How to Bootstrap

TezBake Bootstrapping

To bootstrap your TezBake node means to download someone else’s snapshot of the blockchain and import it into your node. This is much faster than synchronizing the blockchain from scratch. There is a way to quickly bootstrap your node using a snapshot and a way to bootstrap your node using a snapshot and a block hash. The latter is the most reliable and robust method but it is also the slowest. The former is faster but it assumes you trust the source of the snapshot.

Please be aware that bootstrapping your node could result in your nonce revelation to fail and for you to forfit your endorsement rights for the cycle. This is because by default we’re using rolling snapshots which don’t export full blocks for past cycles by default. If your node baked a special kind of block during the lack cycle, it may be asked to provide its nonce to the network. To do so, it needs to have the .tezos-client data intact from the last cycle and it needs to have the full blocks for the last cycle.

To remedy this situation and to never risk forfitting your endorsement rights for a whole cycle, you have to use a snapshot that’s at least 5-6 days old (from today), when bootstrapping a node. You also have to not wipe out or to move your .tezos-client directory. This way you’ll always have at least 1 cycle+ of full blocks in your node’s database as well as the nonce file on disk. The downside of this method is that it will slow down your bootstrap process by the amount of time it takes to download the full blocks for the past 1 cycle+, which can be up to 2 hours on some slow home networks.

Bootstrap using a snapshot

You can get Tezos node snapshots in the following places run by the Tezos Foundation and Marigold respectively:

Before bootstrapping your node, made sure to stop your node as shown below.

Using the first bootstrap method below ensures that the snapshot is checked for consistency both programmatically and by your checking the blockchain explorer(s) to confirm the block hash. This is the most reliable and robust method but it it also the slowest.

tezbake stop
tezbake bootstrap-node <url> <block_hash>
tezbake start
# example:
tezbake bootstrap-node https://snapshots.eu.tzinit.org/mainnet/rolling BL8Vq12HX6MJWkB6RLgQAYRKpKZ5fyMoLpWzAoQ6mh55gkKHiQU

You can replace eu above with us or asia if you prefer to use a different mirror closer to you.

Get the block hash and block level from the snapshot provider’s website: https://snapshots.eu.tzinit.org/mainnet/rolling.html

The <block_hash> argument is optional but encouraged. If you don’t want to borther with this protection, use the second method below which will also be faster.

Verify the hash/checksum provided by the snapshot provider to ensure the snapshot is valid. You can find the correct hashes for all blocks on Tezos blockchain explorers such as: https://tzkt.io/blocks https://tzstats.com/

Simply search for the block level in the search field and verify the hash of the block matches the hash provided by the snapshot provider.

Using the second bootstrap method below is faster but it assumes you trust the source of the snapshot. Sometimes one doesn’t have a choice and must make such trade-offs when time is of the essence.

tezbake stop
tezbake bootstrap-node --no-check <url>
tezbake start
# example:
tezbake bootstrap-node --no-check https://snapshots.eu.tzinit.org/mainnet/rolling

You can replace eu above with us or asia if you prefer to use a different mirror closer to you.

Any questions/comments/concerns? Please contact the Tez Capital team on Discord or Telegram