Addressing syncing issues

[wolovim]

The Mist team is very aware of how troublesome it's been to fully sync a node recently. The intention of this issue is to introduce some more transparency into what we've been working on to address this.

TL;DR

In a coming Mist release, you will be able to connect to the network immediately. This means you'll be able to see your balances and send transactions without waiting.

Technical Details

We're working to introduce "layered nodes." With this layered node architecture, Mist will immediately connect to a remote node, hosted by our friends over at Infura. Meanwhile, in the background, your local geth node will continue to sync. When your local node finishes syncing, Mist will begin pointing web3 calls to your local node instead of the remote node.

Big Picture

Infura provides an amazing service, but it is important to the health of the ethereum network that many individuals run their own nodes. For that reason, Mist will always promote doing so. We understand, however, that a node is becoming prohibitively large and expensive for many machines to run locally. We will likely offer an option to operate Mist purely on the remote node to accommodate those users.

This work is a "small" piece of a larger refactoring we're working toward. Part of that plan is to offer more configuration options to users. That may include decoupling Mist from geth to allow users to select the client of their choosing. Of course, we enjoy working closely with the geth team, but it is in Mist's best interest to be flexible enough to survive any single client having issues.

A Note on Geth

We should mention: the geth team is also working very hard to reduce the resources required to run your own node. This is no simple task, particularly with how popular the network has become. You can look forward to some exciting improvements in the next big release, 1.8. See some teasers from Peter here and here.

Timeline

There will probably be at least one small release before this major feature is introduced. We have a working proof-of-concept, though, and are currently working through the very many edge cases.

[jordimorris]

Sounds good! This shows empathy. Seeing your balance and execute transactions is number one priority when opening Mist.

It would be really great to have an easy method to move all the data downloaded by mist and geth into an external SSD. Recently I bought one for this purpose. However, I´m having issues with IPC and mist.

On the mean time, a step by step tutorial on how to sync your node while storing the data on an external SSD will increase immediately the number of full nodes.

I will donate to the one helps on that

Open issue:
3661

[jlarrieux]

What about having an option for light sync in the background while connecting to infura. I believe there aren't enough light sync nodes (I may be wrong)

[wolovim]

@jlarrieux this is what I have in mind for default settings once geth releases some light client fixes already in the pipeline 👍

[3esmit]

Mist could "predict" or "oracle" the blockchain size and warn about low space before starting sync, and there propose a light sync or remote node.

[FireflyHM]

Geth has updated to 1.8.0. Any news on the new version of Mist?

[kimpers]

In the meantime you can install geth 1.8.0 and start it with geth --light from terminal before launching mist. Mist will then use the running instance of geth. This is working great for me.

[wolovim]

We waited to push Mist users to upgrade until the geth 1.8.1 patch was released. As of last week, you should be prompted to upgrade when opening the app now. Light mode in particular should get you synced in no time 🎉 Meanwhile, the remote (infura) node feature is still under development.

[user35975432789753]

yeah, light mode helps. but fee in light mode is crazy. waiting for new mist release