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Syncing the blockchain is optional, unless you store your coins in a wallet generated by a full node. Even then, things such as UTXO commitments would make sync
by PretzelPirate 9y ago
Syncing the blockchain is optional, unless you store your coins in a wallet generated by a full node. Even then, things such as UTXO commitments would make syncing the current state almost instantaneous, though it would either requiring pulling the commitment from multiple third parties or having the protocol updated to require a UTXO commitment every Nth block.
- yebyen 9y agoI thought the protocol required you to have the keys in hand while scanning the block chain, in order to be sure that all addresses that were generated with your keys can be recovered. I don't know how I reconcile that with clients like electrum, is that using an implementation of UTXO? Does this just keep a record of any unspent transaction outputs at any given time, scan them, and try your keys on all of them? I think you can do a similar trick with bitcoin core if you have all of the blocks, but you have a new wallet.dat. You can delete the index and it will regenerate it with the new wallet in mind, recovering all of your unspent transactions. (You do not need to literally download all of the blocks again, unless you actually don't have them anymore. It is sufficient to rescan them. But this takes time too, and it does require that you must store a copy of the chain somewhere on an ongoing basis.)