4
2
Bitcoin-QT: Very long startup and at first launch needs to download the entire blockchain
Multibit: Starts up in a few seconds and downloads for only a few seconds
Why is Bitcoin-QT so slow?
Why is bitcoin-qt startup so slow compared to MultiBit
Answers
4
Bitcoin-QT is slower than Multibit because Bitcoin-QT is a thick client(it downloads the entire blockchain,) whereas Multibit is a thin client(it does not download the full blockchain.)
Are there benefits of a thick client? – stommestack – 2013-06-11T17:38:51.287
4Thin clients do not validate transactions, they just assume that the longest blockchain only has valid transactions. Furthermore, thin clients do not help the network. Instead, they rely on full nodes (like Bitcoin-Qt) to do the heavy lifting. – Pieter Wuille – 2013-06-11T20:22:12.090
If multibit doesn't download the full blockchain, how does it learn about transactions in blocks it hasn't seen? – Florian Bösch – 2013-08-05T20:22:36.527
It doesn't; it only learns about transactions in blocks made since it was first started(unless you import an older address, in which case it downloads the entire blockchain.) – DrAwesome – 2013-09-19T20:24:36.777