Is it possible to speed up block chain syncing with a miner?

Syncing the client with the network can take some time. As I have to do this fairly often, it quite bothers me, especially when on slow devices. (A Pi can't do it in a week.)

I don't know exactly what the client does when syncing. Does it verify the block hashes? Transaction hashes as well? If it does hashing, a miner should be able to speed it up. I noticed periodic CPU bursts of the client, so that's probably when the hashing is done.

So, I happen to have one of those little Block Erupter USB Miners. Is it possible to setup one of these to speed up syncing?

Steven Roose

Posted 2013-11-17T18:44:04.493

Reputation: 10 855

Answers

Syncing means:

Downloading the blockchain.
For every transaction, check that its inputs actually reference earlier unspent outputs, and that the signatures match.

Hashing is a completely negligible part of the process and a mining device will not help you. Computationally the major work is verifying ECDSA signatures, and you also need disk access to find the past outputs. Using an SSD will make things faster.

Meni Rosenfeld

Posted 2013-11-17T18:44:04.493

Reputation: 18 542