Blockchain synchronization is painfully slow / Best way to download blockchain I'm trying to setup my own Bitcoin node on Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS.

Right now, I've stuck with blockchain synchronization. I'm letting bitcoind to run every day for at least 10-12 hours while I work and it already takes three days to download 83% of the entire data.

I have very good Internet connection, it should take no more than two hours to download 80 GB of data, however, it's taking at least 30 hours already. My connection is practically free from other downloads most of the time.

I've googled this problem: some people say that current version of the bitcoind is so fast that it doesn't matter how blockchain is downloaded throught the Bitcoin network or by torrent. Other people say, that it takes a week to download the entire blockchain.


Is there a way to optimize my setup to make it download blockchain much-much faster?
Or do I better download it via some torrent and then synchronize the differences from the network? What is the best place to find such torrent file or magnet link? Also, is it safe to download blockchain from some third-party, will bitcoind validate it?


SO, generally speaking, what is the best way to download the blockchain in order to setup a working up-to-date Bitcoin node?



$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS \n \l

$ uname -a
Linux destiny 4.4.0-47-generic #68-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 26 19:39:52 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ bitcoind -version
Bitcoin Core Daemon version v0.13.1.0-g03422e5
What usually takes time is the validation of the transactions in the blockchain, not downloading it. Bitcoin Core implements a fully validating node, which does not trust any of the information other peers give it. The only way to accomplish that is by validating everything itself.

30 hours sounds painfully long though. If you have memory to spare on your system, you absolutely should increase the database cache size. The default in 0.13 is 300 MB, but you'll see very significant speedups from using a higher value, up to 4000 or so (which would require an extra 4GB of memory).