Lightweight Filecoin Chain Snapshots

Lightweight Filecoin chain snapshots are a segment of the Filecoin chain exported to a Content Addressable aRchives (CAR) file. They contain a chain segment large enough to allow the Filecoin network consensus protocol to apply messages successfully (2x+ finality; 1 for consensus; 1 for reorgs). Lightweight snapshots become less useful the older they are (as the chain progresses). The goal of providing lightweight snapshots is to allow users to join the network as quickly as possible.

The snapshot links issue a 302 Found redirecting to the latest snapshot file. Snapshots files are named in the format of <height>_YYYY_MM_DDTHH_MM_SSZ.car.zst where the date & time is the chain timestamp for the given height. The height is the highest TipSet height in the chain.

These links can be used directly with Lotus --chain-import flag, the redirect will be followed.

Verify a snapshot

Every snapshot has a sibling sha256sum file that can be downloaded to verify the snapshot before use.

curl -I https://snapshots.mainnet.filops.net/minimal/latest

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 14:58:50 GMT
Location: https://pub-fd31751bcb69400eb39e694385c19457.r2.dev/minimal/2864400_2023_05_16T12_00_00Z.car.zst
Connection: keep-alive

You can then verify the snapshot:

curl https://pub-fd31751bcb69400eb39e694385c19457.r2.dev/minimal/2864400_2023_05_16T12_00_00Z.sha256sum

052fa682d62d835360fe5892a82a2f923464193e37a162d3c1a0849f63d669f6 *2864400_2023_05_16T12_00_00Z.car.zst

Feedback & Issues

If you run into issues with the snapshots provided or have feedback you can open a discussion topic on the Filecoin Chain Archiver repository.

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