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I'm downloading the blockchain from scratch, and it's been stuck at 2442432 for a couple of hours now.

The chain structure keeps on downloading though. Is there a way to find out how much of that is left before the blocks continue?

screenshot of the stuck block

radekradekradek
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1 Answers1

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I experienced a similar issue while testing a clean local install of Mist Wallet and Ethereum.

This is very likely the result of the large amount of spam-generated state from the recent attacks (which is displayed as "chain structure" in the Mist splash screen).

"You're not stuck in a loop; the attacker created a lot of state. It'll finish eventually, and the forthcoming second fork [EIP158 State Clearing HardFork] will reduce the state a lot." - Nick Johnson

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/584epf/stuck_on_block_downloading_chain_structure/

Jamie Pitts
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  • Thanks for the info! I'll have to delete the chain and start over since I gave up a couple of days ago. I'm glad I'm not stuck in a loop though and hopefully the Hard Fork will help. – radekradekradek Oct 19 '16 at 13:22
  • Okay, I understand downloading block; but what does "downloading chain structure" mean? How are they different? – NealWalters Jul 20 '17 at 23:23
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    "Chain structure" is the Patricia Merckel trie states. The fast sync needs to pause to download all of that before pivoting to classical synchronization. See https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/pull/1889 – DirtStats Sep 28 '17 at 04:09
  • I'm trying to learn more about this chain structure, see also my question and partial answer: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/27125/can-the-merkel-trie-state-entry-download-period-of-a-fast-sync-extend-between-ge – DirtStats Jan 03 '18 at 16:09