Getting Synced

As of Parity version 1.3.0 ("Acuity"), Parity supports state snapshotting. This allows for an extremely fast "synchronisation" that skips almost all of the block processing, simply injecting the appropriate data directly into the database.

NOTE: At present, snapshotting does not place all of the block or receipt data into the database. This means you will not get information relating to transactions more than a few days old. This is fine for some usages such as mining, but if you have or need access to historical transaction data (e.g. if you have an account that you've been using with Geth and wish to browse sent transactions) then you probably want to sync normally.

To use a snapshot sync, you first need to download a snapshot. You can do this via Bittorrent. There are different snapshots for the standard Ethereum mainnet and the Classic networks:

(NOTE: As of Parity 1.4.0 these snapshots are no longer valid. As the snapshot format may be subject to change, these are not guaranteed to work with every version of Parity)

• Standard mainnet magnet:?xt=urn:btih:E9B318B15016AAD261E925FF19AE14B30D1BACA3&dn=mainnet-2021235.snapshot
• Classic magnet:?xt=urn:btih:EAA20FC76D0C14B14FC43FC99EE3E0078B0B2161&dn=classic-2019364.snapshot

With your snapshot downloaded, simply run Parity telling it to restore from the snapshot in question. For example, to restore the mainnet use:

parity restore mainnet-2021235.snapshot

To restore the Classic chain, ensure that you use the --chain option (you'll end up with a very confused database otherwise):

parity restore classic-2019364.snapshot --chain=classic

It takes a minute or two to restore. After that, just run Parity normally and you'll be synced in no time.