How to switch from zcash-cli to Ywallet?
I have a zcash-cli wallet, installed a few years ago. Now I wanted to use it, but seeing that the blockchain has increased to 260GB, I decided to switch to some lightweight wallet. I have a backup I made in zcash-cli, what is the easiest way for me to switch to a light wallet (without downloading the whole blockchain for zcash-cli)?
Lightwallets in general do not directly use the zcashd wallet.dat file or require having a personal node and copy of the blockchain, at all, and so it is not useful in this context.
(The light wallet will call to a lightwalletD server to be served block and tx info. The lightwalletD server talks to the node, wherever it may be, to fetch that stuff and relays back to you. No personal node required)
Starting a new instance of Ywallet will not require downloading any prior chain data at all, and in fact, it would be best to simply send funds from your full node wallet to your new light wallet and backup whatever old memos and tx histories from zcashd as text files.
You could, however, import your seed and attempt to restore the unified addresses that were created post NU5. The seed will not restore the legacy addresses; those will require their respective keys.
Like mentioned, the lightwalletD server will call to a node and theoretically you could utilize your node for that purpose and run your node/server/lightwallet locally. But, it will be with the caveat of requiring the -“insightexplorer” and a couple of other flags that will increase your db size to over 508GB after a reindex so it may not be most feasible.
If the purpose is to avoid downloading the blockchain, the OP cannot transfer funds from his node.
The wallet keys can be exported even when the node is out of sync. Then import them into a light wallet.