Wallet Sync
Could someone please explain to me why sync’ing a wallet is an issue and why this is any different than sync’ing to microsoft exchange, pop3, smtp, google drive or any other sync my devices and apps on my devices do every day as services? I sync GB of data a day with no issues.
Why can’t the wallet run as a service and sync as needed? What am I missing here, we’ve been sync’ing for 30+ years now.
My layman’s reply: Google Drive and all thse other services are not decentralized, so in the case of Zcash, you need to download the whole history to verify that it’s in the state it should be (up to date). Because of the “network congestion” aka SPAM issue that has been plaguing this chain, it increased the amount of blocks needed to download/sync, thus increasing the time to do.
mistakeerror
Syncing mail is done lazily. The app downloads the titles, the content is done in the background and on demand. You can do that because messages are mostly unrelated but for a Blockchain, the transactions are chained.
Also, the Blockchain is 250 gb and can be synced in a hour or two with ywallet. Imo, it is not that bad when you think about it in these terms.
Also my layman’s reply,
Take BTC for instance, transactions are made of inputs and generates outputs. A newly generated output is called an unspent transaction output, or UTXO for short. UTXOs can then be used as inputs for a new transaction. These transactions made of inputs are grouped in a block of transactions. These blocks are recorded and linked sequentially in a chain of blocks, called the blockchain.
One of the jobs of a wallet is to scan the entire blockchain and keep track of which of these UTXOs are yours. When your wallet has the same view of the blockchain as the rest of the network, the wallet is said to be synchronized.
In the case of BTC and other public blockchains, all transactions inputs and outputs are visible, so servers can index and keep the balance of UTXOs for you, your wallet simply queries the server for the balance or any other info it needs.
In the case of Zcash, that uses state-of-the-art cryptography, all shielded transactions inputs and outputs are kept hidden, encrypted with a secret only your wallet knows.
So a Zcash wallet needs to download every block and try to decrypt every single transaction to see if any of the transaction notes (in the case of Zcash, unspent transaction outputs are known as notes) belongs to you.
Since only you knows the secret, it’s not possible to rely on a server to keep track of your balance.
This is a simplified view of what I understand (which is not much btw)
Unless your device only has 64 gb… “Ywallet” (Edit nighthawk) on my phone has 16gb locked, I cant finish sync. Have no idea what’s in wallet its years old. Its too complicated and a pain to move it. A waste of my time sadly at this point.
Very sad user experience.
ywallet … sorry.
None of this speaks to why wallet cant be a service and always on, so its always almost synced.
I get it, I get a new wallet and it needs to sync…Fine… But once its sync’ed why doesnt the wallet stay open and cont to sync as needed.
You all explained alot, but non of it explains why I have to open the app before it will sync.
Only thing I can guess is security concern but Id let the user make that choice.
If Im going to use a wallet even weekly I want it always running and mostly synced up.
Why cant I have that?
Could you provide a screenshot of the storage page?
My installation uses less than 1 mb of data and I have 5 accounts.
Hey so sorry its my nighthawk wallet not y…
I cant show space without logging in to phone from pc and finding the file in the phone system files. Took me forever to figure out where all my phone space is stuck.
so many wallets. I hate it.
I have put a lot of effort into keeping memory and storage usage low. You should be able to sync a phone with 2 GB of RAM, I know some users who did.
YWallet has background syncing on Android, but iOS prevents any app for running like that (besides their own apps of course).
… nice
Btw I loved your appearance on the call today. Good shit.
Nice…but Thats not ram, its hard drive space. Thats locked space I cant get back unless I delete the app I assume.
Thank you. I really really dont want to offend anyone, or anyone to feel like Im attacking them. I appreciate the hard non stop work everyone does and the vision Zooko, Nate, Za and countless others have.
However, I am very passionate as I believe the fate of humanity lies with zcash.
Less than 100 mb then. Most of it is the zcash zk reference string.
Yes, it’s the old Nighthawk Wallet, the new release(coming soon) will streamline disk space usage to keep only the necessary data and not the entire downloaded light blocks!
