Hi guys.

Captain Anton is speaking.

Today we have released our Ethereum Blockchain Images service. Take a look at it — http://chain.cloud/eth_blockchains.html

The idea behind this little backup service is that you can simply unpack these images and don’t need to wait for blockchain synchronisation. The images are prepared regularly and only the last one is kept.

We wrote a straightforward ‘cron’ backup scripts. You can help us improve the solution. The source code is available here: https://github.com/ChainCloud/BlockchainBackupScripts

Please pay attention to details regarding -- fast option. You can download the blockchain using geth’s --fast option. We have 2 images that were created with this option. The blockchain is much smaller in this case. From the original documentation:

This -- fast flag enables fast syncing through state downloads rather than downloading the full block data. This will also reduce the size of your blockchain dramatically. NOTE: -- fast can only be run if you are syncing your blockchain from scratch and only the first time you download the blockchain for security reasons.

Blockchain sizes

Current Ethereum blockchain data size: 70+ GB

Current Ethereum Ropsten blockchain data size: 1.2 GB

Current Ethereum (fast) blockchain data size: 11 GB

Current Ethereum Ropsten (fast) blockchain data size: 760 MB

We hope that this free service will help you. And please test it) We are still in beta.

Feel free to write us here or in our Slack channel if you have any comments or suggestions.

Anton.