Oct 27, 2024

The node rapidly finds the fastest available peers on the network and uses very little of their resources because of work splitting. There are no redundant block requests. Work is managed by the check chaser such that channels request work (hashes to download) and if the channel is dropped, the hashes are returned to the chaser. As channels become starved, more work is generated, and if no more is pending, the slowest channels are dropped (to prevent redundant downloads, since there is no way to withdraw a request made to a peer, and we always request the full batch of work) and their work divided up. This can cause a few seconds of delay in each download “window” as the last work is shuffled around, but a peer cannot delay the sync. The window can also be configured to be the whole chain, but breaking it up is good for preventing validation delay.