The July 9, 2018 IOTA Snapshot

Next Snapshot: July 9, 2018 @ 08:00 UTC
Network Restart: July 9, 2018 @ 15:00 UTC

As you probably already know, we are performing global snapshots of the IOTA network on a more or less regular basis. The main motivation for global snapshots is to prune the database and allow smaller nodes to keep participating in the Mainnet. Otherwise, they may run out of space andfall off the network— something we definitely don’t want.

The amount of traffic on the IOTA network is ever-increasing (even more so after the Tip Selection algorithm improvements). The increased traffic is something we’re very proud of as it’s a testament to the network being used more and more, but it comes at the price of a faster database growth. This is something we currently work on addressing with local snapshots. For now, we recommend moving to at least 80 GB nodes until local snapshots are available to make sure your node doesn’t run out of space.  

You can read more about snapshots in general in our FAQ. If you’d like to know more about the process, see our previous blog post.  

A snapshot is always a good time to get involved and start running your own nodes! The following community-run guides will help you get set up, and you won’t need any special instructions to use the latest snapshot as your starting point. Please note that we now recommend setting up nodes with at least 80 GB of disk space.

• IOTA.partners
• IOTA Full Node Installation Wiki

You have 2 basic options:

1. Do nothing.You are free to continue running your existing version of IRI. There are no significant changes to IRI this time, we released a major update few weeks back and there’s more good stuff baking, so stay tuned for more. Still, we strongly encourage every node operator to keep IRI up to date to ensure you have the latest performance enhancements and bug fixes. Note that while the Coordinator is offline, you won’t see any confirmations on the Mainnet for several hours (July 9, 8:00 UTC to July 9, 15:00 UTC).
2. Clean the database.If you are running a smaller node that is short on disk space (the database has grown to ~43 GB since the last snapshot), you may want to remove your existing database entirely and start fresh. In this case delete yourmainnetdbfolder and replaceiri.jarwith theMainnet v1.5.1jarfile which will be found on the releases page shortly after the snapshot. This will allow your node keep participating in the network.

If you run a node and would like to participate in the validation process, it’s not too difficult. Just make sure you have Node.js installed and follow the instructions here: https://github.com/iotaledger/snapshot-validator.  

IF and Community members will be available on Discord in the #snapshots channel to provide support during the snapshot if you would like to participate.