This project covers a range of efforts to ensure access to the Filecoin chain. The primary focus is for the Filecoin Mainnet, but tooling under this project should work with all networks.
Efforts
Lightweight Filecoin chain snapshots are a segment of the Filecoin chain exported to a Content Addressable aRchives (CAR) file. They contain a chain segment large enough to allow the Filecoin network consensus protocol to apply messages successfully (2x+ finality; 1 for consensus; 1 for reorgs). Lightweight snapshots become less useful the older they are (as the chain progresses). The goal of providing lightweight snapshots is to allow users to join the network as quickly as possible.
Lightweight Filecoin Chain Snapshots
Internal: Lightweight Filecoin Snapshots Service README
Archival snapshots are an ever growing set of Content Addressable aRchives (CAR) files that contain a fixed time length of chain data. These snapshots are produced at regular intervals (eg; 24h) with minimal overlap (possibly none). The snapshots contain all data for a segment of the chain capture this includes blockheaders, state, messages, receipts.
These archives can be stored on Filecoin, or imported and served over IPFS protocols to allow for fetching Filecoin chain state over IPFS.
Required: Add ChainExportRange API method https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/issues/8641
The message provider ensures that all blockheader messages are available on the network and accessible over the Filecoin Spec protocols to any node on the network. Currently the Archival Nodes service this purpose (operationally this isn’t ideal due to complexity around trimming state and preserving messages).