Quote from: thefreshprinceofbell on February 28, 2021, 10:44:05 PM

There are 10,000 full nodes many of them on fiber connection ready and willing to share the full Bitcoin blockchain.

But the core client only connects to 8-9 outbound nodes by default with no way to change this, other than manually adding clients.

source: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/8140

I'm running on 4 year old hardware and only utilizing 3% CPU and 25% memory with the only constraint being downloading the blocks. Currently my sync time is pegged at 4 weeks but when I manually add clients it drops to 40 hours.

There are not enough new nodes coming online for Pieter Wuille's explanation to make sense. There is no reason someone should have to download the Blockchain via Bittorrent to speed syncing because the Core client is purposely crippling the network.

We need to fix this if we want new users to run full nodes. More importantly lightning network depends on people running full nodes. Most people are going to lose interest when you tell them it will take 4 weeks to sync.

Great title for a topic and disappointing followup, both for you as the op and others who've contributed untill now.

Initial sync process for bitcoin is crippled not by what you think, a default number of 8 outbound connections which you can override it anyway! Who cares about defaults, and how does this specific number relate to days of bootstrapping lag for bitcoin in the wake of 5G internet?

Bitcoin initialization process is crippled not because of stupid defaults, come on, it is obvious, it is due to the pathetic, baseless, infamous slogans about the holly verification thing that are circulating around in the community, and by verification they mean the current naive approach of bitcoin despite lots of smart ideas and proposals out there.