How much time until the state data is PoW validated when using parity warp?

Question

Ethcore claims parity --warp only takes one minute to sync the chain. I tried myself and it indeed takes around 2-3 minutes on my machine with a slightly bad connection.

 0 ✓ user@hoster ~ $ parity --mode passive --db-compaction ssd --pruning fast --warp --cache-size 4096
2016-11-30 12:21:26  Starting Parity/v1.4.5-beta-UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN/x86_64-linux-gnu/rustc1.13.0
2016-11-30 12:21:26  State DB configuation: fast
2016-11-30 12:21:26  Operating mode: passive
2016-11-30 12:21:26  Configured for Frontier/Homestead using Ethash engine
2016-11-30 12:21:32  Syncing snapshot 1/69         #0    4/10/25 peers      3 MiB db    7 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   10 KiB sync
                     [...]
2016-11-30 12:23:43  Syncing snapshot 68/69         #0    1/14/25 peers      3 MiB db    7 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   10 KiB sync
2016-11-30 12:23:48  Syncing #2720000 e0a7…f90a      0 blk/s    0 tx/s   0 Mgas/s       0+    0 Qed   #2720000    8/11/25 peers    0 bytes db  656 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   12 KiB sync
2016-11-30 12:23:56  Syncing #2720149 3f85…a2c7    120 blk/s  979 tx/s  40 Mgas/s       0+  613 Qed   #2721511    8/14/25 peers     23 MiB db    2 MiB chain    5 MiB queue    1 MiB sync
2016-11-30 12:23:57  Imported #2721511 3702…acd3 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 1.02 ms, 0.51 KiB) + another 3 block(s) containing 4 tx(s)
2016-11-30 12:24:11  Imported #2721512 e6c5…2d67 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 0.74 ms, 0.51 KiB)

But, how much time does it take until the state data is PoW validated? And, is it validated at all?

Answer 1

The --warp downloads the most recent 30k blocks and quickly validates for PoW and total difficulty. This is what's taking around 1-5 minutes.

 0 ✓ user@hoster ~ $ parity --mode active --db-compaction ssd --warp --cache-size 4096
2016-12-01 22:27:08  Starting Parity/v1.4.5-beta-UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN/x86_64-linux-gnu/rustc1.13.0
2016-12-01 22:27:08  State DB configuation: fast
2016-12-01 22:27:08  Operating mode: active
2016-12-01 22:27:08  Configured for Frontier/Homestead using Ethash engine
2016-12-01 22:27:14  Public node URL: enode://94ea88a67d176eac49e5aa64aa277aa5bd48e96bb549c1852545d943dedc4409039072766387597b415a9ccd38167ab848bfdf93919009d2d942687aa8ccb714@172.16.16.11:30303
2016-12-01 22:27:19  Syncing snapshot 0/66         #0    3/11/25 peers      3 MiB db    7 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   10 KiB sync
-------------------- ^ warp started ------------------------------------------------

                     [...]

2016-12-01 22:30:14  Syncing snapshot 61/66         #0    3/16/25 peers      3 MiB db    7 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   10 KiB sync
2016-12-01 22:30:19  Syncing #2730000 fa0e…0b90      0 blk/s    0 tx/s   0 Mgas/s       0+    0 Qed   #2730000    2/16/25 peers    0 bytes db    8 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   11 KiB sync
-------------------- ^ warp finished -----------------------------------------------

2016-12-01 22:30:21  Imported #2730131 adda…db11 (3 txs, 0.09 Mgas, 1.59 ms, 0.99 KiB)
2016-12-01 22:30:54       #59817   14/15/25 peers      3 MiB db   23 MiB chain  0 bytes queue    6 MiB sync
------------------------- ^ normal sync started ------------------------------------

2016-12-01 22:31:17  Imported #2730134 68eb…bd60 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 7.36 ms, 1.03 KiB) + another 1 block(s) containing 16 tx(s)
2016-12-01 22:31:29       #72301   11/13/25 peers      3 MiB db   26 MiB chain  0 bytes queue    6 MiB sync
2016-12-01 22:30:09  Syncing snapshot 57/66         #0    3/15/25 peers      3 MiB db    7 KiB chain  0 bytes queue   10 KiB sync

                     [...]

2016-12-02 00:45:36  Imported #2730701 ad59…c8b8 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 1.05 ms, 0.52 KiB) + another 2 block(s) containing 27 tx(s)
2016-12-02 00:45:48  Imported #2730702 2a08…4c17 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 0.68 ms, 0.51 KiB)
2016-12-02 00:45:53  Imported #2730701 fcb0…d533 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 6.60 ms, 0.51 KiB)
2016-12-02 00:45:55  Imported #2730704 a5c7…076d (19 txs, 0.47 Mgas, 12.23 ms, 3.41 KiB)
2016-12-02 00:46:04     #2677968   18/20/25 peers      5 MiB db  215 MiB chain  0 bytes queue   25 MiB sync
2016-12-02 00:46:39     #2691893   21/23/25 peers      5 MiB db  219 MiB chain  0 bytes queue   21 MiB sync
----------------------- ^ normal sync finished -------------------------------------

2016-12-02 00:47:14      0/24/25 peers      5 MiB db  223 MiB chain  0 bytes queue   68 KiB sync
2016-12-02 00:47:20  Imported #2730707 1bc4…6d75 (0 txs, 0.00 Mgas, 0.32 ms, 0.51 KiB) + another 1 block(s) containing 2 tx(s)
-------------------- ^ receiving new blocks ----------------------------------------

After that the full blockchain is synchronized and PoW validated. This took a little bit more than 2 hours with my setup in fast pruning mode, see timestamps above.