How can I find out what the highest block is?

Question

I'm syncing up a new node. How can I find out what the latest block is so that I know how far I've got to go?

Answer 1

For Geth, in another terminal, attach to the Geth console, such as geth attach. This will allow you to keep your syncing node running, without restarting, and you will not see the noisy logs as you would if you simply ran "geth console" without other parameters.

In the console, run eth.syncing

> eth.syncing
{
  currentBlock: 745600,
  highestBlock: 889152,
  startingBlock: 745553
}

You can then see where you are (currentBlock), and the block you still have to reach (highestBlock). (The difference between them is the number of blocks you have left remaining.)

You can run eth.syncing a few times to check your progress, and it will return false when done. You can then use eth.blockNumber and also compare with a blockchain explorer, as other answers here mention.

For clarity web3.eth.isSyncing() will also return false when syncing has not yet started (or is currently not running). If this is the case, you need to check your networking that you are connecting to peers: Why doesn't my Ethereum node have any peers?

Answer 2

If you are using Geth:

geth attach http://host

then enter:

web3.eth.blockNumber

It will give you the block number as integer, here's the function documentation. If you are looking for the block hash instead you can use:

web3.eth.getBlock(BLOCK_NUMBER).hash

so for the current block (atm) it will be:

web3.eth.getBlock(887893).hash

and for the latest block:

web3.eth.getBlock(web3.eth.blockNumber).hash

In the latest version of web3 you can use getBlockNumber() which returns a promise (thx @PaulRBerg for mentioning that)

Answer 3

there are 2 usefull scripts in https://github.com/lyricalpolymath/Ethereum-Scripts

• 1) show simple progress %

with geth running, copy and paste this code in a terminal window to have a simple feedback of the blockchain syncing progress

geth --exec 'var s = eth.syncing; console.log("\n------------ GETH SYNCING PROGRESS\nprogress: " + (s.currentBlock/s.highestBlock*100)+ " %\nblocks left to parse: "+ (s.highestBlock-s.currentBlock) + "\ncurrent Block: " + s.currentBlock + " of " + s.highestBlock)' attach

you will get an output like this

------------ GETH SYNCING PROGRESS 
progress: 81.9161292631709 % 
blocks left to parse: 368837 
current Block: 1670754 of 2039591

---

• 2) advance progress with Time Estimate

download the script and with geth running, copy and paste this code in a terminal window to have a simple feedback of the blockchain syncing progress

geth --exec "loadScript('GethSyncingProgress_2TimeEstimate.js')" attach

will give you an output like

------------ GETH SYNCING PROGRESS - Time estimate
progress: 83.83513931320763
Estimated Time left*: 7d :11h :4m :4s.3
Time it took to parse 10 blocks: 0d :0h :0m :19s.5
blocks left to parse: 330536

Answer 4

You could use a block explorer, such as Etherchain.

Answer 5

The Ethereum wallet will display the latest block number. The official Ethereum stats website also displays it. (Note: this doesn't represent all peers on the network.)

Answer 6

web3.eth.blockNumber gets you the latest block height on your node. Note that you have to have a synced node for that. When you are still downloading the blockchain this number will be smaller.

Answer 7

If you are still syncing you can type eth.syncing and it will report

• currentBlock
• highestBlock
• startingBlock

If eth.syncing is false then use the eth.blockNumber command sebastian mentioned and compare it to the reported block height from your favorite online block explorer

Answer 8

web3.eth.getBlock('latest').then(function(x){console.log(x.timestamp)});

Answer 9

I use the JSON RPC to check from another machine (assuming access). Replace 0.0.0.0:8545 with th RPC address and port of the machine running GETH with RPC.

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"web3_clientVersion","params":[],"id":67}' 0.0.0.0:8545

returns

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":69,"result":{"currentBlock":"0x767811","highestBlock":"0x767879","knownStates":"0x8ba1951","pulledStates":"0x8ba0752","startingBlock":"0x5a95a1"}}

Answer 10

I was annoyed because eth.syncing returns false even before the syncing starts (and it also returns false after the sync finished, so there's no way to tell).

A different way to go about it, if you don't need the actual block number: you can compare your latest synced block's timestamp with the current time:

Date.now()/1000 - eth.getBlock('latest').timestamp

If this amount is greater than, say, 2 minutes (120), then it's very likely that you don't have the last blocks.