Can I start mining before my node is fully synced?

Question

I'm trying to mine some Ether on Ropsten, using a Geth node configured as follows:

--verbosity=3
--networkid=3
--testnet
--mine
--fast
--cache=8192
--datadir=./data
--etherbase=0xMyAccountAddress
--bootnodes=enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02b14182d37ea7c3c8b9c2683aeb6b733a1@52.169.14.227:30303,enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa349691242576d552a2a56aaeae426c5303ded677ce455ba1acd9d@13.84.180.240:30303,enode://a979fb575495b8d6db44f750317d0f4622bf4c2aa3365d6af7c284339968eef29b69ad0dce72a4d8db5ebb4968de0e3bec910127f134779fbcb0cb6d3331163c@52.16.188.185:30303,enode://3f1d12044546b76342d59d4a05532c14b85aa669704bfe1f864fe079415aa2c02d743e03218e57a33fb94523adb54032871a6c51b2cc5514cb7c7e35b3ed0a99@13.93.211.84:30303,enode://78de8a0916848093c73790ead81d1928bec737d565119932b98c6b100d944b7a95e94f847f689fc723399d2e31129d182f7ef3863f2b4c820abbf3ab2722344d@191.235.84.50:30303,enode://158f8aab45f6d19c6cbf4a089c2670541a8da11978a2f90dbf6a502a4a3bab80d288afdbeb7ec0ef6d92de563767f3b1ea9e8e334ca711e9f8e2df5a0385e8e6@13.75.154.138:30303,enode://1118980bf48b0a3640bdba04e0fe78b1add18e1cd99bf22d53daac1fd9972ad650df52176e7c7d89d1114cfef2bc23a2959aa54998a46afcf7d91809f0855082@52.74.57.123:30303

I don't see any change in my account's balance when I view it on https://ropsten.etherscan.io.

Is this possibly because my node is not yet fully synced?

In the Geth console, I see the following types of printouts, which I think are relevant to my question:

• imported 187 receipts in 54.968ms. #640580
• commit new work on block 1 with 0 txs & 0 uncles. Took 999.2µs
• mined potential block #1
• mined block #1

Those numbers vary of course (block numbers are gradually incrementing, while others are just changing "sporadically").

But I think that this block-mining is not the Ether-mining which I've been aiming at.

So how can I determine whether or not any Ether-mining is actually taking place, and if it's not, then how can I determine the cause (or should I wait for the node to be fully synced, as stated in the title of my question)?

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

Your problem is that you can start mining from whichever block and it's totally ok. At least in theory.

If we are now at block 10 and you start mining from block 5 you may eventually get your own block number 10 and 11. But at that point the rest of the blockchain is probably already at least at block 20 or 50 or 1000 - you can never catch up by solo-mining (except possibly in a testnet). And because the canonical chain (the "real" chain) always chooses the chain which is the heaviest (almost the same as longest) your chain never gets chosen as the canonical chain.

So if you want to help the network and do some real mining you have to wait until your client is fully synchronized.