I am new to Umbrel and am trying to set up a Bitcoin Node. it may be that what I am seeing is normal based on my hardware and the current size of the blockchain, or I am doing something wrong. I re-installed the whole setup a couple of times because I thought maybe I tinkered with setting too much, …

Same issue here on RPi 5, my internet speed is top notch. Syncs fast on everything other than RPi.

Something you can try is install Bitcoin Core v28 first, sync the blockchain, and update to your desired version later.

Your internet speed is fine, the hardware is very important. It is not uncommon for a full sync to take multiple days, I have devices that will take ~2 days, I have devices that could take weeks. First thing I would try is increasing the Cache size. This can speed things up a bit assuming no other …

Thank you. I will increase the Cache. My router is a standard Linksys router and I couldn’t see any settings that would block i2p traffic.

It’s been reported that from v29.2 (if I’m not mistaken, you can check bitcoin core’s github) the initial sync could be slower than the usual, so just to make sure I’d go with v28, and then upgrade to v30.2 (latest) or whatever you prefer, so I’d give it a try. Also increase the cache as Crayon sai…

With mine the slowdown seems to be around the time the blockchain begun being spammed with images and such. Another reason to run Knots and BIP110 everyone.

It’d be the same anyway, the blockchain info is the same for any Bitcoin instance, being Knots, Core, or whatever, installing Knonts won’t accelerate anything, and you’d probably ending downloading things (especially mempool) twice.

I know that, but Knots and BIP110 is trying to stop all the non monetary data for the future.

But that’s not what the topic is about, and doesn’t make a lot of sense to “start” that debate here :grin: For this topic it’s exactly the same to use either Core, Knots, Librerelay, or whatever.

Bitcoin Node on RPi Slow to Synchronize after ~65%

Support and Troubleshooting

RodB March 7, 2026, 8:41pm 25

I wrote Blockchain Sync Monitor for exactly this … to help give you some insight on IBD processing.

But from what I have heard, rPi and external SSD do not perform very well and I am sure that is your bottleneck.

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Bitcoin Node on RPi Slow to Synchronize after ~65%

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