Software required

here we'll cover the software needed throughout the course.

In the next lectures there will be talks about the theory, which will be a good chance for the code to be downloaded.

We should start geth in the background:

We need to add the --fast flag
- Enables fast syncing through state downloads rather than downloading the full blockchain data.
- This will reduce the size of the blockchain dramatically
- Fast can only be used starting geth without having downloaded anything before
Second flag is --cache
- and is the amount of megabytes allocated for internal caching
- Depends on ram memory

Already downloaded some data?

If you are at 50% or beloe, remove the chaindata directory and start over
- ~/.ethereum on linux
- ~/Library/Ethereum in OS X
- /AppData/Roaming/Ethereum in Windows
In these directories there are:
- chaindata: product blockchain
- testnet: test blockchain
- keystore: your keys

Start it as

geth --fast --cache=1024

It will be around 11GB.