Join the network using Snapshots

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Snapshot Sync

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Snapshot Providers

• Polkachu: Mainnet Snapshots | Testnet Snapshots
• Imperator.co
• Stakeme
• kjnodes

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Clean Up & Preparation

1. Stop the service
   sudo systemctl stop seid
   
2. Backup Validator State (Critical for Validators) Assuming your sei home directory is $HOME/.sei, back up priv_validator_key.json and priv_validator_state.json:
   cp $HOME/.sei/data/priv_validator_state.json $HOME/priv_validator_state.json
   cp $HOME/.sei/config/priv_validator_key.json $HOME/priv_validator_key.json
   
3. Reset the State
   seid tendermint unsafe-reset-all --home $HOME/.sei
   
4. Check custom state-store paths Print the state-store section from app.toml:
   sed -n '/^\[state-store\]/,/^\[.*\]/p' $HOME/.sei/config/app.toml
   
   If ss-db-directory or evm-ss-db-directory is not empty, the state store may live outside $HOME/.sei/data. Back up anything you need, then move or remove the old state-store data before you restore the snapshot. The generic commands below expect both settings to be empty so the snapshot’s default paths are used. Follow your provider’s placement instructions if you keep custom paths. Do not reuse a RocksDB directory with ss-backend = "pebbledb".
5. Remove data and Wasm
   rm -rf $HOME/.sei/data
   rm -rf $HOME/.sei/wasm
   

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Download & Restore

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Prerequisites

sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl lz4 wget aria2 pv -y

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Download and Extract

1. Set the Snapshot URL Replace <SNAPSHOT_URL> with the link from your chosen provider.
   SNAPSHOT_URL="<PASTE_SNAPSHOT_URL_HERE>"
   
2. Extract the snapshot Most providers compress the data and wasm directories directly. Stream the archive to avoid storing a second compressed copy:
   set -o pipefail
   curl --fail -L "$SNAPSHOT_URL" | lz4 -c -d | tar -x -C "$HOME/.sei"
   
   Alternative: parallel download with aria2 aria2c supports parallel connections but keeps the compressed archive beside the extracted data. Put the archive on a data disk with enough free space for both:
   set -o pipefail
   SNAPSHOT_FILE="/path/on-data-disk/snapshot.tar.lz4"
   aria2c -x 16 -s 16 \
     -d "$(dirname "$SNAPSHOT_FILE")" \
     -o "$(basename "$SNAPSHOT_FILE")" \
     "$SNAPSHOT_URL" && \
     pv "$SNAPSHOT_FILE" | lz4 -c -d | tar -x -C "$HOME/.sei"
   
   The -x 16 flag sets the maximum connections per server, and -s 16 splits the file into 16 segments for parallel downloading. You can adjust these values based on your network conditions.
   If extraction fails, remove the partially extracted data and wasm directories before you retry. Do not continue to verification.
   Some providers wrap the data in another directory or use a different compression format. For a .tar.gz snapshot, use the provider’s tar -xzf command. If the archive contains a root directory such as sei/data, adjust the extraction target or --strip-components. Run the backend check below after any extraction method.
3. Verify every extracted state-store path The check below scans every backend-labelled default state-store path instead of stopping at the first result. It catches archives that contain both PebbleDB and RocksDB:
   verify_snapshot_backend() {
     local state_store_config backend_dirs backend path
   
     if [ ! -f "$HOME/.sei/config/app.toml" ]; then
       echo "UNVERIFIED: app.toml not found. Do not start seid." >&2
       return 1
     fi
   
     state_store_config="$(
       sed -n '/^\[state-store\]/,/^\[.*\]/p' \
         "$HOME/.sei/config/app.toml"
     )"
   
     if printf '%s\n' "$state_store_config" | \
       grep -Eq "^[[:space:]]*(ss-db-directory|evm-ss-db-directory)[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*(\"[^\"]+\"|'[^']+')"; then
       echo "UNVERIFIED: custom state-store directory configured." >&2
       echo "Use the provider-specific placement and verification steps." >&2
       return 1
     fi
   
     backend_dirs="$(
       for backend in pebbledb rocksdb; do
         for path in \
           "$HOME/.sei/data/$backend" \
           "$HOME/.sei/data/state_store/cosmos/$backend" \
           "$HOME/.sei/data/state_store/evm/$backend"; do
           if [ -d "$path" ]; then
             printf '%s\n' "$path"
           fi
         done
       done
     )"
   
     printf '%s\n' "$backend_dirs"
   
     if printf '%s\n' "$backend_dirs" | grep -Eq '(^|/)rocksdb$'; then
       echo "FAIL: RocksDB data found. Do not start seid." >&2
       return 1
     fi
   
     if ! printf '%s\n' "$backend_dirs" | grep -Eq '(^|/)pebbledb$'; then
       echo "UNVERIFIED: no PebbleDB state-store directory found." >&2
       return 1
     fi
   
     echo "PASS: PebbleDB found and no RocksDB directory found."
   }
   
   verify_snapshot_backend
   
   The function returns a nonzero status for FAIL and UNVERIFIED. Continue only if the provider confirmed PebbleDB and the command prints PASS. A legacy EVM store at data/evm_ss/ does not identify its backend in the directory name, which is why provider confirmation is still required. If you used aria2c, remove the downloaded archive after this check passes:
   rm "$SNAPSHOT_FILE"
   
4. Restore validator state
   cp $HOME/priv_validator_state.json $HOME/.sei/data/priv_validator_state.json
   
5. Enable SeiDB and configure PebbleDB Make sure SeiDB is enabled and the state-store backend is PebbleDB:
   sed -i.bak -E "/^\[state-commit\]/,/^\[.*\]/ s|^[#[:space:]]*(sc-enable[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*).*$|\1true| ; /^\[state-store\]/,/^\[.*\]/ s|^[#[:space:]]*(ss-enable[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*).*$|\1true| ; /^\[state-store\]/,/^\[.*\]/ s|^[#[:space:]]*(ss-backend[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*).*$|\1\"pebbledb\"|" $HOME/.sei/config/app.toml
   
   sed -n '/^\[state-store\]/,/^\[.*\]/p' $HOME/.sei/config/app.toml
   
   Confirm that the output includes ss-backend = "pebbledb". If the key is absent, add it directly below [state-store] before you restart the node.
6. Restart the node
   sudo systemctl start seid
   
7. Monitor logs
   sudo journalctl -fu seid
   

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Troubleshooting