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Mainnet

FastNear no longer documents a public self-serve mainnet snapshot download flow here.

Free snapshots are deprecated

The free nearcore data snapshots were deprecated on June 1, 2025.

For regular RPC nodes and validators​

Use NEAR Nodes for the current bootstrap guidance based on Epoch Sync plus decentralized state sync. That is the public recommendation for normal mainnet node bring-up and recovery.

Before the first neard run, refresh network.boot_nodes with the current command from NEAR Nodes: Epoch Sync. A freshly downloaded config.json can still leave boot_nodes empty, which can leave the node stuck at Waiting for peers 0 peers.

For archival mainnet snapshots​

Archival snapshot access is request-based. Start from fastnear.com/snapshots or email snapshots@fastnear.com to get the current availability, block height, and storage expectations.

About the legacy scripts​

The fastnear/static repository still contains the historical down_rclone.sh and down_rclone_archival.sh scripts. These docs no longer publish copy-paste commands for them because the old public latest.txt discovery URLs now redirect to the snapshots info page and are not a supported public workflow.

If FastNear support gives you a current block height and a supported download path, use the exact host, block, and storage layout they provide instead of the retired public examples.

If you are preparing for an archival request​

  • Be ready to separate hot and cold data if the snapshot package requires it.
  • Confirm your storage layout with nearcore before you start the transfer.
  • Install rclone only if the support flow you receive actually depends on it.

If FastNear provides a snapshot package​

  1. Stop neard before you replace any snapshot data or edit archival storage settings.
  2. Confirm whether the package is meant for ~/.near/data or for split hot-data and cold-data paths.
  3. Verify that your config.json matches the intended archival mode before restart. For archival nodes, NEAR Nodes documents archive: true and tracked_shards: [0] as critical settings.
  4. If the package uses split storage, make sure your configured store paths match the delivered hot/cold layout before you start the node again.
  5. Restart the node and verify that it starts cleanly and resumes syncing instead of silently serving stale local state.

For nearcore storage expectations and operator prerequisites, see nearcore.