Author

Topic: Why does wallet.dat change? (Read 915 times)

newbie
Activity: 20
Merit: 0
June 24, 2011, 06:37:00 PM
#5
I think it would be much more user-friendly to actually CREATE, NAME and SAVE your
own wallets (prompt the first time you open the client). Imagine a family sharing the same computer and having to copy/move around a bunch of files all named wallet.dat. Unnecessarily tricky! I'm sure there are lots of plans on incoporating better wallet handling in future versions.
cjg
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 0
June 24, 2011, 04:49:47 PM
#4
Well, that explains it.

It just made me concerned because I was backing up my wallet.dat, but then I could see it had changed since the backup.

wallet.dat seems like a counter-intuitive place to keep information on the latest blocks.

legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1015
June 24, 2011, 04:44:55 PM
#3
it stores the header of the highest block you've downloaded, so it can quickly request and validate the next block.  Otherwise, as you mentioned, most wallet modifications happen when you perform transactions.

Will
The reason we now store that in the wallet is so that you can swap wallets in and out and they'll know how far back they have to rescan. Before, you had to do a full rescan of the blockchain whenever you swapped your wallet back in and had a transaction to/from the wallet since you swapped it out.
hero member
Activity: 767
Merit: 500
June 24, 2011, 04:39:05 PM
#2
it stores the header of the highest block you've downloaded, so it can quickly request and validate the next block.  Otherwise, as you mentioned, most wallet modifications happen when you perform transactions.

Will
cjg
newbie
Activity: 6
Merit: 0
June 24, 2011, 04:29:18 PM
#1
I've noticed that wallet.dat changes even though I've not generated new addresses, carried out any transactions, etc.

Under what circumstances does wallet.dat change?
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