Lookups go to packed history, not a UTXO set. If you have more than one kind of disk, split hot and cold. Schema 20 is current on the 0.x line; the format still moves before 1.0. Some upgrades rebuild indexes without a full re-sync.
The archive is the truth. Outputs and spends stay on the fast disk. Inputs and witness can live on something cheaper. Wallet indexes cost extra disk if you serve Electrum.
full history · outputs stay hot · inwit can go cold
best-chain visibility · spentness as annotations
optional · Electrum + silent payment tweaks
Ordinary files under --datadir. --datadir-cold holds
inwit only. There is no LevelDB coins database. Table names and versions:
SCHEMA.md.
Three jobs in one store. The split is what you buy disk for.
Headers, outputs (hot), inputs and witness (cold), and spend marks.
--datadir-cold puts inwit on the second volume. Everything
you touch on the confirm path stays on the hot datadir.
Electrum scripthash history and silent payment tweaks. Extra disk you choose, not a faster sync. Off until you turn wallet serving on.
Which chain is best, and at what height each transaction was created. Spentness is a mark on the output that created the coin—not a delete from a UTXO set.
Spentness, history, and reconstruction — without a UTXO set.
| Question | Path |
|---|---|
| txid → transaction | Tip-hot txid index, then the packed body. Newer transactions resolve first. |
| height → block txs | Best-chain height → the contiguous archive range for that block. |
| scripthash / SP tweaks | Electrum wallet index joined with packed outs, spentness, and the mempool. Silent payment tweaks are served on the same Electrum surface. |
| Is this output spent? | A mark on the output that created it. No separate UTXO hash table. |
| Serve historical block wire | Rebuild from packed outs and inwit. Recent tip can come from the live wire cache. |
The archive is the truth. core’s truth is a UTXO chainstate plus block files.
| Concern | rbitcoin | bitcoin core (typical) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary store | Packed archive tables; no UTXO set | blocks/blk*.dat + undo + LevelDB chainstate (UTXO) |
| Historical blocks | Reconstruct from packed outs + inwit; IBD getdata serves from archive spans |
Serve raw blk / undo |
| Spentness | Annotations on creates; no mutable UTXO set as truth | Coins view / UTXO mutations |
| Txid lookup | Full archive txid index, written during IBD. Not optional. | Optional txindex; otherwise not the hot path |
| Electrum / Esplora | In-process Electrum, including silent payment tweaks | External indexer over core (Fulcrum, ElectrumX, …) |
| JSON-RPC | Optional documented subset; decode helpers; cookie or user/pass; template selector, no stratum | Large core surface including wallet and mining |
| Script verification | In-tree Rust scripts; rust-bitcoin types; libsecp256k1 for ECDSA/Schnorr | libbitcoinconsensus / C++ interpreter |
| IBD RAM | No coins cache. Modest process RSS; the OS page cache is the cache | Multi‑GiB dbcache to keep the UTXO set hot |
| IBD wall-clock | IBD in the same neighborhood as core. One measured run, not a warranty. | assumevalid / default IBD on the same class of host |
Independent code still has to match the chain. See Security → What the tests cover.
The node that validates is the node that serves. There is no second process reading blk files.
| Concern | rbitcoin | Typical external indexer |
|---|---|---|
| Data source | Validating node + archive in one process | Reads core RPC or blk files after the fact |
| Wallet indexes | In-process scripthash + silent payment tweaks | Separate DB built by scanning history |
| Unconfirmed | Mempool attached in-process | Depends on core mempool RPC |
| Consensus | This binary validates blocks/scripts | Trusts the node it indexes |
Full archival only. There is no prune switch. Wallet indexes are extra disk when you serve Electrum. The format will change before 1.0. Current tables: SCHEMA.md.
Grab a Release, or build musl with Nix.
