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What does the Bitcoin Core linearize script do? The Bitcoin Core docs state it will:

Construct a linear, no-fork, best version of the Bitcoin blockchain.

By "linear, no-fork" blockchain does that mean throwing away orphan/stale blocks (blocks that were successfully mined but didn't make it into the blockchain due to competing mined blocks)?

What use cases would make use of this linearize script?

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By "linear, no-fork" blockchain does that mean throwing away orphan/stale blocks (blocks that were successfully mined but didn't make it into the blockchain due to competing mined blocks)?

Yes.

What use cases would make use of this linearize script?

The script was used to construct the bootstrap.dat file that was previously used to quickly sync new nodes. This method of node initialization has been deprecated and remove as headers-first syncing is faster.

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  • Thanks for this Andrew. Is there any reason for maintaining it then and not just deleting it from the Core repo? Do we know if anyone is using it for anything else? I wonder if we should at least add a comment on the README that this isn't used for anything (as far as we know).
    – Michael Folkson
    Oct 9, 2020 at 13:29
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    While the autoloading of the bootstrap.dat file has been removed, it is still possible to use such linearized files to initialize a node in this manner. So the script is still useful in constructing those files.
    – Andrew Chow ♦
    Oct 9, 2020 at 13:39

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