Snapshot download
This cluster restarts (regenesis) periodically. If your validator missed one, replaying from slot 0 can take a long time — pull a snapshot from a live node instead. This node (ag.validblocks.com) serves full + incremental snapshots and genesis over plain HTTP on its RPC port, same as any Solana RPC node configured to do so.
Current state
Full + incremental snapshots regenerate continuously (roughly every minute for the incremental). The URLs below always redirect to whatever is current — no need to hardcode a slot number.
Option 1 — download directly
Grab the files yourself and point agave-validator at them with --snapshot-archive-path / by placing them in your ledger dir before first boot.
curl -O http://ag.validblocks.com:8899/genesis.tar.bz2
curl -O http://ag.validblocks.com:8899/snapshot.tar.bz2
curl -O http://ag.validblocks.com:8899/incremental-snapshot.tar.bz2- Plain http://, port 8899 — this goes straight to the validator's RPC port, not through the site's nginx/HTTPS on 443. No TLS on 8899, same as talking to any validator's RPC directly. This is a different path than rpc.ag.validblocks.com (proxies only JSON-RPC POST /, 404s on anything else) or the explorer site itself.
- Genesis rarely changes — only re-fetch it after a regenesis (new hash above).
- curl follows the 303 redirect to the real filename automatically; no flag needed.
Option 2 — let your validator fetch it at boot
Add this node as an entrypoint / known validator so agave-validator downloads the snapshot itself on startup — the normal bootstrap path.
--entrypoint ag.validblocks.com:8000 \
--known-validator 8Y95xnGZVeAT3kcjysU7G6NJ1UpJdykSLLea4Z2rCTjB \
--expected-genesis-hash Ewmsp4zPAhq5BcVwgg73m2yPzF37RMDqNoxdcHwxsPHr- Make sure --no-snapshot-fetch and --no-genesis-fetch are not set on your validator — those flags are for a bootstrap validator that's waiting on --wait-for-supermajority at genesis, not for catching up after you missed a restart. If they were left over from a previous config, remove them.
- You can list multiple --known-validator entries; add ours alongside any others you already trust.