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The checkpoint archive is a remote object store holding IOTA's checkpoint history since genesis — checkpoint summaries and their full contents — trailing the latest checkpoint by roughly 10 minutes. When a full node cannot retrieve checkpoints from its peers via state sync (for example, because they have pruned the range it needs), it falls back to downloading them from a pre-configured checkpoint archive, letting it catch up — even from genesis — regardless of its peers' pruning policies. Configure it with the checkpoint-archive-config block in fullnode.yaml, described in Configure Checkpoint Archive Fallback.

A full node can also fall back to a cloud key-value store for individual historic transaction data (transaction digests, effects, events, and checkpoints) that it has pruned locally, described in Key-value Store Backup.

IOTA Full Node Key-value Store Backup​

To enable historic data queries for the IOTA full nodes that prune old transactional data, full node RPC implementation is configured to fallback for querying missing transactional data from a remote store.

If the information about the transaction digest, effects, events, or checkpoints is not available locally, a full node automatically retrieves the historical data from a cloud-based key-value store (currently managed by the IOTA Foundation). Note that the current key-value store implementation keeps historic transactional data only.

Configure Checkpoint Archive Fallback​

To enable your node to fall back to the checkpoint archive when peers no longer serve the range it needs, add this to your fullnode.yaml file:

checkpoint-archive-config:
  # Use https://checkpoints.mainnet.iota.cafe/ingestion/historical for mainnet
  # Use https://checkpoints.testnet.iota.cafe/ingestion/historical for testnet
  url: "https://checkpoints.<mainnet|testnet>.iota.cafe/ingestion/historical"
  # Optional. Number of checkpoints to download in parallel; defaults to 10.
  download-concurrency: 5