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Ethereum method

eth_syncing

Reports whether the node is still catching up with the chain.

cheapCheap for a provider to serve — no state is read, or one key is.Primary specification (opens in a new tab)

How each provider handles it

This method has not been measured in this window.

It is scheduled but no observation has landed yet.

What it does

Returns `false` when the node is synced, and an object with `startingBlock`, `currentBlock` and `highestBlock` when it is not.

A syncing node answers requests normally and quickly while serving state that is hours or days old. Nothing else in the JSON-RPC surface tells you this.

Returns

Object | false.

Try it

Runnable as written, against a keyless public endpoint. Nothing here needs an API key.

Request

curl -s https://ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_syncing","params":[],"id":1}'

As JSON-RPC

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "eth_syncing",
  "params": [],
  "id": 1
}

Response

{
  "id": 1,
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "result": false
}

Things that bite

  • Behind a load balancer this reflects whichever node answered, so false is not a promise about the fleet.
  • Clients may add fields beyond the documented three. Parsers that reject unknown keys break on some providers.

Why it is measured

It is the only self-reported health signal in the standard API, and it is worth recording precisely because a syncing node looks healthy on every other metric.

Called every 300 seconds per endpoint, with jitter so the fleet does not hit a provider in lockstep.

24h window · generated 2026-08-24 16:32:47 UTC · 0 providers