The wallet will get synced automatically. "PoW" stands for "Proof of work", your CPU will do a couple of calculations to get the coin onto your wallet.
My suggestion is to let the wallet sync, unlock the wallet and wait for a handfull of seconds to get your coins.

Be very carefull about Mercatox, the price surged unexpectedly 4x there but it's probably due to an error on their exchange or even some kind of scam. XRB is woth like that (even more in my opinion) but not this way.
We truly need an established exchange for XRB, bittrex showed some interest in the past, maybe with the new relase the interest could become a listing.

Let Bittrex know that you are interested in this coin! Use social networks like twitter and let them know there is this amazing new coin with new tech and a new codebase (zero tx fee, instant tx!) that is looking for a reliable home

Just read on coinmarketcap that the value for xrb is now 2842 satoshi is this real??

I'm getting so many invalid claims...anybody know why this is happening to me?

just my opinion

Can dev release the full sync data per week and show people to restore wallet

it can resovle the sync problem

no.

you will piss off the exchanges.

it's because of this very fact that Cryptopia delisted XRB because idiots were giving death threats when their XRB was not getting through cause they

kept spamming the exchange with their fucking deposits.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's not recommended with all coins even bitcoin faucet is not recommending to use exchange,it's a sure way to lose your coins and support will just ignore because some of them have policy that they should not use their wallet for faucet claiming.

Disable firewall or add rai_wallet in exceptions.
Also you should use broadband stable connection I guess.