From 370,000 Full Bitcoin Nodes to 6,000: What happened?

[coins101]

I'm doing some research on Bitcoin nodes and how to increase their numbers.

As part of that I thought I had better get some reference points. These are the results:



Q1. Can the numbers indicating that there were over 370k nodes be trusted?

Q2. Why was there such a sharp fall in numbers? GPU and then ASICs?

Q3. Is is possible to ever see that number again?

Source for 370k number was worked out from:

http://bitnodes.io

Wow, wir sind nach China und USA No 3 in der Welt, stärker als Russland und Kanada. Nochmal WOW !

Sehr stolz der junge Skywalker nun seien ...

edit

BTC user disclosure runs Bitnodes, the source of the above data. He has answered the questions:

The early December 2013 network snapshots, i.e. with over 100k nodes, are not valid as the crawler at that time took several hours just to complete one full network snapshot and it includes all nodes from addr responses which can be faked or likely stale. Those snapshots were linked to from getaddr.bitnodes.io/SNAPSHOT_NUMBER/ which have been removed since.

With the new crawler released in late Dec 2013, the crawl time was brought down significantly down to sub 5 minutes with considerably good churn rate. I use the churn rate to measure how good a network snapshot is. A value of 0 implies the network snapshot was taken instantly but of course that's not possible. At the moment, we are seeing a typical churn rate of 30+: https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

China's bubble bursted, thats what happened. Which along with the government restrictions on BTC, short term view of things etc.. I guess they don't see it worth it anymore. They'll come back when the price bubbles to 2K again don't worry.

[newIndia]

Earlier running a full node was the only way to have a wallet. Now, there are many lightwight clients and online wallets to give people the ease of use. Naturally people have stopped running a full node. Now-a-days full nodes are mainly run by those who need it, i.e. business to verify their Tx and miners. There are few volunteers who run full node though.

[BitUsher]

The main driving force was SPV wallets being adopted and the centralization of mining due to ASICs. Those peak node numbers are suspect as well because they weren't being as accurately tracked back than.

It is an interesting question to answer about how much decentralizations optimal? This certainly extends beyond simply the node count and into areas such as mining pools, ASIC manufacturers, exchanges, payment processors, implementations, wallets, ect...

[RodeoX]

I remember this being predicted as far back as 2010. As mentioned above, there has been a switch away from running a full node. In 2010 you HAD to run one if you wanted to use BTC. Bitcoin is becoming phone based and a full node on a phone makes little sense.

[iram66680]

Can the numbers indicating that there were over 370k nodes be trusted?

Possibly but they can be faked too since there isn't much evidence. I personally find it hard to believe that there are so much nodes in existence especially since Bitcoin hasn't very much hit the mainstream yet. But the screenshot is likely not to be faked. There are cache of the page and it does indicate that much node.

Q2. Why was there such a sharp fall in numbers? GPU and then ASICs?

There can be people mining on their own BTC core since it wasn't all that competitive at that time. As time passed, competition became much harder and people may be forced to abandon solomining and go pooled mining. The increase in blockchain size may also be one of the factors since many people don't have that much space in their hard drive anymore.

Q3. Is is possible to ever see that number again?

You can, but it is not realistic. People have not much incentive to run a full node again since many wallet services are starting to surface and they offer moderate security features and they are more convenient to use. SPV nodes may be such factor too since they offer basic functions.

[Meuh6879]

Only volunteers who would run full bitcoin nodes now

it's not a problem.
it's a feature.

it's Bitcoin network rules.
no control, no business interference.

[coins101]

....
It's also thanks to government restriction in china.
...

I though that was closer to early 2014?

[qwk]

Q1. Can the numbers indicating that there were over 370k nodes be trusted?

Yep. Reasons have been given before.

Q2. Why was there such a sharp fall in numbers? GPU and then ASICs?

No. Mining had (almost) nothing to do with it. Although that might have contributed, since miners were likely to run full nodes as well. With the concentration of mining, you'd expect a concentration of full nodes as well.
One of the reasons were obviously lightweight wallets.
But most probably the most important factor was a redefinition of how those numbers are estimated. I guess that the ~6000 nodes today only take into account the more or less permanently running nodes, whereas the old numbers also counted nodes that were only connected infrequently. But that's just a guess, I'm unsure how bitnodes.io counts.

Q3. Is is possible to ever see that number again?

Unlikely. But a stable number above let's say 10.000 would probably be nice to have.

[RappelzReborn]

Okey , don't insult me and don't call me a noob because I know I'am but I may be correct and i may be wrong (most likely wrong but here to learn) . Why does it matter how nodes there is? We know that nodes helps the network yes but I don't think it does matter or decide the number of Bitcoin users , can't we just assume that this change is caused by people who hate downloading blockchain and use Online wallets / Lightweight wallets as Electrum & Multibit ? since Nodes = Bitcoin core as far as I know.

[coins101]

Okey , don't insult me and don't call me a noob because I know I'am but I may be correct and i may be wrong (most likely wrong but here to learn) . Why does it matter how nodes there is? We know that nodes helps the network yes but I don't think it does matter or decide the number of Bitcoin users , can't we just assume that this change is caused by people who hate downloading blockchain and use Online wallets / Lightweight wallets as Electrum & Multibit ? since Nodes = Bitcoin core as far as I know.

Too many reasons to give, but mobile and lightweight wallets need full nodes to tell them what the mobile owner owns.

[manselr]

Earlier running a full node was the only way to have a wallet. Now, there are many lightwight clients and online wallets to give people the ease of use. Naturally people have stopped running a full node. Now-a-days full nodes are mainly run by those who need it, i.e. business to verify their Tx and miners. There are few volunteers who run full node though.

Very good point. Back then Bitcoin QT was basically Bitcoin within itself, now no one wants to use it because it's a pain in the ass. The increasingly demand on the computer to deal with the ever growing Blockchain doesn't give people an incentive big enough to use it. Plus it's very limit within its features. Has no HD addresses, there's no way to sort out addresses, you need a backup everytime you create a new address.. it needs a lot of work to make people come back to it so we can increase the nodes again.

[R2D221]

Okey , don't insult me and don't call me a noob because I know I'am but I may be correct and i may be wrong (most likely wrong but here to learn) . Why does it matter how nodes there is? We know that nodes helps the network yes but I don't think it does matter or decide the number of Bitcoin users , can't we just assume that this change is caused by people who hate downloading blockchain and use Online wallets / Lightweight wallets as Electrum & Multibit ? since Nodes = Bitcoin core as far as I know.

Too many reasons to give, but mobile and lightweight wallets need full nodes to tell them what the mobile owner owns.

Apparently, ~6000 nodes are enough for that task.

[odolvlobo]

It seems to me that there needs to be a distinction between "running a full node" and running Bitcoin Core.

There may have been 370k people running Bitcoin Core, but how much benefit were they providing to the network? Running Bitcoin Core long enough to sync the block chain and send some bitcoins or view your balance provides very little benefit, especially if you haven't opened port 8333.

[unamis76]

It seems to me that there needs to be a distinction between "running a full node" and running Bitcoin Core.

There may have been 370k people running Bitcoin Core, but how much benefit were they providing to the network? Running Bitcoin Core long enough to sync the block chain and send some bitcoins or view your balance provides very little benefit, especially if you haven't opened port 8333.

I assume the numbers presented have that distinction already made... At least the OP and thread title talk about full nodes.

[spazzdla]

It seems to me that there needs to be a distinction between "running a full node" and running Bitcoin Core.

There may have been 370k people running Bitcoin Core, but how much benefit were they providing to the network? Running Bitcoin Core long enough to sync the block chain and send some bitcoins or view your balance provides very little benefit, especially if you haven't opened port 8333.

If you have over 8 connections one can assume that port is open?

[coins101]

It seems to me that there needs to be a distinction between "running a full node" and running Bitcoin Core.

There may have been 370k people running Bitcoin Core, but how much benefit were they providing to the network? Running Bitcoin Core long enough to sync the block chain and send some bitcoins or view your balance provides very little benefit, especially if you haven't opened port 8333.

I assume the numbers presented have that distinction already made... At least the OP and thread title talk about full nodes.

Its a good observation and question.

Bitnodes gives details of how their crawler works:

https://github.com/ayeowch/bitnodes/wiki/Provisioning-Bitcoin-Network-Crawler

What is not clear is if the way they measure nodes has changed over time. If it has, that could account for quite a lot of the variance.

[RitzBitzz]

centralization of the nodes coupled with Chinese restrictions.

[cryptworld]

I think that was counting every bitcoin qt and not only full nodes

Now,new countings is counting only full nodes

[Lauda]

It doesn't matter if it was counting QT users or not, because it is a fact that the number of nodes has definitely fallen over time and it might start reaching critical levels at some point.
Satoshi had originally described nodes as computer on the networks that were doing the POW. However once mining had shifted from CPUs, the definition of a node changes.
Miners are also technically nodes, however when we talk about nodes we are thinking of relay nodes.

The main problem is that there is no incentive to be a node and there is not enough (is for now) people who would voluntarily run nodes.