Ethereum nodes are experiencing a false boom, with the number dropping by 60% in one year

Times are indeed tough for Ethereum today.

ICO declined, the price of the currency plummeted, and core developers left one after another. Although Constantinople has been successfully upgraded, the number of its nodes is declining.

A node is a network node in the distributed ledger of a blockchain that connects to servers and other devices through the network. A full node refers to a node in the complete blockchain ledger, which is responsible for verifying and recording newly generated blocks and transactions, and is the core force supporting Ethereum transfer transactions. Therefore, full nodes need to have complete block data, and sometimes they also need to assume routing functions.

According to ethernodes data, the current number of Ethereum full nodes is 8443, of which 3451 nodes are run in the United States and 1316 nodes are run in China.

According to a report released by TokenGazer, the number of Ethereum nodes peaked between December 2017 and February 2018, with over 30,000 nodes, and then dropped sharply to 15,000 in July 2018. The number of nodes is positively correlated with the price: the lower the price, the fewer the number.

Image source: TokenGazer

In this regard, a financial blogger said: "Ethereum previously claimed that the number of nodes exceeded 30,000. In fact, most of these nodes are just dead nodes that synchronize part of the ledger. Moreover, many of these nodes were issued by the foundation to increase everyone's confidence. However, with the sharp drop in the exchange rate, the foundation can no longer afford to spend money, and the number of nodes has also dropped sharply."

Some industry insiders also said: "The reduction in nodes is due to the sharp drop in the price of coins. Many miners stopped mining and stopped synchronizing data. On the other hand, the data of Ethereum is increasing. The capacity and bandwidth required to run a full node are increasing. The maintenance cost is very high. Ordinary people cannot maintain it, so they stop running it. In this regard, the DPOS mechanism is better."

Today, the number of Ethereum nodes is decreasing at an average of 20 per day. Perhaps it is time for Vitalik to think about how to solve this problem.

Of course, it’s not all bad news for Ethereum. A recent report by cryptocurrency asset management firm Electric Capital found that Ethereum has twice as many active core developers as Bitcoin, and has the highest number of monthly active developers among all cryptocurrencies. Its average monthly active core developers exceed 216, far exceeding the number of developers on other public chains.

To use an industry saying: Don’t look at the price, the team is doing the work, hold on, don’t panic.