Node Count
The number of independent machines observed running the network's software and relaying data.
A full node downloads blocks, verifies them against the consensus rules and serves data to peers, which is how a participant avoids trusting anyone else's version of the chain. Counts come from crawlers that connect to publicly reachable peers and record what answers. The number is an observation of a peer-to-peer network, not a registry.
Where it misleads
Crawlers see only nodes that accept incoming connections, so the many nodes behind home routers, firewalls or private peering are invisible and the count understates the network, while a single operator running several cloud instances is counted several times. Node count does not measure decentralization by itself: a network where most reachable nodes run one client implementation in one data-center region is fragile no matter how many there are. On most chains full nodes have no vote in consensus, so the figure is unrelated to validating power or stake distribution. Methodologies differ enough that two published counts for the same chain on the same day routinely differ by a wide margin.
Reading a high or a low value
A higher count means more reachable machines were observed independently verifying and relaying the chain. Client diversity and hosting concentration determine what the count implies about resilience.
Highest values in our coverage
Ordered by the figure alone. This is not a ranking of quality and carries no view.
