As Ethereum nodes kept falling over the course of 2019, Bitcoin nodes continued to grow

By Selena On Dec 22, 2019

According to statistics from Trustnodes, Ethereum is the largest network when it comes to the number of nodes and the level of Blockchain dominance when it comes to scaling in the crypto industry. However, this level of growth is gradually shrinking since the beginning of 2019, the number of Ethereum nodes has decreased by about 3,000 nodes.

As the Ethereum nodes decrease, the Bitcoin nodes continue to grow

Nearly half of the Ethereum nodes have been shut down since the Istanbul Ethereum hard fork. This is a rather unexpected change for the Ethereum Blockchain. However, Bitcoin nodes increased sharply throughout 2019.

In early 2019, Bitcoin had only about 10,266 nodes in the network. Meanwhile, the highest number of nodes in Ethereum in 2019 is only 10,078 nodes. However, in May 2019, the Bitcoin network surpassed 100,000 nodes within the reporting period.

This proves that it is difficult for Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin. Moreover, the Ethereum nodes have dropped at a dizzying rate throughout 2019, especially in December 2019. At the lowest point, ETH reached 6,500 nodes, though this was quickly followed by a recent rally that brought it back to around 7,000.

Ethereum nodes, Dec 2019 (Source: Ethernodes)

Because Ethereum nodes gave up so early?

The Ethereum nodes have plummeted for quite a long time. The reason is probably due to the low level of interest in the project. And rightly so, the price of Ethereum has dropped over the past six months, just like Bitcoin. Besides, the Istanbul hard fork also contributed a part because the project had to cut out a lot of them to undergo those upgrades.

This decline was most evident a few weeks ago when the project was challenging to add some cost-effectiveness. Meanwhile, any node that does not upgrade duly is cut off from the network, causing ETH to lose about 1,500 nodes in the process.

However, this is not the worst part for Ethereum, as the project is sure to see another hard fork shortly so that it delays its tight bomb for another two years. This means that in less than two weeks – the project may take another wave of non-upgradeable nodes.

Why does the Bitcoin network not have the same situation as Ethereum?

Contrary to Ethereum, Bitcoin takes a different approach. Explicitly, give the button the ability to choose whether they want to upgrade or not. If the nature of the upgrade does not provide the option nodes, then Blockchain does not implement it.

The Bitcoin network used only to have 5,000 nodes and changed dramatically during the 2017 price surge. The increased adoption began to bring new nodes to the Blockchain, and it never really stopped.

Bitcoin nodes, Dec 2019 (Source: Trustnodes)

Ethereum, on the other hand, had 25,000 nodes back in 2017, while now, two years later, it has nodes somewhere in the range of 7,000 to 7,500. There are many similarities between the two networks – both networks run at 1MB every 10 minutes (although Bitcoin’s node capacity can reach 2 MB), and both have similar differences.

Some estimates suggest that Germany is surging as a hot spot for nodes in Bitcoin networks, most likely due to the context of the great underground developers.

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