Is there anybody keeping historical data regarding the number of full nodes on the Bitcoin network?
There is : https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/dashboard/?days=90
but it only shows data up to 90 days.
Additional sources also here :
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3 Answers
There is no measure of the number of full nodes. The number published by many websites is the number of listening nodes, instances of software which is advertising itself as available for connections on the Bitcoin network. The term "full" refers to "fully validating", as distinct from non-validating or BIP37 SPV. To be listening you do not need to be validating, or even a Bitcoin node at all (a proxy connection is indistinguishable from a real node).
If you want to know about the number of listening nodes, bitnodes.io does track numbers for these though they appear to be easily manipulated at times (see the spike around September 2015).
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You can check the user agent field ( github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0014.mediawiki ) to see what type of node it its, although there's no gurantee that the node is what it advertises itself to be. Commented Oct 16, 2015 at 19:22
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Why does this data now only go back two years despite records for far longer than that?– B TCommented Sep 5, 2019 at 16:25
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Here is a best effort crawler to get the "accurate" number of bitcoin nodes: luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/software.html Commented Dec 26, 2020 at 14:07
Yes, LukeJr. But you have to work for it:
"If you want some gigabytes of data, clone my git repo here. It goes back to 2012 June."
The best source I've found is coin.dance's chart that goes back to 2015:
