Total # of miners?

Question

Is there any way to find out the total no.of mining nodes in the Bitcoin network? In case of mining pools, the devices present in each pool.

Answer 1

I don't know if mining pools keep stats like that, and I doubt they would be public if they did. However, you can make a reasonable estimate of the physical hardware miners in the network by plugging a few numbers into an equation.

To get the lower bounds of our estimate, take the current network hashrate and divide it by the hashrate of the "best" ASIC miner on the market rated by hashrate. This calculation represents the fewest possible number of miners on the network that would be required to produce the current hashrate, given the best technology available.

To get the upper bound of the estimate, you'd need to figure out what is the "average worst" available ASIC and it's hashrate. That is to say, you need to figure out the ASIC that, on average, has the minimum required hashrate for miners to be profitable. Since electricity and cooling costs vary from location to location, there is no single answer for this, and an average must be taken. Once you have this average hashrate, divide the current network hashrate by it. Now you have an estimate for the most number of hardware miners that are likely on the network producing the current hashrate.

Answer 2

I have another technique...I would like to have your opinions. But it only answers the Number of Mining Nodes, which is not the number of Miners. I round numbers on their theoretical basis just for demonstration. First, you take the Reward estimate earned by the Fastest Hashing rate Machine. Currently it appears to be the Antminer S19 Pro at 110Th/seconds. For this I use a calculator from https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/hardware/ With this Hash Rate rate it calculates I get 0,2911 Bitcoin in rewards per year with the device running 24/7/365. This means that at 6.25 Bitcoin rewards per block, I contributed to solving 0.0465 of 1 block in 1 year. If all the Network used only these machines, then I divide the 55,000 Block per year by 0.0465 = 1,182,795 Mining Nodes. This is the Lower Bound, the minimum number of Mining Nodes on the system. Now, my other assumption is that Network Difficulty is equivalent to the weighted Hash rate of the sum of all Mining Nodes. If the current, March 18 2021, Network Difficulty is 21.6 Th/seconds, then the same calculator calculates that if my device ran at this speed I would earn 0.0572 Bitcoin in 1 year. Using the same calculation, 55,000/(1/(6.25/.0572)) = 6,009,615 Mining Nodes. This would be the estimated number of total Mining Nodes on the Network. Blockchain.com explains that it gets the Network Difficulty information from Full Nodes which have the number of Hash used to solve a block in a set time (around 600 seconds) once it has been authenticated. So in fact this is described as the Weighted average Hash rate of the Miners, which is used to either increase the difficulty if times falls measurably under 600 seconds per block, or loosen difficulty if time rises measurably over 600 seconds. But in the long term, the difficulty has risen at a rate of 400% per year. The calculator mentioned above does make an adjustment in calculating rewards, by using a discounting of performance of 0,45% per day.