Motivation

Since I started with Gridcoin, I have always been interested in the question of how big the Gridcoin network actually is. More precisely, how many different nodes are there in the Gridcoin network and where are they geographically located?
Unfortunately, I could never find an answer to this question.
The number of nodes is important for the security of the Gridcoin network, especially since Gridcoin works with proof-of-stake.

Process

To finally answer this question I made some small source code adjustments to get all IP addresses of known nodes from the client that were online in the last 7 days.
Of course, these are only the nodes that my client knows and not necessarily all that exist. But I have added as many addnodes as possible to reach as many clients as possible.
I also used Maxmind's Geoip-Location Service to find out the approximate location of all nodes.

Results

My Gridcoin client knows 3470 different nodes that have been online in the last 7 days!
These are spread all over the world, as the pictures below show.

Gridcoin Nodes - World map

Gridcoin Nodes - Europa map

Gridcoin Nodes - America map

Conclusion

The Gridcoin network is very diverse and consists of nodes from many different countries! This shows the popularity Gridcoin enjoys with its followers and underlines the security of the network!