3 March 2016 — Ethereum Nodes have shot up about 22% in the past 24 Hours with the .5 “Homestead” beta release of the official wallet, to a total of 4,611. That’s 72% the number of Bitcoin nodes currently running, or roughly equal to the amount of active Bitcoin Core nodes at the time of writing. The announcement was made in a tweet from Ethereum today. Ethereum has been taking the cryptocurrency world by storm with their smart contract application platform, with projects popping up in areas as disparate as advertising and equity crowd funding. This most recent development unsurprisingly comes as the price of Eth rises, but this massive growth serves as an indicator that this price increase isn’t transient.
Also Read: Core Dev Dashjr Anticipates Mass Miner Exodus
More Ethereum Nodes Indicate Sustained Growth
Note that this number cannot be used as a 1:1 metric for the purposes of comparing the growth of each network. There are far more options for keeping Bitcoin without running a local node than there are for Ethereum. We’ve seen a gradual shrinkage in the number of Bitcoin nodes over time despite increased adoption. Even still, A 22% jump in the number of Eth nodes means there’s 22% more interest in mining, developing for, and keeping Eth locally for the same reason. A lack of remote options at present makes the increase more meaningful for the Ethereum network than Bitcoin or other more mature altcoins.
This development likely means we’ll be seeing more people trading in Eth, unsurprising given it’s rising market cap. More importantly, though, it means we’ll see more adoption of Ethereum as a smart contract platform. This is an important distinction to make , as Ethereum brings a unique value-add to the traditional concept of cryptocurrency in the form of robust scripting and application development using smart contracts. Meaning Ethereum is useful for development outside of finance in ways not previously available. Whether ethereum will become the lingua franca in smart contract development remains to be seen, but this development makes the likelihood of long-term growth in the price and trade volume is much more likely than other altcoins that enjoy short-term success.
Where do you see Ethereum in a year or two? Be sure to let us know in the comments!
