Peers seen in 24 hours, not 24 peers
Discussion
My mistake. Thank you for clarifying.
Why is that number so vastly higher than every other estimate of the number of nodes on the network that I have been able to find, including from other pages on that same site?
Not sure tbh 🤔
I read somewhere that a lot of Monero nodes change their IP addresses on a frequent basis. Could it be that this site is counting each IP as an entirely different node and just adding up all of them it has seen in the last 24 hours, thus inflating the number?
Sure, I guess anything is possible, but if we would be fair in our assumptions I don't see why the same couldn't be said of bitcoin node IPs. Would want more proof that this is the case for either.
From what I can see, the methodology for counting nodes on monero.fail/map is prone to counting the same node multiple times, because it counts every node it sees within a 24 hour period, while but nodes.io counts Bitcoin nodes only once because it is looking at a snapshot of reachable nodes at a given time. This means it will exclude offline nodes that are only turned on periodically, but also means there isn't a danger of a node getting counted multiple times.
Given the differences in methodology, and how far in excess that 11k number is from every other estimate of the number of nodes on Monero's network that I have been able to find, while estimates of Bitcoin's reachable nodes are always within a couple thousand of each other, I have to conclude that it is inaccurate, and Monero likely has between several hundred to a little over 1000 reachable nodes.
This estimate also makes sense given it's market cap is $2.7b compared with Bitcoin's $528b, adjusting for the fact that a larger percentage of people who own Monero are likely true believers in it, and therefore more willing to go through the work of running their own node.