✅Planet Earth Covered — Hydra Records 909 Real-Time Nodes!
We are happy to announce a much-requested feature going live on our hydrachain.org website — the real-time nodemap.
From now on you will be able to track the Hydra node activity around the world on a dynamically updating map.
HYDRA’s public blockchain is safeguarded in some of the most distant places in the world: Honoluluu, Anchorage, Santiago, Mauritius, Auckland, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, which are just adding up to almost a thousand other locations in the world on all 5 continents. Each of these growing locations having a node with a backup of the HYDRA chain.
As of today’s launch, a total of 909 nodes were reported to be online.
This number is pretty significant and makes Hydra one of the most decentralized blockchains in the world. Many of the popular chains have less than 100 nodes, making them less resilient as a network. The latest number of 909 nodes compares to the last update of 540 recorded just a few months ago.
Starting from today, our community will be able to monitor this metric on a daily basis by visiting our homepage at hydrachain.org.
What are Hydra nodes?
Hydra nodes are the building parts of the blockchain. Each node represents a connectivity gateway and a backup of the entire chain, the vast number of nodes facilitates a powerful redundancy network effect.
1. Block Producing Nodes / Staking Nodes / Validators
These nodes are essential and are requiring HYDRA holders to use their coins for staking. In this process, they contribute to the network validation and occasionally get rewarded by block rewards for validating the on-chain transactions that take place. There’s a record of 733 Nodes that have produced more than one block!
For comparison, here’s the number of block producers/validators for most established blockchains Alts (sorted according to count):
- Cardano ~up to 2700 Validators ($33 Billion Market Cap)
- Avalanche ~ up to 1027 Validators ($23 Billion Market Cap)
- HYDRA ~up to 700 Validators ($0.09 Billion Market Cap)
- Polkadot ~up to 297 Validators ($21.8 Billion Market Cap
- Algorand ~ up to 100 Validators ($5.2 Billion Market Cap)
- Binance Smart Chain ~up to 21 Validators ($72 Billion Market Cap)
- Zilliqa ~ up to 12 Validators ($1.7 Billion Market Cap)
As it can be seen, HYDRA’s node network and the number of validators have reached a point where it outperforms even some of the most reputable tier 1 chains that are top 20 according to CMC. Some may argue that the consensus mechanism used for network validation on some of the competitive chains predisposes a smaller set of block producers, but even so, we do believe having an unpredictable nature of who produces the next block is an important factor for security. The decentralization lies in randomness and permissionless systems.
2. Non-Staking Nodes
Due to HYDRA’s architecture, it has a healthy percentage of nodes that contain the network history and contribute to its redundancy without actually producing blocks. Having strong redundancy ensures censorship resistance and protects against data loss. Also having more nodes improves the global connectivity and discoverability in addition to making it more difficult for flood and Spam attacks to pose any risks. For those reasons, even if full nodes aren’t effectively producing blocks, they still play a vital role in strengthening the performance and security of the network, because they act as a safety net against network disruption.
Some of the utilities these non-block-producing HYDRA nodes are:
- Functional Nodes
- Application-Specific Nodes
- Backup wallets
- Read-only nodes
- Hot wallets used for more trivial tasks
- Low-balance stakers that have not yet mined any blocks
While reading all of this, you may ask yourself why you have never heard of any nodes other than the “staking node”.
In fact, all of the four types mentioned above consist of the very same staking client.
However, the way they are used makes the difference. For example, a block-producing node requires a significant amount of HYDRA held inside, in order to product block regularly. It also needs to have the staking feature enabled and safeguard its private keys against potential attackers.
A functional node also needs funds to pay for transaction fees and perform certain activities, but it won’t activate the staking feature.
An application-specific node doesn’t even need any funds in it, as its only task is to read & broadcast information. The read-only nodes are even simpler than that, as the communication is one-directional.
As the ecosystem grows with more applications & projects being launched, the number of non-staking nodes is also expected to increase steadily.
👉 Join the Hydra Community
HYDRA is a proof-of-stake blockchain optimized for real-world businesses. It tackles some of the most profound and challenging issues with existing blockchain economies and introduces a truly shared economy with fair treatment to all network participants. Some of the more notable features:
🔥 100% Burn of all Transaction Fees
💎 50% Royalty on Gas for Smart Contract Creators → More Info
📌 Fixed Coin Transaction Fees of $0.20 → More Info
📌 Fixed Token Transaction Fees of $0.50 → More Info
💰 20% Minimum APR Staking Income → Staking Calculator
📈 Up to 540 TPS Elastic Capacity
🔏 EVM Compatible Smart Contract Platform
⚙️ Wallet-Level Scalability → More Info
🗳 Unique Decentralized Governance Protocol
