Nodes by Country

What this measures

This ranking shows the 15 countries with the most public Lightning nodes, according to mempool.space. Each node is assigned to a country based on the IP address it announces to the network, using a geolocation database. The unit is the number of nodes: not the capacity they hold, nor the volume of payments they forward. It is a snapshot of the present, not a historical series.

A map with a large blank space

Geolocation only works for nodes that publish an IP address. Nodes reachable exclusively through Tor announce none: they have no country and do not appear in this ranking. Yet a large share of the public network runs over Tor. The chart therefore describes the visible part of the network, and the total number of public nodes is far larger than the sum of its bars.

Even for located nodes, the country shown is the machine’s, not the operator’s. A node rented in a data center abroad, or whose traffic exits through a VPN, is attributed to the server’s country. Geolocation databases also get it wrong at times. As for mobile wallets, whose channels are usually unannounced, they are missing altogether.

Protocols cannot be regulated, operators can

A node that can be located falls, in practice, under the law of the country where it runs. Its operator can be identified, and its hosting provider can receive a request from the authorities. If visible nodes cluster in a handful of jurisdictions, a small number of governments could gain leverage over part of the routing. The ranking by internet provider shows that this exposure often runs through the same hosting companies.

That said, a country’s absence from the ranking does not mean Lightning goes unused there. Where internet access is monitored or filtered, users have every reason to go through Tor or a VPN, or to rely on a wallet that announces nothing to the network.

🪙 The Bitcoin Revolution in Iran

This is exactly what Tor is for. A node running at home behind Tor reveals neither the household’s IP address nor its operator’s country. It becomes harder to target, at the cost of higher latency and sometimes less reliable routing. The blank space in this chart is not a measurement flaw: it is a protection chosen by the people who run those nodes.

The nodes that are easiest to put on a map are also the easiest for a state to reach.