Multiple Sides of 36 Coins: Measuring Peer-to-Peer Infrastructure Across Cryptocurrencies

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive, longitudinal measurement and analysis of peer-to-peer networks across 36 blockchain ecosystems, revealing their size, structure, and behavior to improve understanding of decentralization and resilience.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, scalable methodology for measuring blockchain peer-to-peer networks, including auxiliary networks, using Internet-wide scans and discovery protocols.

Findings

Network sizes vary from under 10 to over 10,000 nodes.

IPv4 dominates over IPv6 in these networks.

Significant differences in decentralization and resilience are observed.

Abstract

Blockchain technologies underpin an expanding ecosystem of decentralized applications, financial systems, and infrastructure. However, the fundamental networking layer that sustains these systems, the peer-to-peer layer, of all but the top few ecosystems remains largely opaque. In this paper, we present the first longitudinal, cross-network measurement study of 36 public blockchain networks. Over 9 months, we deployed 15 active crawlers, sourced data from two additional community crawlers, and conducted hourly connectivity probes to observe the evolving state of these networks. Furthermore, by leveraging Ethereum's discovery protocols, we inferred metadata for an additional 19 auxiliary networks that utilize the Ethereum peer discovery protocol. We also explored Internet-wide scans, which only require probing each protocol's default ports with a simple, network-specific payload. This approach allows us to rapidly identify responsive peers across the entire address space without having to implement custom discovery and handshake logic for every blockchain. We validated this method on Bitcoin and similar networks with known ground truth, then applied it to Cardano, which we could not crawl directly. Our study uncovers dramatic variation in network size from under 10 to more than 10,000 active nodes. We quantify trends in IPv4 versus IPv6 usage, analyze autonomous systems and geographic concentration, and characterize churn, diurnal behavior, and the coverage and redundancy of discovery protocols. These findings expose critical differences in network resilience, decentralization, and observability. Beyond characterizing each network, our methodology demonstrates a general framework for measuring decentralized networks at scale. This opens the door for continued monitoring, benchmarking, and more transparent assessments of blockchain infrastructure across diverse ecosystems.