Validators process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Hedera is a decentralized enterprise-grade public network that uses proof-of-stake hashgraph consensus to offer low & fixed fees, 10k TPS, and instant transaction finality. Hedera was founded by Leemon Baird, Mance Harmon, etc. and launched in 2019.

HBAR holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction and query fees paid by users (revenue). Hedera’s investors include BlockTower Capital, Continue Capital, Unanimous Capital, etc.

github

twitter

discord

website

Blockchains (L1)

Hedera

# Hedera Number of validators Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Hedera number of validators metric measures the daily count of active consensus nodes that processed transactions on the Hedera network. This metric provides insight into the operational decentralization and validator participation by tracking how many unique nodes are actively validating transactions each day, rather than simply counting registered or potential validators.

## 2. Data sources

- **Hedera transaction records**: Complete transaction data from the Hedera network containing transaction details, timestamps, and the specific consensus node that processed each transaction
- **Consensus node identifiers**: Node information embedded within transaction records that identifies which Hedera consensus node validated and processed each transaction

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transaction node extraction
- **Purpose**: Identifies all transactions with valid consensus node information
- **Logic**: Extracts transaction records from Hedera network data, filtering to include only transactions where the processing node is clearly identified (non-null `node` values). Each transaction record contains the timestamp when it was processed and the identifier of the consensus node that validated it.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for timing information, `node` for consensus node identification, `transaction_hash` for transaction uniqueness

### Component B: Daily validator aggregation  
- **Purpose**: Counts unique active validators per day
- **Logic**: Groups all transactions by day using timestamp truncation to daily boundaries. For each day, counts the number of distinct consensus nodes that processed at least one transaction. This approach treats any node that processed transactions on a given day as an "active validator" for that day.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` truncated to day granularity, `node` for distinct counting, `number_of_validators` as the final count

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The daily validator counts are processed through standard metric finalization which validates the data structure and ensures consistent schema
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are established by truncating transaction timestamps to the start of each day
- **Gap filling**: Days with no transaction activity (and therefore no active validators) are filled with zero values using the fill_zeros strategy
- **Final calculation**: The final metric value represents the count of unique consensus nodes that actively processed at least one transaction on each given day, providing a measure of operational validator participation rather than total registered validator capacity

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Number of active validators securing the network.

HederaHBAR

Number of validators

Number of validators

Competitive landscape