According to Bitnodes data, the number of full Bitcoin nodes has reached an all time high of 11,727.
On January 20, the Coin Dance statistics tracker identified 11,619 nodes on the network, this exceeded last year's maximum of about 11,250.
The second most popular version of the Bitcoin Core 0.20.1 client were used by more than 5,000 hosts.
On January 14, 2021 the last client update 0.21.0 was released, only 5.9% of the network nodes (687) are running on this software version.
0.21.0 added support for Tor Network V3 addresses, descriptor wallets. Schnorr signatures, Taproot and Tapscript technologies were included in the technologies to improve privacy and network scalability. Subsequent implementations of BIP 340, 341 and 342 will increase coin interchangeability.
About a quarter of all nodes operating on the Tor network will face the need to upgrade to a more current version of the client. By October 15, 2021, developers will disable support for V2 addresses. New V3 addresses with more secure cryptography and less disclosures will be supported in Bitcoin Core 0.21.0 and newer.
The growth in the number of Bitcoin nodes correlates with the increase in the number of Lightning Network nodes. According to BitcoinVisuals, the number of online payment channels is also at a record high of 8468.
In January, the Zap startup announced the launch of a cross-border transfer service based on the Lightning Network.