Sources

Named, not hidden.

OC Globe is a thin client over public Bitcoin infrastructure, a convenience and never the authority. Everything it draws can be reproduced against the network itself.

The whole picture, one source

mempool.space

Read from your browser over its public API and websocket, with no key. Two reads pass through globe's own server and its edge cache: the lightning hubs' positions (/api/ln-hubs) and the five-day BIP-110 trend (/api/bip110-history). mempool.space is open source (AGPL): run it over your own Bitcoin Core node, with a Lightning node (LND or CLN) and MaxMind's GeoLite2 databases for locations, and the picture is the same.

mempool.space

6 layers and the live band, one source

Every layer, mapped

Where each layer of the globe comes from
Layer	What you see	Endpoint	Refresh
Nodes	The glowing markers: lightning nodes per country	`/v1/lightning/nodes/countries`	About hourly
Lightning	Hub markers, where mempool.space places each hub’s IP address	`globe /api/ln-hubs, from /v1/lightning/nodes/rankings/liquidity + /v1/lightning/nodes/{pubkey}`	About daily; cached an hour
Mining	The recent blocks in orbit, by the pool that found each	`/v1/blocks`	Every block
BIP-110	Which recent blocks signal, and the five-day trend	`/v1/blocks + globe /api/bip110-history`	Every block; the trend cached 30 minutes
Retarget	Epoch progress, the estimated change, the countdown	`/v1/difficulty-adjustment + ws`	Every block
Fees	The fee ladder and the halo’s colour	`/v1/fees/recommended + /mempool + ws`	Live, about every second
Live band	Tip height, the last pool, mempool depth and throughput, the fee, blocks to retarget	`/v1/blocks + /mempool + ws`	Live, about every second
Totals	Lightning node, channel and capacity totals, and the network hashrate	`/v1/lightning/statistics/latest + /v1/mining/pools/1w`	About hourly

Nodes
What you see
The glowing markers: lightning nodes per country
Endpoint
/v1/lightning/nodes/countries
Refresh
About hourly
Lightning
What you see
Hub markers, where mempool.space places each hub’s IP address
Endpoint
globe /api/ln-hubs, from /v1/lightning/nodes/rankings/liquidity + /v1/lightning/nodes/{pubkey}
Refresh
About daily; cached an hour
Mining
What you see
The recent blocks in orbit, by the pool that found each
Endpoint
/v1/blocks
Refresh
Every block
BIP-110
What you see
Which recent blocks signal, and the five-day trend
Endpoint
/v1/blocks + globe /api/bip110-history
Refresh
Every block; the trend cached 30 minutes
Retarget
What you see
Epoch progress, the estimated change, the countdown
Endpoint
/v1/difficulty-adjustment + ws
Refresh
Every block
Fees
What you see
The fee ladder and the halo’s colour
Endpoint
/v1/fees/recommended + /mempool + ws
Refresh
Live, about every second
Live band
What you see
Tip height, the last pool, mempool depth and throughput, the fee, blocks to retarget
Endpoint
/v1/blocks + /mempool + ws
Refresh
Live, about every second
Totals
What you see
Lightning node, channel and capacity totals, and the network hashrate
Endpoint
/v1/lightning/statistics/latest + /v1/mining/pools/1w
Refresh
About hourly

Method, and how to reproduce it

Read every number yourself

Every overlay names its endpoint, how the number is computed from the response, and the command to reproduce it on your own Bitcoin node. Dispute the method, not the messenger.

Where the nodes are

mempool.space /v1/lightning/nodes/countries

Lightning node count per country, where mempool.space places each node by IP geolocation (MaxMind GeoIP); nodes reachable only over Tor have no country and are not counted. A marker sits at the country centroid — mempool reports counts per country, not a coordinate per node, so this answers “where does the network concentrate”, not “which building”.

Reproduce

GET the endpoint on any mempool.space instance, or self-host it over your own Bitcoin Core + LND, with MaxMind GeoLite2 databases for locations.

Lightning hubs

mempool.space /v1/lightning/nodes/rankings/liquidity; the globe’s markers via globe /api/ln-hubs, which adds /v1/lightning/nodes/{pubkey} per hub

Top nodes by public channel capacity. The ranking is read from your browser; the globe’s hub markers come through globe’s own /api/ln-hubs, which takes each hub’s location from mempool.space’s IP lookup (MaxMind GeoIP) and is cached at the edge for an hour. Nodes without coordinates (Tor-only) are dropped — never positioned by guess.

Reproduce

Cross-check any hub’s capacity and addresses on your own LN node (lncli getnodeinfo) or a public explorer. The location is an IP lookup, not something the node reports.

Who’s mining

mempool.space /v1/mining/pools/1w + /v1/blocks

The winning pool is the coinbase tag mempool.space attributes to each block. The 7-day shares count each pool’s blocks over the week; the ring’s shares are over the sampled recent blocks — a live hashrate proxy, not an extrapolated network figure.

Reproduce

bitcoin-cli getblock <hash> 2 → decode the coinbase scriptSig and match the pool’s tag/address.

BIP-110 signal

mempool.space /v1/blocks + /v1/difficulty-adjustment + globe /api/bip110-history

A block signals iff (version >> 4) & 1 === 1 (BIP-9 bit 4). Rate = signalling ÷ sampled blocks. 55% (1109/2016) is BIP-110’s early-lock threshold over a retarget period. The countdown’s heights are the BIP’s deployment parameters verbatim — mandatory signaling 961,632–963,647, lock-in by 963,648, activation at max_activation_height 965,664, expiry active_duration (52,416) blocks later. Dates are projections, not consensus: blocks inside this epoch at the epoch’s observed pace (mempool’s adjustedTimeAvg), blocks past the retarget at the 10-minute target, anchored on the tip block’s timestamp. None of this is our opinion — it is the block header and the BIP.

Reproduce

bitcoin-cli getblock <hash> → read `version`; ((version >> 4) & 1) is the signal bit. Tally it yourself over any window. Heights: bip-0110.mediawiki §Deployment.

Difficulty retarget

mempool.space /v1/difficulty-adjustment

Epoch progress and the estimated change are derived from block timestamps across the current 2016-block period. Retargeting every 2016 blocks is consensus, not an estimate.

Reproduce

bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo (→ difficulty, blocks) — or recompute from the period’s timestamps.

Fee pressure

mempool.space /v1/fees/recommended + /mempool

The recommended fee ladder (sat/vB) and mempool size. The halo colour is a fixed threshold on the fastest rate; backlog ≈ mempool vsize ÷ ~1M vB per block.

Reproduce

bitcoin-cli estimatesmartfee 1 and getmempoolinfo on your own node.

Blocks and mempool

mempool.space /v1/blocks + /mempool + websocket

Tip height, the block heartbeat, mempool depth and throughput — read live over the public websocket. No key, and no server of ours in the path.

Reproduce

bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo and getmempoolinfo, or subscribe to your own mempool.space websocket.

2 known limits

Where the picture is coarser

The markers are lightning nodes, by country.

The obvious source for full peer-to-peer topology, Bitnodes, went dark in May 2026 when its domain lapsed after twelve years. Its successor is btcnodes.io, which bitnodes.io now points to and describes as an independent rebuild. It crawls about hourly and counts the reachable nodes it verified on Bitcoin's chain. globe's server keeps its latest snapshot for the analytics cockpit, but the globe does not draw it yet. Until it does, the glowing markers are the public Lightning node set: a real, reproducible read of where the network concentrates, but a country-level one, not a dot per reachable peer.

The positions are country centroids.

mempool.space reports node counts per country, not a coordinate per node, so a marker sits at the country's centre of mass. The country is mempool.space's IP lookup (MaxMind GeoIP), not something the node reports, and nodes reachable only over Tor have none. It answers "where does the network concentrate" honestly, not "which building is this node in".

A viewer, not an oracle.

OC Globe holds no keys, moves no funds and asks for no account. It mints nothing and allocates no protocol identifiers: it is a read of Bitcoin's public network state, like OC BTC. If mempool.space disappeared tomorrow the network would be unchanged; only this picture of it would go dark.

No custody. No KYC. No account required.