The Hedera network has expanded from 22 to 23 nodes in the mainnet upgrade to v0.18.1 on October 7th, 2021 with the addition of IIT Madras transitional node (Node 22 | Account ID 0.0.25) in Mumbai, India.
You can find node and network status updates by visiting https://status.hedera.com/
Hedera’s path to full decentralization calls for the expansion of its network. This is performed by establishing new network nodes, as outlined in the Understanding decentralization at Hedera Hashgraph: The path the permissionless network nodes whitepaper.
The expansion of the Hedera network is planned to go from a limited number of permissioned council member nodes, expanding further into hundreds of permissioned nodes by parties outside of the Hedera Council. Eventually, permissionless nodes will be run by anyone who would like to participate in validating transactions and contributing compute, storage, and bandwidth, to earn hbars.
It’s essential that the Hedera network continues to expand to ensure mainnet reliability. More nodes on the Hedera mainnet means an additional level of trust and redundancy if any nodes go offline or experience performance degradation due to standard on-premises data center or cloud provider issues.
IIT Madras joined the Hedera Governing Council on September 14th, 2021. They’re being onboarded by the Council and determining which council member committees they’ll be actively participating.
IIT Madra’s node on the Hedera mainnet is “22” and account “0.0.25”. This node is hosted in Linode located in Mumbai, India. Hedera staff will assist with running this node for the time being and will be working with IIT Madras on a permanent home for their node as their technical teams are onboarded.
Once on a permanent node, IIT Madras will be in full control from an operations and maintenance perspective. Hedera staff will only maintain access to ensure codebase upgrades until network automation capabilities are completed later in 2021.