The reading, 14 September 2026
A blockchain is either producing blocks or it is not, and that is a measurement rather than a matter of opinion. We run a validator node on Nimiq mainnet, so instead of arguing about it, here is what our node reported on 14 September 2026.
| What | Reading | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|
| Block height | 61,511,158 | our network endpoint |
| Epoch | 1,344 | our network endpoint |
| Batch | 967,586 | our network endpoint |
| Registered validator records | 52 | our validators endpoint |
| Of those, with no inactivity flag | 40 | our validators endpoint |
| Retired or jailed | 0 and 0 | our validators endpoint |
| Staker records | 2,878 (2,851 on non-inactive validators) | our validators endpoint |
| Total validator balance | about 9.27 billion NIM (9.10 billion non-inactive) | our validators endpoint |
| Listed in the official validators API | 25 | Nimiq validators API |
Those are a single reading taken on one day. They will have moved by the time you read this, and the block height will have moved by a great deal, which is itself the answer to the question in the title. The two endpoints are named in the sources at the foot of this page and they are public, so you can take your own reading and compare.
Blocks, without a gap
A current block height proves the chain is alive now. It does not, by itself, prove it has been alive the whole time. For that you want the numbers to agree with each other, and they do.
Nimiq's proof of stake chain began at proof of work block 3,456,000 on 19 November 2024. Each batch is 60 blocks. At our reading the chain was 58 blocks into batch 967,586, meaning 967,585 batches had closed. Multiply it out:
3,456,000 + (967,585 x 60) + 58 = 61,511,158
Which is exactly the height our node reported. Every batch since the migration is accounted for in that arithmetic, with no missing interval anywhere in between. The epoch number checks out on the same reading: 1,343 completed epochs of 720 batches each, plus 626 batches into epoch 1,344, comes to batch 967,586. That also settles a detail the documentation states inconsistently. An epoch is 720 batches, so 43,200 blocks, about 12 hours, because the node's own epoch number divides that way and not any other.
So: roughly 58 million blocks produced since the switch to proof of stake, at about one block a second, continuously. You can watch the next one arrive in our block explorer.
What "52 validators" does and does not mean
Validator counts are where honest sources disagree, because there are several legitimate denominators and most articles pick one without saying which. Ours, labelled:
- 52 registered validator records existed on chain. A record exists once somebody has locked the 100,000 NIM deposit and registered, and it persists until it is deleted, whether or not the node behind it is currently doing anything.
- 40 of those carried no inactivity flag, making them eligible for election. The other 12 had been flagged inactive, which is what happens to a node that stays offline.
- 25 appeared in the official validators list, the one our validators page renders. That list only contains operators who have registered their details with it, so it is a subset: it held about 61% of the chain's total validator balance.
- Fewer than any of those are elected in a given epoch. Election hands out 512 slots in proportion to stake, fresh at every epoch boundary, and only elected validators produce blocks. Our own validator is in the registered and not inactive group and is not being elected, which is a normal state for a small operator and one we describe honestly in choosing a Nimiq validator.
Nought retired and nought jailed on the day we read it is worth a line of its own. Jailing is the protocol's response to serious misbehaviour such as signing two blocks at the same height, and on this reading nobody was serving one.
Stakers and stake
2,878 staker records were delegating across all validators, 2,851 of them behind validators with no inactivity flag. Be precise about what that counts: a staker record is one address delegating to one validator. An address can only back one validator at a time, so anyone splitting a delegation across operators appears more than once, and the number of individual people is somewhat lower than 2,878.
Those records sat behind about 9.27 billion NIM of total validator balance, of which about 9.10 billion was on validators with no inactivity flag. That total is each validator's own deposit plus everything delegated to it, so it is not purely delegated stake, though the deposits are a rounding error at this scale: 52 deposits of 100,000 NIM is 5.2 million NIM in total.
Delegation is public, so you do not have to take the aggregate on trust. NimMap draws the delegation graph, every validator and every address staking with one, and the shape of it is a more useful answer to "is anyone actually using this" than any single number we could print.
The public record of development
Chain data proves the network runs. It says nothing about whether anyone is still building, so here is that, limited strictly to dated official sources and with nothing inferred.
Node software releases
The core node software, core-rs-albatross, published four mainnet releases in
the three months before this page was written:
v1.7.1 on 29 June 2026, v1.7.2 on 28 July 2026,
v2.0.0 on 11 August 2026 and v2.1.0 on 31 August 2026. The
release history is public on
GitHub and was checked on 14 September 2026.
A protocol upgrade in progress
Nimiq published Hard Fork Phase 1 is Now Open on 10 August 2026, following Hard Fork Preparations on 24 July. The post says the new protocol version has been shared with community members running a validator node, and that the upgrade activates "once validators representing 80% of staked NIM have signaled readiness, at the next election block after that threshold is reached". It also tells ordinary holders there is nothing they need to do.
That signalling is visible on chain, in the signal data field of the validator record, which the developer documentation describes as being used for chain upgrades and coordination. On our reading, 29 of the 52 registered records carried the same non-null signal data value, and those 29 held about 88% of the total validator balance. We are reading a raw protocol field rather than an official tally, so treat that percentage as our own measurement and not as a status page. What it shows plainly enough is validators actively coordinating a protocol upgrade, which is not something a dormant network does.
Official communications
The Nimiq blog was posting regularly when we checked it on 14 September 2026, with the most recent entries dated earlier that month, including monthly NIM Treasury Accumulation updates through August 2026, a post on the project's renewed vision, and the mini apps competition results. We are describing the publication record rather than endorsing the contents, and we have deliberately not summarised any roadmap claim here. If you want to know what the team says it is doing, read it from them.
Why this question gets such bad answers
Worth naming, because the search results are genuinely unhelpful and it is not your fault for finding them so.
- Price prediction pages. "Is it dead" is a query with buying intent behind it, so it attracts automated price forecast pages. They forecast a number. They do not look at the chain.
- A satellite with the same name. Nimiq is also the name of a series of communications satellites, which drags entirely unrelated results into the same search.
- Stale articles. A good deal of what is written about Nimiq predates the move to proof of stake in November 2024 and describes a network that no longer exists, including several that still call it a proof of work chain.
None of those sources read the chain. The chain is public and answers in seconds, which is the entire method of this page.
What this page cannot tell you
A block height is a strong fact with narrow scope, and it is worth being clear about the edges.
- It is not a statement about price. We publish no price figures anywhere on this site and there is nothing here about market value, trading or whether NIM is a good thing to own.
- It is not a headcount. We can point to dated releases and dated posts. We cannot tell you how many people work on Nimiq, and we have not guessed.
- It is not a roadmap. Anything about future direction should come from Nimiq's own channels, which is why this page links to them and does not paraphrase them.
- It is a single reading. Everything above was true on 14 September 2026. Re-run it, the endpoints are public.
Check it yourself in two minutes
Open our block explorer and watch the height climb. Look at the validators page for the live validator set, their stake and their fees. Put any address into NimMap to follow the flow of value around it. If you are new to the chain underneath these numbers, start with what Nimiq is; if you have got as far as wanting to participate, how to stake NIM is the next step, and the rest of the guides are in the Learn hub.
Nothing on this page is financial advice.