Ethereum method
eth_blockNumber
Returns the number of the most recent block the node has, as a hex quantity.
How each provider handles it
This method has not been measured in this window.
It is scheduled but no observation has landed yet.
What it does
This is the node's own view of the chain head. It is not a claim about the network — a node that has fallen behind reports its own stale head perfectly happily, and with no error.
That is exactly what makes it useful for measurement. Comparing one node's head against nothing tells you very little; comparing it against every other node at the same instant tells you which providers are behind.
Returns
QUANTITY — the current block number in hex.
Try it
Runnable as written, against a keyless public endpoint. Nothing here needs an API key.
Request
curl -s https://ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_blockNumber","params":[],"id":83}'As JSON-RPC
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "eth_blockNumber",
"params": [],
"id": 83
}Response
{
"id": 83,
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"result": "0x4b7"
}Things that bite
- Behind a load balancer, consecutive calls can go backwards: two nodes at different heights answering in turn. A head that decreases is a real finding about the provider's fleet, not a bug in the caller.
Why it is measured
It is the primary freshness signal. Each observed head is compared against the highest plausible head across the whole cohort at that instant, time-aligned by the chain's block rate — never against a single provider treated as truth.
Called every 30 seconds per endpoint, with jitter so the fleet does not hit a provider in lockstep.
7d window · generated 2026-08-24 15:46:52 UTC · 0 providers