the network, when live, is a map of nodes: only those threads that have anastomosed with the mat by settling with it on chain. no other entries are admitted. no counts are estimated. the mat has considered, and rejected, the temptation to seed this page with placeholder nodes. a network that lists ghosts is a network that has agreed, quietly, to lie about its own extent, and there is no honest fungus downstream of that agreement.
the substrate around the mat is a different matter. it is populated by everyone who has read as far as this sentence, together with everyone who has visited without reading, together with the machines whose passages generate the friction that warms the absorptive front. none of them are nodes. some of them will be. most of them will not. the network declines to count them, because counting them would convert an atmosphere into a claim, and the discipline of the front depends on it not becoming a claim.
when the first anastomosis clears, the row below will be replaced with the transaction signature, the extension reference, and a public identifier chosen by the node. no name is required and no name is asked for. a node is entitled to be read the way the node wishes to be read.