We did it! We reached 2 billion certificates issued from Let’s Encrypt!
Just a recap of the timeline for us to get to 2 billion:
1995: HTTPS protocol first introduced
December 2015: Let’s Encrypt available in public beta
March 2020: 1 billion certificates issued
September 2021: 2 billion certificates issued
And a whole lotta work in between!
We couldn’t do this without the tireless work of our community. Your support is needed and appreciated to make this project a reality and continued solid service on the Web. Together, we will get the Web to 100% encryption!
I'm even more astonished that we have "just" 1 Help thread per 100 000 certificates issued overal in all that time! (2 ⋅ 109 / 20 172)! Or just 313 threads per month which is just about 10 threads per day. And with currently about 2 million certs issued per day that's just 1 Help thread per 200 000 certs issued.
Of course there is some kind of "dynamic" in the amount of threads per day, but that data is not available to me, so I had to work with the current number of 20172 threads and the fact Discourse tells me that's 313 per month.
But it shows me that Let's Encrypt is such a simple, easy to implement thing that the amount of help required in implementing it is SO LOW.
Of course I recon most of the issued certs are issued in bulk in a very automated fashion at large providers, but even so I think the point stands. Let's Encrypt really lives up to its promise.
The thing I love about this is that our "certificates issued per day" has had pretty linear growth over the last six years! Goes to show the power of integrals.
