The world's first blockchain technology evolution report

Blockchains have recently become more and more popular, with companies, stocks and products related to the concept of countless blockchains. There is even a blockchain phone.

It is predicted that by 2024, the global blockchain technology market will reach 7.74 billion US dollars, and the financial services industry will account for most of the future market growth. According to a report by San Francisco-based market research and forecasting firm Grand View Research, "blockchain technology is one of the most promising technology trends in information technology." The report predicts that the US and Canadian markets (40.9% of the market) will continue to grow. At the same time, as the financial industry adopts blockchain technology, China and India will achieve a compound growth rate of 37.6% in the next eight years.

Yesterday evening, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued an announcement stating that it will pay close attention to the information disclosure of listed companies and the secondary market transactions involving the concept of blockchain. In order to use the concept of blockchain to speculate and mislead investors, disciplinary action will be taken in a timely manner. Measures.

It is time to look at the blockchain rationally.

Two months ago, in November last year, Deloitte released the report "Evolution of Blockchain Technology: Insights from the GitHub Platform", using metadata provided on the global software collaboration platform GitHub for the first time. In-depth empirical analysis of blockchain technology and project evolution.

According to Deloitte's report, more than 50,000 blockchain-related projects were created on GitHub in 2016 and 2017. In comparison, less than 15,000 data was created in 2015.

Through open source data, the study traces the various implementations (including Bitcoin) that began in 2009 and depicts the evolution of blockchain technology.

Highlights of the report include:

Blockchain is booming in the open source world. In the current evolution of blockchain technology, developers are more interested in the development of open source blockchain solutions.

Blockchain talents mainly live in North America or Europe, and San Francisco is the most concentrated, followed by London and New York. Beijing and Shanghai were selected for Top5 due to the active Bitcoin project

The most popular programming language for blockchain development: C++ ranks first, Go ranks second

There are nearly 90,000 blockchain projects on Github, but only 8% are maintained, and the survival rate of projects by fork is only 5%.

The survey also lists the Github blockchain TOP 20 list, where institutional players dominate

Research blockchain with GitHub: Identify project developers, talents, and organization

We cannot predict the exact trajectory and impact of blockchain technology. However, we should not ignore its early development, success and failure cases. Tracking this emerging technology may maximize its potential.

It's not easy to figure out how basic technologies such as the Internet or mobile phones are going. New technologies often attract a variety of developers. They are numerous and there are too many types of problems they are trying to solve, all of which make it extremely difficult to predict new technologies.

But perhaps the blockchain development is different, it is largely done in an open source environment. Bitcoin is the original blockchain system, which is generated in open source.

Therefore, in order to better understand the development of blockchains and their ecosystems, we conducted extensive data analysis of blockchain projects in the open source environment. Our research is the first empirical study to understand the evolution of blockchain using metadata provided on GitHub.

We chose GitHub because it is the world's largest software collaboration platform with more than 68 million projects and 24 million participants. GitHub also undertakes the most important projects in the blockchain community. With GitHub, you can determine who is behind the blockchain development, what type of programming is supported, where the talent is going, how the project and developer are organized, and the risk factors that put the resources into the library.

Financial services companies are leading the way in the applicability of blockchain, and they currently have the most blockchain business use cases on the market. Based on the evolution of the blockchain ecosystem, the results of this study can help companies improve their ability to identify successful projects and opportunities.

Unless otherwise quoted, all data and statistics on blockchain activity on GitHub in this article are derived from our analysis of the GH Torrent project and the GitHub API.

Blockchain thrives in the open source world

While sharing software code in public forums dates back to the 1950s, the open source platform has been the center of software development for the past 30 years. The Internet is an important driver. Previously, source code activities were mainly popular in the academic world, but the Internet allowed Xiaobai and experts to participate. Once, licensed and patented commercial entities set a lot of restrictions on software code. However, disruptive innovation has fueled the growing sharing economy and brought software development back to the open source platform.

Open source may be an ideal dish, attracting a large number of people working on blockchains that accelerate the common standards of ecosystems. It can also reduce the cost of the business. Developing proof of concept in the "Intranet" blockchain learning platform is not as efficient as learning to develop business solutions on the "Internet" blockchain. In the current evolution of blockchain technology, developers are more interested in the development of open source blockchain solutions. Blockchain enables faster protocol and standardization through open source collaboration.

The main unit we analyzed on GitHub is the repository. A library contains the relevant code and files behind the project, including the actual protocol and implementation of the program. Throughout the report, we can use the terms "repository" and "project" interchangeably. We will also see two types of projects: the user (no connection with the organization of individual); organization (related to financial services companies, start-up companies, research centers or Software Foundation).

In the next three sections, we analyze the repository: authors, chances of survival, and how they fit into the community and community networks; which programming languages and reasons are popular; where people go.

Where are the blockchain talents? Beijing, Shanghai selected Top 5

An important issue for financial institutions is to hire the necessary talent to develop, deploy and maintain new technologies, so it is necessary to understand the top blockchain talent distribution on GitHub. Most GitHub project owners - developers of development libraries - live in North America or Europe, and San Francisco is the most concentrated. Followed by London and New York, which are also two traditional financial service centers looking for project owners.

However, what pays more attention to us is the Beijing and Shanghai that follow.

We found projects from San Francisco to be diverse, including switching solutions, cryptocurrency wallets, interfaces to different blockchains (such as Ripple, Hyperledger, and Ethereum), and payment instruments for cryptocurrencies. London's ecosystems are also different, but there are more projects related to the Ethereum community, which means more projects revolve around accompanying technologies such as digital identity, smart contracts and open APIs. New York seems to be focusing on projects that target traditional financial services.

It is worth noting that in China, especially Shanghai and Beijing, the blockchain activity level is very high. In both cities, most projects involve cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency transactions, with a focus on scalability.

There are nearly 90,000 blockchain projects on Github, but only 8% survived.

The core code supporting Bitcoin was released in April 2009. Since then, the number of GitHub-related projects related to the blockchain has grown significantly, with an average of more than 8,600 new projects per year. In 2016 alone, there were nearly 27,000 new projects.

There are now 86,034 blockchain projects on Github.

But at the same time, it is also important to note that only 8% of the projects are maintained and 5% are survived by the fork project. The average life expectancy of the project is only 1.22 years.

The increase in the number of projects matches the rapid growth of the content used to develop blockchain technology.

Github blockchain TOP 20 list, institutional players dominate

In analyzing the blockchain library and its content, we noticed that more and more organizations are joining it. In 2010, less than one percent of institutions developed projects. By 2017, their blockchain projects accounted for 11% (the organization currently accounts for 7% of the total software development projects on GitHub). Recent data on the success rate of blockchains by commercial organizations through open source seems promising; some high-profile commercial entities have already done so.

Of particular importance is the development of projects developed by some organizations that have produced new platforms such as Ethereum, Corda and Quorum. Some developers use it to build applications. Organization-owned projects tend to update more frequently than users develop projects, and are five times more likely to be replicated.

When a project is copied, all content can be used by the account of the copied project, thus becoming a de facto knowledge transfer mechanism. This process is often referred to as a reference network, where the most frequently replicated projects occupy a more prominent position in the project network, which we call the project center. Some of the most core projects are developed and maintained by the organization: Bitcoin Core, Ethereum's C++ and Go implementations, Ethereum's Python customers, and Bitcoin improvements.

When studying the above diagrams, keep in mind that the initial projects of Ethereum and Bitcoin are maintained by the organization (foundation), and a large number of blockchain projects and applications in GitHub are actually built on these two projects. In short, an organization-led project is the backbone code for thousands of other projects. Of the 20 most important projects in the blockchain, 18 were created and maintained by the organization.

Below are the top 20 blockchain projects on Github based on attention. The first is bitcoin, followed by go-ethereum, and the third is bitcoinjs-lib.

The commitment of the organization's open source dominates the core development of the blockchain because it is most likely to be more demanding and purposeful than individual participation in development. Relative to the individual, once the organization invests resources, the motivation for promoting the success of the project is greater. Given that organizational players are closely linked to one another, they often have greater responsibility for each other, which also drives the continued development of the blockchain.

The most popular programming language for blockchain development: C++ ranks first, Go ranks second

For potential developers, the first question that often arises is “How do we get started?” To help answer this question, it is important to find the language of the existing project.

We found that C++ is the most widely used in the ecosystem's central database, although this language is not the most popular, measured by the number of blockchain libraries. This is not surprising, as C++ has been widely used in the financial services industry to develop applications that require efficient memory management, speed and reliability. C++ is still the most popular language for the burden behind cryptocurrency items, including bitcoin. For the core repository on GitHub, C++ is almost half of everything.

However, we also found that Go, a programming language developed by Google in 2009, seems to be receiving more and more attention. Go is now the second largest language for blockchain related projects. Go seems to have quickly evolved from a marginal language to one of the cores of the GitHub blockchain ecosystem. In 2015, in the blockchain project developed by Go, the content of all projects was less than 2%. The programmer attributes the rise of Go to its simplicity and scalability.

Although financial services companies are said to rely on C++ memory management, speed and reliability, for financial services companies, scalability seems to be a very high priority. This also seems to be confirmed in the Ethereum and Hyperledger projects, both of which involve integrating other technologies into the blockchain to expand their use beyond cryptocurrencies.

Financial services companies pay close attention to the GitHub blockchain project, and some even participate in development

Deloitte data scientists learned that financial services companies are also involved in GitHub's blockchain development. There are roughly two types of participants on GitHub: committers and observers. The submitter submits or contributes to the code, and the observer tracks the development of the project without making a code contribution. So far, financial services companies seem to be primarily observers of the GitHub project, and few employees of financial services companies are submitters for projects on behalf of the company. However, there are also some well-known financial service companies that not only observe from the side, but also have their own projects, operate under their brands, and bear major responsibilities.