2 minutes reading time (395 words)

Report Deloitte: in 2016 on GitHub more than 26 000 blockchain-projects started

Thursday, 09 November 2017

According to the data collected by Deloitte, last year in the repositories on GitHub was created more than 26,000 new projects related to the blockbchain. In its new report, "Evolution of Blockchain Technology: A Look from the GitHub Platform", published on November 8, the company presented data from an application development platform that stores codes for more than 86,000 blockbchain initiatives, including major projects such as Bitcoin. In general, the study reflects the development of technology since Bitcoin, since 2009.

The Deloitte report demonstrates that to date, 2016 has become one of the most crowded in terms of the number of new projects based on the blockchain, which were initiated by both companies and individual users - they were created more than 26 000. By comparison, in 2015 there were fewer projects - 15 000. Data for 2017 include only the first six months, but for this period almost 25 000 projects have already been placed on GitHub.
The report also includes data on the most popular code repositories on GitHub related to blockbchain. Among them Bitcoin's code repository (which is not surprising) shows the greatest activity: 627 participants and almost 12,000 subscribers. Go-ethereum (or Geth), a client supported by the non-profit organization Ethereum Foundation, attracted 149 participants and 5,603 subscribers.
Another important point in the report is that most of the blockchain projects that exist today are mostly inactive.

Deloitte explains:

"The stark reality of open-source projects is that most are abandoned or do not achieve meaningful scale. Unfortunately, blockchain is not immune to this reality. Our analysis found that only 8 percent of projects are active, which we define as being updated at least once in the last six months."

The authors add that organizations are a "positive differentiator" in the data, saying "while 7 percent of projects developed by users are active, 15 percent of projects developed by organizations are active."

The report further offers geographical insights into the pace of blockchain development thus far, noting that San Francisco plays home to the most blockchain-related GitHub repository owners, with 1,279 users and 101 organizations. London scored the second-highest with 919 projects in total, followed by New York with 774.

"It is also worth noting the high level of activity in China, specifically, Shanghai and Beijing. In both of these cities, most of the projects pertain to cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges, with an emphasis on scalability," the report goes on to say.