A new report from Deloitte says blockchain technology development and projects are accelerating as developers and companies explore the benefits and opportunities with the new technology. We’ve got a quick set of highlights from the report.

In preparing this report, the company analyzed data from the popular GitHub site starting in 2009 up to and including the first six months of this year.

86,034 blockchain projects identified

In the first six months of 2017, more than 25,000 new blockchain projects were created, compared with 26,885 new projects in all of 2016.

The report identified 86,034 blockchain projects since April 2009 with 9,375 (10.9%) sponsored by companies, research institutes and startups with the majority by individuals. View chart here.

Company projects strongest

Deloitte says company projects were five times more likely to be developed (forked) and had the fastest rate of adoption at 20% annually. In all likelihood, this was due to slower startups but stronger company commitments to projects once they became active on GitHub.

Like most startup ecosystems, the success rate for blockchain projects is startlingly low. Only 8% are actively maintained; only 5% of forked project survive; and projects have a short lifespan of an average of 1.22 years so far. In this environment, it’s likely projects are quickly abandoned if they aren’t funded, developed, commercialized or turn out unfeasible.

Key blockchain communities

Research found that of the 20 top repositories (projects), 18 were maintained by organizations, identified as companies, institutions or startups. Not surprisingly, bitcoin and ethereum had the largest number of copies and followers.

The detailed chart shows the top 20 projects with  their total number of  copies, followers, contributors and project description.

Top development locations

As expected, the location of projects tends to occur where the talent pool of programmers and developers work.  this includes San Francisco with 1,279 projects and 101 by organizations, followed by London (858/61), New York  (725/49), Beijing (587/17), Shanghai (390/12), Toronto (321/31), Austin (261/38), Paris (283/15), Seattle (253/18) and Atlanta (265/4). You can view the chart here.

More blockchain communities insight

The Deloitte report includes more detail on the key communities  such as most popular code language used by developers, most popular platforms – mostly  bitcoin and ethereum – and other communities including:

  • Wallets and tools for Ethereum
  • Bitcoin experimentalization
  • Ripple protocols
  • Ethereum tools
  • DAAPS and more.

All in all, it’s a valuable look at the early stages of blockchain technology development and a glimpse of what’s ahead. You can check out the report and its interactive charts here.

Visuals courtesy of Deloitte

Author: Jeff Domansky