
26k blockchain projects launched in 2016, 92% are now dead - elmar
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/11/09/deloitte-blockchain-26000-projects/
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IkmoIkmo
Their methodology defines 'project' as github repo. That's probably quite
strong as the vast majority of repo's carry no formalised initiative or
organisation driving it, but are 'merely' places for tinkering of individual
users.

If anything, I'm surprised about 10% are still active. If you compare it to
the failure rate of formal (money-backed) initiatives of startups in general,
or say restaurants, or hell, people starting a workout routine this time a
year, it's not a particularly unique failure rate.

edit: they later differentiate between users/organisations. The latter has
about double the activity rate (15%) after a year. But they define
organisations using GitHub's definition, which can be had for as little as
$300 a year. At that level the difference between user and organisation is
probably limited to the difference between casual user and casual
entrepreneur.

~~~
alangpierce
GitHub organizations are actually free (although, of course, there are paid
plans for private repos and enterprise features):
[https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-new-
organization...](https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-new-organization-
from-scratch/) It's often a way that people group collections of related
subprojects of an open source project, e.g. Babel is an org, with babel/babel
being the primary repo: [https://github.com/babel](https://github.com/babel)

People who make an org rather than just a project are probably more serious
about it, which explains the higher activity rate, but it's still just
"someone on the internet tried out an idea".

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onion2k
_Our analysis found that only eight percent of projects are active, which we
define as being updated at least once in the last six months._

By that measure it's impossible for a project to be finished, and must carry
on being added to forever to not be dead.

I have a few repos I've not touched in a while that are apps/libraries/etc
that I planned, coded, updated, and now exist as things I use quite regularly.
They're not _dead_. They're _done_.

~~~
foobarchu
Normally this is a valid discussion to have, but I don't think it has any
merit here. The projects analyzed were launched in 2016. You're suggesting
that a statistically significant number of people completed a project centered
around a concept as fast-moving and heavily researched as blockchain could be
feature-complete and bug free in under a year and a half. I'd believe that
_maybe_ a dozen projects like that exist, but not nearly enough to affect
these numbers.

The bigger issue here is how many of those 26k projects are dead-end forks for
playing around.

~~~
onion2k
"Playing around" in many cases will mean "learning the technology", and those
developers would have then moved to other blockchain projects. That means the
code is "dead" in the sense that it's finished, but it'd be unfair to suggest
it's "abandoned".

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wslh
Once I read Deloitte I increase the reading speed by 4x and reduced the brain
usage to the minimum. They are "specialists" in distributed ledgers:
[https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/innovation/solutions/d...](https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/innovation/solutions/deloitte-
blockchain-practice.html)

You cannot do a serious analysis based on just GitHub projects. You can create
thousands of blockchain projects with a few clicks.

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krzrak
Seems not that bad, considering that 90% startups fail [1]

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-
star...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups-
will-fail-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-10/)

------
partiallypro
As several have pointed out this is click bait, I carry forks on occasion and
never carry out on doing anything with it.

Let's say that wasn't the case and people were more serious and less casual, a
failure rate of around 90% is pretty much expected for a newer technology. New
business start up failure rates are around that number.

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tobyhinloopen
I'm more amazed that 8% are -not- dead apparently. Either is true for most
other projects, but you can make it newsworthy by adding the word "blockchain"
in the title

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ThomPete
This should be seen as a great signal that humans now have the capability to
quickly divert funds and invest in areas to explore new opportunities.

The blockchain is one of those half protocol/half business potentials which
are hard to solve but which amazing potential.

Personally, I probably consider it more protocol (infrastructure) than
business per se, but only time will tell.

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rcharles
I wouldn't mind 100% now dead if it means GPUs are affordable again.

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thisisit
This is just a faulty analysis to show-off "expertise" in the blockchain space
by Deloitte. Measuring about of changes in a github repo has to be the worst
kind of "analysis".

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pavel_lishin
Over two thousand blockchain projects is still pretty impressive. Although,
it's only been at most two years.

I wonder what a graph would look like.

~~~
lern_too_spel
If you click the fork button on GitHub, that counts as another project.

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thesmallestcat
TIL creating a GitHub repo is a project launch.

~~~
mtgx
Study found that 99.9% of ideas in people's heads ended up as "dead projects."

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kowdermeister
I wonder what percentage is a toy / learning project with no intention of
developing it to a "real" project.

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bhnmmhmd
Gartner's Hype Cycle for 2017 predicted blockchain to reach its maturity
within the next 5-10 years. That 92% of the projects based on blockchain are
now dead means that practical applications of blockchain are being narrowed
down to a few. But I'd say those _few_ projects are going to get attention
sooner rather than later.

