Public Chain Annual Ranking! Data reveals who the toughest public chain of 2019 is!

Since 2017, there has been a boom in public chain financing, followed by the mainnet launch trend in 2018, and in 2019, the belated star public chains have delivered their performance, with middleware gaining prominence. As the industry's infrastructure, public chains have quietly entered the stage of stock game from the era of numerous chains.

The financing story of public chains may have come to an end, as the gate to the competition arena has been closed. Only a few dozen public chain projects with significant achievements have truly begun to compete. Looking back at 2019, how did the development of these public chains fare? Who is tirelessly working on development? Whose social media influence is the greatest? Whose ecosystem is the most prosperous and stable? Whose on-chain transactions are the most active?

PAData selected 35 public chain projects from the top 100 listed on CoinMarketCap (note: decentralized accounting, tokens not built on another public chain) with the top 20 in market value as the top assets, and those ranking 21-100 as mid-tier assets. By sorting and analyzing data from these projects' Github, on-chain data, and social media, PAData took stock of the "best of public chains" in 2019.

Which public chain is the most active in technical development?

Bitcoin Leads by a Wide Margin, Many Mid-tier Public Chains Are Actively Developing

Technical development is the most important criterion for evaluating public chain projects. Among the 35 public chain projects, 32 have open-sourced their code on Github[1]. PAData compiled the total number of Stars, Forks, and annual code commit counts to comprehensively assess the development activity of public chain projects.

Stars refer to the number of developers following a project, with more indicating higher technical value. As of December 27, among the 32 public chain projects, Bitcoin has over 40,000 Stars, far more than other public chain projects. Ethereum and EOS also have over 10,000 Stars each, reaching approximately 25,000 and 11,000 respectively. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS are the top three most popular public chains among developers.

Although the top 100 projects in market value represent the more liquid projects in the plethora of blockchain projects, there is still a clear differentiation among them. Apart from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS, the number of Stars for other public chain projects is below 5,000, with TomoChain having the fewest Stars at 27, and V Systems, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Diamond all having fewer than 100 Stars.

Looking at domestic public chains, NEO is the most popular among developers, with a total of 2,928 Stars. TRON, Bytom, and Qtum are also popular domestic public chains. Another noteworthy mid-tier public chain, Nano, has a total of 2,612 Stars, making it the most popular among mid-tier assets.

Fork count is another indicator of the technical value of open-source documentation, with more indicating a higher code reuse and developer popularity. From the statistics, the distribution of Fork counts among public chain projects is similar to that of Stars. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS are the top three most forked public chains, referenced 16,700, 8,500, and 3,200 times respectively. Other projects have been referenced less than 1,000 times. NEO is the most forked domestic public chain, with 865 references. Among the top 10 most forked public chain projects, BitShares ranks 10th with 533 references.

In terms of code commits this year, TRON had the highest number with 4,182 commits throughout the year, averaging 11.45 commits per day, making it the most active public chain in terms of code submissions. Bitcoin and EOS followed with 3,374 and 2,508 commits respectively throughout the year.

Looking at the top assets and mid-tier assets, the code submissions for mid-tier assets were quite active this year. IOST, Aeternity, OmiseGO, Waves, Qtum, Bitcoin Diamond, and Tomochain ranked from 4th to 10th, all surpassing 1,100 code submissions throughout the year. Among them, Aeternity set a record for the highest single-day code submission count at 234.

Conversely, some early-stage top asset projects had lower code submission counts this year, such as NEM, which only submitted 4 times this year, Dogecoin with 61 submissions, and DigiByte with 103 submissions. Vechain, which saw a 122% price surge at the end of October, only submitted 219 times this year, averaging 0.58 times per day. Among the bottom 10 projects in terms of code submissions throughout the year, three well-known domestic public chain projects are included, namely Vechain, Ontology, and Bytom.

It should be noted that the number of code submissions does not necessarily reflect the quality of the submissions. Projects that consistently submit lower-quality code throughout the year may not demonstrate the same technical capabilities as projects that submit high-quality code in one go.

Looking at the most recent code update time for the 32 public chain projects, nearly 50% have submitted code on the day of the statistics (December 27). Bitcoin was viewed a total of 3,505 times after its most recent update, followed by Ethereum and EOS, which were viewed 2,014 and 1,185 times respectively. Only 4 public chain projects had their most recent update nearly a year ago, namely Bitcoin Diamond, Litecoin, MonaCoin, and NEM, with update views not exceeding 100 times.

For a more unified cross-sectional view of the technical development activity of each public chain project, PAData quantified the performance of different dimensions of data, assigning values of 10-0 based on the ranking of Stars, Forks, total code commit counts, time since the most recent code submission, and views, and calculated the total score based on weights of 30%, 30%, 30%, and 10% respectively. The higher the total score, the more active the technical development of the public chain project.

According to the statistics, Bitcoin scored 9.7 points and emerged as the most active public chain project in terms of technical development, followed by Ethereum and TRON with weighted scores of 5.3 and 4.2 respectively. Waves, OmiseGo, and IOST were the top three most active mid-tier asset projects in technical development, but with a lower weighted total score of only 2.7. In terms of weighted values, Bitcoin significantly outperforms other public chains, while Ethereum, TRON, and EOS form the second tier, with other public chains showing lower levels of technical development activity.

Which public chain has the most social influence?

Top Public Chains Have Strong Community Foundations, TRON Shows Significant Bias

In addition to technology and market value, the size of a public chain's influence is also reflected in the level of fan attention on various social channels. Since public chains advocate community governance, they have to pay extra attention to promotion and fan operation on various social channels from their inception.

PAData compiled the number of fans of 35 public chain projects on Twitter and Reddit, focusing on official social accounts. If individual projects did not have official social accounts, official foundation accounts or major community group accounts were selected as substitutes.

According to the statistics, Twitter is an important community for public chain projects. The public chain with the most Twitter followers is Bitcoin, with nearly 997,400 followers, on the verge of breaking the one million mark. Compared to PAData's statistics from the end of last year, Bitcoin gained around 67,400 new followers in 2019, with an increase of approximately 7.25%. Bitcoin has more Reddit subscribers than Twitter, reaching 1.2 million followers. It's worth noting that the owner of the Bitcoin Twitter account remains anonymous, with early Bitcoin investor and Bitcoin Cash proponent Roger Ver once believed to be the operator of the account, but clarifying in April 2018 after the account was briefly suspended that the owner is a Bitcoin Cash investor since 2009.

Other public chains with a significant number of Twitter followers include TRON, Litecoin, and Ethereum, with 491,700, 449,500, and 448,500 followers respectively. Ethereum and Litecoin also have a large number of Reddit followers, with 209,000 and 448,000 followers respectively, making Litecoin the public chain with the second-highest number of followers on Reddit after Bitcoin. TRON, consistent with the previous year's statistics, still shows a significant bias, with only 71,700 Reddit followers.

Among domestic public chains, besides TRON, IOST, Qtum, and NEO also have a relatively large number of Twitter followers, all exceeding 170,000. These public chains generally have fewer followers on Reddit, which may be related to Reddit's reach. For domestic public chains, in order to cover domestic users, they often focus more on managing local communities like Weibo. For example, TRON founder Justin Sun was a Weibo influencer before his account was suspended.

PAData assigned values of 10-0 based on the number of followers on both websites, and calculated the total score with a 50% weight for each, indicating that the higher the total score, the more traffic and active the community of the public chain project. According to the statistics, as of December 27, Bitcoin has the most followers among public chains, followed by Ethereum, Litecoin, and TRON with weighted scores of 4.5, 3.5, and 3.0 respectively, forming the second tier.

It is worth noting that Litecoin has lower technical development activity but a large fan base. Additionally, public chains with earlier establishment dates tend to have better fan bases, while newly developed projects have weaker fan bases. For example, Cardano and Cosmos, two star public chain projects in the past two years, only received weighted scores of 1.5 and 1.0, indicating that despite efforts to expand their reach in the past two years, they have had little success.

Which public chain has the most active on-chain transactions?

Ethereum Has More Daily Transactions Than Bitcoin

Launching the mainnet is just the beginning, as usability after launch is crucial. Currently, blockchain technology has yet to be widely applied in commercial scenarios, and the circulation of public chain tokens on exchanges is perhaps the most common form of on-chain transactions. However, this also represents the lowest application threshold. If a public chain's native tokens do not have secondary market liquidity, how can one expect them to have other application scenarios in the current environment?

PAData observed the on-chain transaction situation of public chains based on the daily average active addresses, daily average transaction counts, and daily average transaction amounts over the year, including data from BitInfoCharts on the on-chain data of 8 public chains within the scope of this statistics. It was found that Bitcoin has the highest daily average active addresses, exceeding 620,000. If daily active addresses are considered as daily active users, then Bitcoin's network has reached a daily activity of 620,000. However, it should be noted that under the Bitcoin UTXO model, change balances automatically generate a new address, so the daily average active addresses likely include these automatically generated addresses, potentially resulting in lower actual daily activity numbers.

Despite Ethereum having fewer daily active addresses than Bitcoin, its daily average transaction count is much higher than that of the Bitcoin network. According to the statistics, Ethereum's daily average transaction count reached approximately 667,000 over the year, while Bitcoin had only 328,400 and Bitcoin SV had 142,900. The daily average transaction counts of other public chains within the scope of the statistics did not exceed 100,000.

Looking at the daily average transaction amount over the year, Bitcoin reached $32,700, followed by Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin at approximately $24,800 and $10,900 respectively.

PAData assigned values of 10-0 based on the daily average active addresses, daily average transaction counts, and daily average transaction amounts, and calculated the total score with weights of 1/3 each, indicating that the higher the total score, the more active and user-friendly the on-chain transactions of the public chain project.

According to the statistics, Bitcoin is the most active public chain in terms of on-chain transactions, with a weighted total score of 8.7, followed by Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash with weighted total scores of 5.7 and 3.3, respectively. Looking at the distribution of weighted total scores, Bitcoin significantly outperforms Ethereum, which in turn significantly outperforms other public chains, showing a clear hierarchical pattern more pronounced than technical development activity and community activity.

Which public chain has the most prosperous ecosystem?

Ethereum and EOS Have Rich DApp Types, TRON Has High Transaction Counts

DApps are an important part of the public chain ecosystem, and public chains targeting consumer markets have built or are still working on DApp ecosystems. Although many public chains have worked on building DApp ecosystems, only a few have truly established and prospered in their ecosystems.

According to DAppTotal statistics as of December 27, the well-known domestic public chain Ontology has only 50 DApps, with the most user-rich application being Cloud Fighting Dragons, with approximately 2,810 active users in 7 days. However, the second most user-rich application has only 613 users, and applications outside the top 10 have no active users or on-chain transactions. Another domestic public chain, IOST, which claims to have a "big ecological explosion," has a similar situation. As of December 27, there are a total of 42 DApps, with the top application having 2,310 active users in 7 days, while the second has only 571, and applications beyond the top 30 have virtually no active users or on-chain transactions.

Currently, public chains with recognized DApp ecosystems that are relatively prosperous include Ethereum, EOS, and TRON. Major DApp information websites have recorded and monitored their DApps. PAData analyzed the top 100 DApps ranked by user count by DAppTotal on December 27. According to the statistics, Ethereum and EOS have a wide variety of DApp types, covering 8 categories, while TRON's DApps mainly revolve around lottery applications, with 31 and 44 respectively.

When considering the overall performance of the DApp ecosystem of each public chain, the influence of top applications is significant. Looking at the median performance that better reflects the general level, Ethereum has the highest average of 162 users per DApp (assuming one address corresponds to one person), followed by TRON with 143.5 users.

In terms of transaction counts, TRON, with lottery and high-risk DApps accounting for nearly 75% of its total, has an average of 1,995 transactions per DApp over 7 days, followed by Ethereum with 1,250 transactions.

Combining observations made by PAData at the end of August 2019, the user count and transaction count of DApps on Ethereum remained relatively stable, whereas those on EOS and TRON fluctuated significantly. For example, EOS DApps had an average of 222.5 users in late August, which dropped to only 54.5 users in this round of statistics. From this perspective, the Ethereum ecosystem is not only more prosperous but also more stable.

Data Explanation:

[1] Tezos is open-sourced on other platforms and not included in the statistics; Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Gold have no confirmed Github open-source files and are not included in the statistics.

This article is from our partner PANEWS

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