Technology can be classified from a variety of perspectives. From the perspective of whether open source or not, it can be divided into open source technology and non-open source technology. Currently, the popular blockchain technology or framework are all open source. Why is that?

In fact the reason is very simple, the economist magazine compared block chain to trust the machine, if the machine to you is a black box, you don’t know why it can create, transfer of trust, you have to do is equivalent to trust to the entrusted to manufacture the black box manufacturers, so as a block chain, The core requirement of its nature is that it be open and transparent.

Da Hongfei, CEO of Onchain, founder of Antshares/NEO project, early participant of bitcoin movement and active member of digital currency community, once said that open source is a must for blockchain, and any blockchain that is not open source is playing rogue. As for the Economist’s interpretation of blockchain, it uses a kitchen analogy: would you like to believe in a transparent kitchen where you can see how the people inside prepare your food? Or was it a completely opaque kitchen with a closed door and no one allowed in? I believe most people will choose the first option.

Da Hongfei also said that open source and delivering source code are two different things. Some blockchain companies, for example, will develop some projects and then release the source code to their partners or customers, but this is completely different from true open source. Open source means you bring the whole process of food production into the hands of the community, outside third parties, you can participate in auditing, you can participate in measuring. Delivering the source code is more like me giving you a food label, telling you what the food is made of, but you are not involved in the process of making the food. There is a significant difference in security, reliability, and engagement between the two.

So, full open source is the best way for blockchain. So what are the major open source technologies for blockchain? Next, we will introduce all the popular blockchain open source projects or frameworks to you, a total of 35, which can be described as the most complete summary in history.

Top01. Bitcoin System (Star: 29,000+)

BitCoin is the earliest and most widely used decentralized blockchain technology in the world, so his open source technology system is very worthy of reference.

The core technical framework of bitcoin blockchain is developed by C++ language, and the formula algorithm is POW algorithm. The amount of work (mining) is proved to obtain the right of accounting, and the fault tolerance is 50%. The whole network can be accounted for, and the public network performance TPS<7.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin (29000 +) Star:

Although POW algorithm is relatively inefficient and energy consuming, and Bitcoin blockchain is not strong enough due to its early launch (such as not supporting smart contracts), it is undeniable that bitcoin is the relatively mature and stable blockchain system in the market at present. The copycat coin on the market is created by copying or making small changes to the source code of Bitcoin. On the basis of the bitcoin blockchain system, several blockchain technology systems are also created:

Colored coins: Colored coins (colored coins) are themselves Bitcoins, which were transferred during the historic Genesis transaction. Technically separate bitcoin networks from their monetary value, they have special properties, such as supporting proxies or gathering points, that give them a value independent of the currency’s face value. Color coins can be used as alternative currencies, commodity certificates, smart property, and other financial instruments such as stocks and bonds.

Lightning network: It is born to solve the bottleneck processing capacity of the Bitcoin blockchain. It can effectively solve the problems of delay, capacity expansion and finality. It provides an extensible micro-payment channel network for the Bitcoin blockchain. If both parties of the transaction have a payment channel in advance on the blockchain, they can realize instant confirmed micro-payment through multiple, high-frequency and bidirectional rolling difference. If there is no direct point-to-point payment channel between the two parties, as long as there is a payment path consisting of multiple payment channels connecting the two parties in the network, lightning network can also use this payment path to realize the reliable transfer of funds between the two parties.

Bitcoin side chains: Side chains are new blockchains based on anchored bitcoin, like dollars anchored to gold bars. Bitcoin’s status in the blockchain is comparable to the gold status in the monetary system, because it is the most decentralized, most distributed nodes, and the most fair blockchain. Side chains are aimed at achieving the goal of the financial ecosystem of cryptocurrencies in a converged manner, rather than rejecting the existing system as other cryptocurrencies do. Using side chain, we can easily establish a variety of intelligent financial contracts, stocks, futures, derivatives and so on. You can have thousands of side chains anchored to bitcoin, with different characteristics and purposes, all of which rely on the resilience and scarcity guaranteed by bitcoin’s main blockchain. The best-known bitcoin side chains are the chains of elements launched by Rootstock and BlockStream.

Rootstock: Rootstock (RSK) is an open source smart contract platform based on the bitcoin side chain, which enables bitcoin to have smart contracts. Rootstock based smart contracts can run countless applications, adding value and functionality to the core bitcoin network. Rootstock uses a bitcoin bidirectional pegging technology that sends or outputs bitcoins on Rootstock at a fixed conversion rate. Rootstock bidirectional pegging is a hybrid drive chain and side chain technology. More importantly, Rootstock is backward compatible with Ethereum, implementing an improved version of the Ethereum VIRTUAL machine, so ethereum distributed DApps can be easily used on Rootstock, achieving bitcoin-level security and reusability of Ethereum’s large number of DApps. Faster execution and stronger interaction with bitcoin. Performance can be extended to a TPS of 300 using Rootstock. Core technology framework using Java language development, open source address is: https://github.com/rsksmart/rskj (350 +) Star:

Elements: Elements is the open source side chain project of Blockstream, which also uses bitcoin bidirectional hook technology. In addition to smart contracts, it also quickly brings many innovative technologies to Bitcoin, including private transactions, evidence separation, relative locking time, new opcodes, signature coverage amount and other features. The core technology framework using c + + language development, open source address is: https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements (480 +) Star:

Top02. Ethereum (Star: 17,800+)

Ethereum is the most famous blockchain open source framework and has become the development platform for blockchain applications. Many blockchain applications are developed based on Ethereum.

Ethereum is a Turing-complete, one-stop blockchain development platform that implements protocols in multiple programming languages, with clients written in Go as the default client (i.e. the way to interact with the Ethereum network, supporting clients in multiple other languages). Applications based on the Ethereum platform are smart contracts, which are at the heart of Ethereum. Smart contracts, combined with a friendly interface and some extra support, allow users to build a myriad of dapps based on the contract, making it much easier for developers to develop blockchain applications. Ethereum has a built-in cryptocurrency called ETH.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: Go/C++

Source address: https://github.com/ethereum (17800 +) Star:

Dapps based on Ethereum are very complex and novel, For example, Vevue (micropat), Etheria (virtual world), KYc-chain (authentication), Eth-Tweet (microblog), 4G Capital (helping small businesses), Ampliative Art (helping artists), WeiFund (crowdfunding), and so on. Their open source projects are listed as follows:

OpenZeppelin: OpenZeppelin is a framework for building secure smart contracts on Ethereum. OpenZeppelin makes it easy to build distributed applications, protocols, or organizations based on JavaScript. Open source address https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity (Star: 3400 +).

HydraChain: Private block chain is an open source project, is an expansion of the etheric fang platform based on Ethernet lane changes the way of building blocks, change the way of mining building block before to vote through consistency algorithm building blocks, increased support for licensing distributed books created, main application fields are private chain or chain alliance, based on the Python language implementation, Open source address https://github.com/HydraChain/hydrachain (Star: 280 +).

BlockApps: commitment to any platform or device to build the etheric fang application with the most simple way, open source address https://github.com/blockapps (Star: 150 +).

Akasha: Decentralized social network based on Ethereum and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). Ethereum is the next generation of social media networks with identity systems and micropayments, and IPFS is the next generation of social media networks with content storage and distribution. Akasha is the brainchild of Mihai Alisie, founder of Bitcoin magazine and co-founder of Ethereum, and V acts as an adviser. Unlike current mainstream social networks, Akasha’s main goal is to create a good online space that respects basic human rights such as freedom of thought, privacy, free access to and use of all kinds of information. Based on the TypeScript language implementation, open source address https://github.com/AkashaProject (Star: 110 +).

SmartID: deloitte is based on Ethernet fang platform for the intelligent identification, based on the JavaScript language, open source address https://github.com/SmartIdentity/smartId-contracts (Star: 110 +).

Gonetwork: based on the Ethernet fang to create a highly scalable mobile network infrastructure, low cost, open source address https://github.com/gonetwork-project (Star: 20 +).

Top03. Hyperledger (6500 +) Star:

Hyperledger, founded in 2016, is a global open source collaboration led by the Linux Foundation to advance blockchain technology across industries. It consists of 30 founding company members and a set of technology and organizational governance bodies, including leaders in the finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chain, manufacturing and technology industries.

Only an open source, collaborative software development approach can ensure the transparency, longevity, interoperability and support needed to push blockchain technology into mainstream commercial adoption. That’s what Hyperledger is for: a blockchain framework and platform built by a community of software developers.

Hyperledger features:

  • Create an enterprise-class, open source, distributed ledger framework and code base to support business transactions

  • Provide a neutral, open and community-driven infrastructure, supported by technology and business governance

  • Building technology communities, developing proof-of-concept (POC), application cases, field tracking and deployment of blockchain and shared ledgers

  • Educate the public about the market opportunities of blockchain technology

  • Promote the community to adopt a toolkit approach to platforms and frameworks

Hyperledger Block chain type

Alliance chain/private chain

Hyperledger hosted commercial blockchain framework

Fabric

An executive version of blockchain technology intended as a basis for developing blockchain applications or solutions. The development environment is established on the VirtualBox VIRTUAL machine, and the deployment environment can be self-built network or directly deployed on BlueMix. The deployment mode can be traditional or Docker-oriented, and the consensus reaching algorithm is plug-in. It supports the development of smart contracts with Go and Java, especially featuring enterprise-level security mechanism and membership mechanism.

Planning the future of enterprise blockchain needs to be built on a fully audited open source architecture, and Hyperledger Fabric is the platform for a distributed ledger solution built on a modular architecture that offers a high degree of confidentiality, resilience, flexibility and scalability. Designed to support pluggable implementations of different components and adapt to the complexity of the entire economic ecosystem, Fabric is to blockchain what Hadoop is to big data.

Marbles is an application based on the Hyperledger Fabric infrastructure, hosted on IBM’s bluemix cloud platform, where developers can use Marbles to understand the basics of chain code and how to develop applications using the Fabric network. Development language: JavaScript and Go, open source address: https://github.com/IBM-Blockchain/marbles (Star: 500+)

Main implementation language: Go

Burrow

Provides a modular blockchain client with a licensed smart contract interpreter partly developed according to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) specification.

Main implementation language: Go

Sawtooth

A modular platform for creating, deploying, and running general-purpose scalable distributed ledgers.

Main implementation language: Python

Indy

A distributed ledger that provides tools, code libraries, and reusable widgets for creating and using independent, decentralized digital identities.

Main implementation language: Python

Iroha

A blockchain framework for simple and easy inclusion of distributed accounting technology in infrastructure projects.

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/hyperledger (6500 +) Star:

Top04: EOS (Star: 5,100+)

EOS introduces a new blockchain architecture design that allows decentralized applications to scale horizontally and vertically. EOS does this by building a mock operating system on top of which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication, and application scheduling across hundreds of CPU cores or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that can scale to process millions of transactions per second, eliminating processing fees for users and allowing rapid and easy deployment of decentralized applications.

EOS addresses scalability issues with the consensus algorithm (DPOS), which generates a block every 3 seconds and only one authorized producer at any point in time. Thus EOS can be said to carry a large number of users, fast (only 3S), transaction costs at the same time. However, the possible deficiency of DPOS mechanism is that the temporary shareholders’ meeting system will always lead to the block issuing users who have a large number of tokens. As a result, most of the rewards will be taken away by them, further resulting in the “gap between the rich and the poor”, a vicious circle, and eventually become a centralized network of giant monopoly.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: WebAssembly

Source address: https://github.com/EOSIO/eos (5100 +) Star:

Top05: Zcash (Star: 500+)

Zcash is an implementation of the Zerocash protocol. The bitcoin-based code, designed with the help of renowned cryptographer Matthew Green, uses a technique called zero-knowledge proof to verify the authenticity of transactions. It provides higher standards of privacy and anonymity for complex zero-knowledge proof schemes by keeping transaction metadata confidential.

If Bitcoin is HTTP, Zcash is HTTPS. Zcash uses encryption to hide users’ identities and claims to be the first truly anonymous digital currency.

The Zcash open source client downloads and stores the entire history of Zcash transactions, depending on the speed of the computer and network connection, and the synchronization process can take a day or more once the blockchain reaches considerable scale.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main development language: C++

https://github.com/zcash/zcash (3500 +) Star:

Top06: Ripple (2,500+)

Ripple is the world’s first open payment network, a point-to-point global payment network based on block connectivity. Through the network, make you relaxed, cheap and safe your money transfer to any one person on the Internet, no matter in which parts of the world, he was able to transfer any currency, including the dollar, euro, yen and RMB or COINS, simple and quick, transaction confirmation in a few seconds to complete, transaction cost is almost zero, There is no such thing as cross-bank and cross-country payment fees. His core technical framework is developed in C++ language with TPS<1000.

Ripple has two important concepts. One is to introduce Ripple currency, XRP, which acts as the basic currency of Ripple network and can be circulated throughout the network just like Bitcoin. It is mainly due to the effect of fuel Gas. The second is the introduction of a Gateway system, which acts like a money exchange institution, allowing people to inject and withdraw fiat money into and out of the Ripple network and acting as a bridge between borrowers and borrowers.

Ripple has introduced a consensus mechanism, RPCA, that allows transactions to be verified and confirmed in a very short period of time by voting on special nodes. The Ripple client does not need to download the blockchain. It displaces the authenticated general ledger chain on the normal node, keeping only the most recent authenticated general ledger and a link to the historical general ledger, so synchronization and downloading of the general ledger is minimal.

Ripple’s role is not just to clear currency exchange, it can be a variety of virtual currencies, digital assets or anything of value.

Type of blockchain: public/Federation

Main development language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/ripple/rippled (2500 +)

Top07. Cardano (Star: 200+)

Cardano is a fully open source blockchain platform. It is the world’s first research-led blockchain that rigorously employs scientific methods (mathematics) to demonstrate rigour and security. Cardano is the first industrial-strength product based on Haskell code. Cardano’s goal is not to build a protocol similar to Ethereum, a smart contract, but to build a layered blockchain ecosystem. To put it simply, Cardano is a blockchain ecosystem that integrates digital currencies (such as Bitcoin and Litecoin) and smart contracts (Ethereum and EOS), and is a direct competitor of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

In addition to being a star product, Cardano has a group of strong international engineers and scientists behind the development team. In the design of Cardano project, Cardano’s team believes that currently blockchain is facing two very big problems :(1) the update of the protocol will lead to forks; (2) Insufficient performance and scalability of blockchain.

So Cardano proposed a layered blockchain architecture. Cardano consists of two levels:

  • Cardano’s ADA token flows through this Layer and is the foundation of Cardano’s entire system.

  • Computation Layer: Cardano will offer smart contracts, identity, messaging and more to make it easier for developers to build applications there.

Cardano’s team believes that this layered design concept makes perfect sense. Like TCP/IP in computer networks, each layer has a role to play. This design concept can not only reduce the risk of network bifurcations, but also enhance the scalability of the system from vertical and horizontal.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: Haskell

https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl (Star: 2,200+)

Top08. NEO (Star: 2,100+)

NEO Ant Blockchain (Antshares) is a non-profit community blockchain open source project. It adopts an improved Byzantine fault-tolerant algorithm -dBFT consensus algorithm. At present, it focuses on the application of digital assets, using blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, and using smart contracts to automate the management of digital assets. A distributed network that implements the “smart economy”. There are two native tokens built into NEO, NEO and GAS (NeoGas).

Ecology is the lifeblood of open source community projects. To achieve the goal of the smart economy network, NEO is committed to developing the developer ecosystem, providing mature development tools, comprehensive development documentation, organizing education and training activities, and providing financial support.

NEO systems use a number of original technologies, including DBFT (consensus mechanism), NeoX (Cross-chain Interoperation Protocol), NeoFS (Distributed storage protocol), and NeoQS (Anti-quantum cryptography mechanism), to build the infrastructure of the future smart economy.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: C#

https://github.com/neo-project/neo (Star: 2,100+)

Corda (Star: 500+)

Corda is a distributed ledger platform for recording, managing, and automating legal agreements between business partners. Designed by R3 (the world’s top financial blockchain consortium), and applied in multiple industries. It provides a unique response to the privacy issues and scalability challenges faced by decentralized applications.

Create conditions for economic exchanges among financial organizations (including but not limited to post-transaction clearing and settlement scenarios) by establishing and improving an open source sharing platform for recording financial affairs and processing business logic: An authoritative global logical ledger of all agreements between enterprises, this architecture will create a new shared platform for the industry, where new entrants and third parties can compete to launch innovative products and services.

R3 Corda features:

  • Smart contracts that can be written in Java and other JVM languages

  • Use a process framework to manage communication and negotiation between participants

  • Point-to-point network nodes

  • “Notary” infrastructure for verifying the uniqueness and ordering of transactions without global broadcasting

  • Develop and deploy distributed applications called CorDapps

  • Write in Kotlin for the JVM

Type of blockchain: Consortium/private chain

Main implementation language: Kotlin/Java

Source address: https://github.com/corda/corda (1500 +) Star:

Top10. Chain (Star: 500+)

Chain, launched by Chain, an American start-up company, is an enterprise-level blockchain platform architecture. As a blockchain provider, institutions can construct better financial services from scratch.

By opening up the source code of its proprietary blockchain and distributed ledger, Chain allows more people to add applications to its software or build proprietary networks. It took several years to create the Chain core developer version, which is a direct result of the collaboration between blockchain vendors and financial institutions. Because the open source software is aimed at the financial sector, it allows users to create and distribute digital assets as they see fit.

Chain features:

  • The new consensus model enables trades to be completed in less than a second, even on very large volumes

  • Private solutions encrypt blockchain data and allow relevant counterparties and regulators to selectively read it

  • Smart contract frameworks and virtual machines support simple rule execution, as well as turing-complete programs for key-value storage

  • A scalable data model can reduce the running load for network participants

  • A rich metadata layer supports meeting KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-money Laundering) requirements

Type of blockchain: Alliance chain

Main implementation language: Go

Source address: https://github.com/chain/chain (1500 +) Star:

Top11. Tendermint (Stars: 1,400+)

Tendermint, as a second-generation blockchain architecture, has gone beyond the restricted token/bitcoin-like monolithic system and is the first public blockchain to implement sharding technology. Tendermint socket is a kind of open source block chain agreement, eliminates the block of the complexity of the chain before, to block chain development provides a modular structure, and provided an open source in the chain of blocks in the core block chain engine, makes a variety of institutions and the development team to be able to easily and efficiently create their own block chain technology. The Tendermint core will manage all of the blockchain partitions, you can have bitcoin partitions or Ethereum partitions with a lot of flexibility.

Tendermint features:

  • Platform can be built based on any programming language application development interface

  • The master core manages all shards, which can be of many types, from Bitcoin shards to Ethereum shards

  • The consensus engine connects to the application through the socket protocol (TMSP)

  • Blockchain design can be decomposed by setting up a simple application interface between the application process and the consensus-forming process

  • TMSP is not dependent on a specific programming language, and developers can use any programming language to write smart contracts

  • Users can leverage existing code bases, workflows, and development ecosystems to create complex applications

  • Using the Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism, it supports smart contracts with decentralized control, low latency, progressive security effects, greatly improved scalability and speed, and can complete more than 10,000 transactions per second

Blockchain types: public/Federation/private

Main implementation language: Go

Source address: https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint (1400 +) Stars:

Stellar (Star: 1300 +)

Stellar is a block-linking project spearheaded by former Ripple founder Jed McCaleb to build a decentralized gateway for transfers between digital and fiat currencies. Stellar is based on Ripple, with many improvements to bitcoin and Ripple technologies, particularly the associated consensus mechanisms and validation algorithms, improved performance of Stellar network operating nodes, and very low node resource requirements.

Stellar features:

  • SCP (Star Consensus Protocol), the support algorithm of star payment system, is the most secure Byzantine algorithm

  • SCP consensus mechanism applies “collection block”, that is, each node selects other trusted nodes, and the sum of all these individual choices is the consensus set at the system level

  • SCP requires moderate consumption of computing power and economic cost, lowers the entry threshold and potentially opens the financial system to new participants. Meanwhile, SCP is also the best construction method to recover the system against malignant participants

Type of blockchain: public/Federation

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core (1300 +) Star:

Top13. Tezos (Star: 100+)

Tezos is a universal, self-evolving cryptographic digital ledger. The biggest advantage of Tezos is that it can absorb the good aspects of any blockchain-based ledger, which implements operations on a regular blockchain as pure functional modules. These operations are utilized to process network layer tasks through a network Shell. Bitcoin, Ethereum Cryptonote and so on can be realized in Tezos through the network layer interface, and then be represented.

Tezos supports metadata upgrades: protocols can evolve through self-correcting code. To do this, Tezos started with a seed protocol to define a process for coin-holding users to fix the code, as well as the voting system itself that would be necessary to fix the process.

Tezos’s seed agreements are placed on a pure proof of equity system (POS) that supports Turing-complete smart contracts. Tezos is implemented through the OCaml language, a powerful set of functional programming languages that provide high-speed, unambiguous semantics and syntax as well as an entire ecosystem.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: OCaml

Source address: https://github.com/tezos/tezos (1100 +) Star:

TRON (Star: 100+)

TRON (wave) is a piece of decentralized chain based smart contract and application development platform, network and intelligent contracts system compatible with a variety of block chain, including COINS, etheric fang, and other public chain intelligence agreement, agreement to provide developers across the entertainment application development of infrastructure, and to provide users with intelligent network experience flowing across the agreement. It allows each user to publish, store, and own content and data freely and, in a decentralized form of autonomy, determines incentives and enables application developers and content creators to form decentralized content entertainment ecosystems through digital asset allocation, circulation, and transactions.

TRON is the product of Web 4.0 and the next generation of decentralized Internet. It aims to build a universal credit platform for the global entertainment network. TRX (Tronix) is the official token that drives the TRON network. In essence, TRON can support all virtual currencies. TRX(Tronix) is TRON’s official legal token, which is responsible for the communication and transfer of all virtual currencies globally within TRON. Application partners of TRON protocol include Peiwo, Obike, Gifto, Uplive, etc., which has accumulated millions of users, making TRON one of the blockchain protocols with the largest number of DAPP users in the world.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: Java

Source address: https://github.com/tronprotocol/java-tron (1100 +) Star:

Top15. Qtum (Star: 795 +)

Qtum (Quantum Chain) is the Chinese community’s original blockchain based on the BITCOIN UTXO model, which supports smart contracts based on Ethereum virtual machines and is protected by an equity consensus model. It allows EVM to communicate with Qtum’s Bitcoin UTXO blockchain through a revolutionary account abstraction layer. Qtum implements peer-to-peer Value Transfer through the Value Transfer Protocol and builds a decentralized DAPP Platform that supports multiple industries (finance, Internet of Things, supply chain, social games, etc.).

The positioning of Quantum chain is to be a decentralized application development platform of blockchain in line with industry regulation. Later in order to comply with regulatory, quantum chain team at the time of design, design for the role of the regulators had a lot of options, the introduction of digital identity and third-party credit platform, and design a new type of contract – the master contract, introduce the role of the regulators, and regulators can be as a provider of Qtum parables and data sources in the system.

Quantum chains employ pluggable consensus mechanisms: Qtum system includes Qtum public chain and Qtum alliance chain. Due to the difference of network environment and participants, the quantum chain development team adopts IPOS (Incentive Proof of Stake) mechanism as the consensus mechanism of blockchain network, considering the degree of decentralization, participation threshold, security and reliability of public chain. Since most participants of the alliance chain are restricted nodes and known counterparties, the consideration of consensus mechanism is different from that of public chain network. In the alliance chain, the quantum chain will adopt consensus protocol combining Proof of Time and Raft to realize high-speed blockchain consensus network.

Qtum features:

  • Compatibility with Ethereum virtual machines allows compatibility with most Solidity based smart contracts. No special reliability compiler is required to deploy smart contracts to Qtum.

  • A proof consensus system optimized for Qtum’s contract model. Any user can participate and help protect the network, with no voting, master node or minimum amount required. There have been blocks created for transactions as small as 2 Qtum.

  • Fully implementable and applied decentralized governance protocols that allow modification of certain network parameters without forks or other network outages. Supports controllable parameters, such as block size and gasoline price.

  • Using UTXO transaction patterns and being compatible with Bitcoin allows existing tools and workflows to be used with Qtum. SPV protocol is allowed, which is ideal for lightweight wallets on mobile phones and Internet of Things devices.

Qtum Core is Qtum’s main wallet. It implements a complete node and is capable of storing, validating, and distributing all history of the Qtum network. Qtum Core is considered the reference implementation of the Qtum network.

Qtum Core currently implements the following features:

  • Send/receive Qtum

  • Send/receive QRC20 tokens on the Qtum network

  • Place and create blocks for the Qtum network

  • Create and interact with smart contracts

  • Run the full node to assign the blockchain to other users

  • “Trim” mode to minimize disk usage

  • The Regtest mode enables developers to very quickly build their own dedicated Qtum network for DAPP tests

  • Compatible with the Bitcoin core RPC command set and API

Type of blockchain: public/Federation

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/qtumproject/qtum (770 +) Star:

Top16. BitShares (Star: 700+)

BitShares is a decentralized peer-to-peer polymorphy system for trading digital assets. Its servers are maintained by trustees scattered around the world, and if a few of them are hacked, the whole system won’t go down. The ability to track the value of gold, silver, dollars, or other currencies and allow holders to earn dividends while avoiding all counterparty risk. BitShares extends bitcoin’s technology, offering many traditional currency functions in a new peer-to-peer, multifunctional network, as well as checking accounts, savings accounts and securities brokerage tools that allow Bitcoin to be used alongside other common financial assets. The system currency circulating on the platform is BTS.

BitShares is one of the milestone products in the history of blockchain and remains one of the most complete, feature-rich and powerful blockchain products. Bitcoin shares can be viewed as a company, a currency, even a community. The anchoring assets it offers, like BitUSD, are one of the most important changes in the history of virtual currencies, greatly eliminating their notorious volatility.

The core technical framework of BitShares is developed in C++ language, which is suitable for both public chain and alliance chain. Only a small number of nodes are required for bookkeeping, with TPS>500 and 50% fault tolerance. In BitShares 2.0, the maximum TPS of 100K can be achieved under the condition of optimal network and hardware.

Type of blockchain: public/Federation

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/bitshares (700 +) Star:

Top17. Coco Framework (Star: 667 +)

Coco is a blockchain framework system that Microsoft plans to open source to support high-scale, highly trusted blockchain networks that meet all critical enterprise needs and provide a means to accelerate enterprise adoption of blockchain technology.

Source address: https://github.com/Azure/coco-framework (690 +) Star:

Top18: Bletchley (Star: 645 +)

Bletchley is Microsoft’s open source BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) project, which is open and flexible for all platforms, partners and customers. Bletchley includes blockchain Middleware and cryptlet. The blockchain middleware will provide core cloud services such as identity and operational management, as well as intelligent services such as analytics and machine learning, while cryptlet will support interoperability and communication between Azure and other public/private clouds, ecosystem middleware and other customer technologies.

Practitioners have access to Bletchley’s open source infrastructure to build peer-to-peer and organization-to-organization transactions via blockchain, as well as interfaces to develop DApps. Bletchley is suitable for financial services, healthcare industry and government sectors.

Bletchley features:

  • Build a new open platform

  • Integrate identity management, key management, privacy management, security management, operations management and collaboration management

  • Provide a highly available and stable platform.

Blockchain types: public/Federation/private

Main implementation language: Shell

Source address: https://github.com/Azure/azure-blockchain-projects (640 +) Star:

Top19. Dragonchain (Star: 545 +)

Dragonchain, built by Disney, is a blockchain platform that combines public and private blockchains in an attempt to simplify the integration of real business applications into blockchains.

Dragonchain, another blockchain used to keep records and process transactions, is very similar to bitcoin’s underlying technology, but a bit different. Dragonchain is a multi-currency blockchain that allows nodes to define a currency and support its use. Multiple currencies can be used simultaneously on the network. Dragonchain’s consensus mechanism can support one or more existing consensus mechanisms (Trust, PoW, PoS), or even allow you to define and create a new consensus mechanism.

Dragonchain features:

  • Easy integration with existing systems

  • Easy for traditional engineers and programmers to develop, not necessarily familiar with blockchain, distributed systems and cryptography technology

  • C/S client server mode is integrated with RESTful mode

  • Simple and flexible architecture

  • By default, service data is protected

  • Allows the business to centrally control the process

  • Fixed length and cycle, short and high-speed blocks

  • Multi-currency support (currency agnostic blockchain)

  • No base money

  • Interoperability with other public and private blockchains

Blockchain types: Federation/private/public

Main implementation language: Python

Source address: https://github.com/dragonchain/dragonchain (Star: 540 +

Top20: Bytom (Star: 523 +)

Bytom is a specific public chain platform for the asset domain, using a multi-bit asset interaction protocol, Running on different than the original chain block chain, heterogeneous bit assets in the form of digital currency, digital assets (native) and atomic assets (with traditional physical world counterparts, warrants, equity, dividends, bond, intelligence information, forecast information, etc.) can be registered through the agreement, exchange, bet, and more complexity of interactions based on contract. Connect the atomic world with the bit world to facilitate the interaction and flow of assets between the two worlds.

Compared with the original chain, the application layer, contract layer, data layer, application layer is friendly to mobile terminals and other terminals, which is convenient for developers to develop asset management applications. The contract layer adopts creation contract and control contract to issue and manage assets. At the bottom layer, the extended UTXO model BUTXO is supported, and virtual machines are optimized. Introspection mechanism is adopted to prevent the deadlock state in Turing complete. Data layer to use distributed books technology, to realize the distribution of assets, cost, and exchange operations, consensus mechanism using of artificial intelligent algorithm, ASIC chip friendly POW introduced matrix in the process of the hash and convolution computation, makes the mill after the idle or be eliminated, can be used for AI hardware acceleration service, so as to generate additional social benefits.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main development language: Go

Source address: https://github.com/Bytom/bytom (530 +) Star:

Top21: BCOS (Star: 500+)

BCOS platform (BlockChainOpenSource) is a fully open source blockchain underlying technology platform jointly developed by Shenzhen Qianhai Webank Co., LTD., Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain Co., LTD., and Matrix Element Technology (Shenzhen) Co., LTD.

BCOS platform based on open source project to develop the existing block chain, to comprehensively consider the maturity and development of the open source project interface friendly, technology components complete, can be pluggable complex, diversified business support degree aspects of performance, and based on the standard and demand of enterprise block chain system, the open source project from the ground to transform and upgrade, Form a technology platform that meets the requirements of function, performance, security and supervision of enterprise-level application scenarios, and help users in various industries to build commercial blockchain services.

BCOS platform is a blockchain technology platform focusing on enterprise application services, which has been fully verified in several enterprise application scenarios with a large number of users. Under the test of real production data, BCOS platform remains zero fault operation, confirmed safe and controllable, the business is feasible, robust available advantages, its function, performance, fault tolerance, reliability, security, confidentiality, traceability, modular, maintainability, portability, interoperability and data consistency properties has also been proven to achieve high standards.

Type of blockchain: Alliance chain

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/bcosorg/bcos (500 +) Star:

Top22. Multichain (Star: 450+)

Multichain is a private chain open source chain software platform that provides a wealth of features, including extensive configurability, rapid deployment, permission management, local assets and data flows, on which anyone can create and deploy private chains. Disputes over privacy and control have prevented Bitcoin from becoming an industrial financial institution. The private chain created with MultiChain has overcome this difficulty. Multichain supports rapid deployment. It takes two steps to generate its own blockchain and three steps to connect to other blockchains.

MultiChain uses the PoW consensus mechanism to solve mining, privacy, and openness issues through comprehensive management of user rights. MultiChain provides an innovative approach to mining private blockchains with trusted decision network entities. The platform limits mining activities to a set of verifiable entities and avoids the monopoly of a single party over the mining process. This scheme, known as “diversity mining”, solves the mining problem by limiting the number of blocks a miner can have in a given window. “Diversity mining” removes the importance of proof of work and the need for local cryptocurrencies, and allows miners processing transactions to recognize transactions in a random rotation.

MultiChain is backward-compatible with bitcoin, including peer-to-peer protocols, transaction/block formats and core BITCOIN APIS/runtime parameters, so users can import existing Bitcoin applications into MultiChain. Instead of supporting a single chain like the Bitcoin kernel, MultiChain can be configured to support different blockchains on the same network simultaneously. MultiChain is able to support many third-party assets and can convert private and bitcoin blockchains to each other.

 

MultiChain is licensed under the GPLv3 open source license and can be commercially licensed to customers who want to integrate MultiChain into proprietary software solutions.

Type of blockchain: private chain

Main implementation language: C++/Python

Source address: https://github.com/MultiChain (450 +) Star:

Top23. ASCH (Star: 350+)

ASCH is a new generation of decentralized application development platform based on side chain technology. Based on ASCH, it can easily develop and deploy decentralized applications or new blockchain systems, and can be included in the ASCH main wallet app store for users to download on demand.

Whom ASCH had secretly features:

  • The support for relational databases to store transaction data makes developing a Dapp very similar to a traditional Web application, making it easy for developers and small and medium-sized enterprises to develop

  • Open design, not limited to finance, file storage, proof of copyright and other niche areas, provides a low-level and abstract API, can be freely combined to implement a variety of applications

  • In terms of consensus mechanism, ASCH inherited and enhanced DPOS algorithm, which greatly reduced the bifurcation probability and double payment risk

  • Side chains, or application models, slow down blockchain bloat while making dApps more flexible and personalized

Blockchain type: public chain

Main implementation language: JavaScript

Source address: https://github.com/AschPlatform/asch (350 +) Star:

Top24. Openchain (Star: 340+)

Openchain is the open source distributed ledger blockchain tool of Coinprism, a blockchain technology company, which is mainly provided to large enterprises and financial institutions. When processing data of large enterprises and financial institutions, Openchain can greatly reduce the computing speed compared with traditional blockchain tools. And reduce costs and counterparty risks.

Unlike Bitcoin, Openchain is based on a unique distributed ledger technology that helps users deploy their own versions of the blockchain, reducing transaction costs and settlement times for users. Openchain removes blocks and allows direct communication between transactions, meaning that transactions can be confirmed instantly. Anyone can connect to an authenticated node and receive a live copy of the authenticated transaction. Openchain also secures transactions through digital signatures that make them unforgeable. In addition, openChain-based tokens can be linked to the Bitcoin network as side chains through the hook module.

Type of blockchain: Alliance chain

Main implementation language: C#

Source address: https://github.com/openchain/openchain (340 +) Star:

Top25: CITA (300+)

CITA is a smart contract platform for enterprise users independently developed by Miape based on blockchain technology. Module of existing block chain technology has high coupling, poor expansibility faults, the CITA to the deployment of the enterprise users and application scenario for the design premise, with high reliability, high performance, high scalability and adaptability for future design goals, provide the flexibility to fit various application scenarios, providing production system support.

The CITA features:

  • Microservices architecture effectively disperses system load, and system throughput is scalable. Components are split into independent services, making the whole system has a very high level of modularity, convenient customization and integration for enterprise users.

  • Innovative asynchronous transaction processing (ATE) technology separates the ordering and execution of transactions into services that run asynchronously, increasing the efficiency of the consensus process. On the basis of asynchronous transaction processing, the superimposed unique View design not only enables a blockchain network to accommodate a variety of businesses, but also improves the throughput capacity and horizontal scalability of the whole system.

  • Executor technology allows users to mix and mix smart contract technologies through different actuators, whether native contracts written in native code such as Java, Rust or C++, or lightweight contracts written in dedicated languages such as Solidity on Ethereum, Can run on the same platform at the same time.

  • Privacy Transaction Private transactions are saved and executed only on the relevant nodes, and have the same execution efficiency as ordinary transactions. Irrelevant users and consensus nodes cannot see the protected data. Since private data is not stored on unrelated nodes, there is no need to worry about leaks due to future technological advances.

  • CITA implements powerful node and user Authentication to keep unlicensed nodes or users completely out of the network. At the same time, the role-based permission control system is implemented, allowing customized roles and assigning fine-grained operation permissions to roles to match the complex enterprise organization architecture.

  • Governance provides solutions for user private key loss, incorrect transaction sending, and fatal system errors.

  • The solid trust cornerstone code is open source and the entire software is written from scratch using Rust, a more secure system-level programming language.

Type of blockchain: Consortium/private chain

Main implementation language: Rust

Source address: https://github.com/cryptape/cita (300 +)

Top26: DNA (Star: 200+)

Distributed Networks Architecture (DNA), China’s first original open source blockchain technology framework released by Onchain (Distributed Technology), is a decentralized Distributed network protocol based on blockchain technology. Through different node roles, interaction modes, functional layering and modular design, To keep the blockchain independent of the core characteristics of the central node, a set of blockchain platform system can meet a variety of scenarios, such as for digital assets and provide financial services, including asset registration, issuance, transfer and so on.

The design of DNA distributed network architecture combines the core technology system of distributed ledger with the application of enterprise-level system, and carries out the architecture system design of matrix, including three level system and five vertical domain system.

Hierarchical system: distributed ledger core layer; Distributed ledger service layer; Cross-chain adaptation layer.

Vertical system: identity management and authorization system; Strategic management system; Application development service system; System management system; Smart contract system.

Blockchain types: public/Federation/private

Main implementation language: Go

Source address: https://github.com/DNAProject/DNA (200 +) Star:

Top27: Factom (200+)

Factom (notarized) using the currency block chain technology to revolutionize business community and government way of data management and data record, can also be understood as an irrevocable release system, the system data once released, the irrevocable, provides an accurate, verifiable, and not tamper with the audit trail records. Leverage blockchain technology to help develop a wide variety of applications, including audit systems, medical information records, supply chain management, voting systems, property deeds, legal applications, financial systems, and more.

Applications built on top of Factom seek to be able to track assets and implement contracts directly using the blockchain without having to write transaction records to the blockchain, where Factom records entries in its own architecture. Like Ethereum, the Factom system creates digital coins called Factoids. Owning Factoids means having access to the Factom system. Converting Factoids into input integrals gives you the right to write data to the Factom system. Federated servers running Factom also receive Factoids in return for maintaining the system. Factom, while also based on the Bitcoin network, is not the technical architecture of side chains or dye coins mentioned earlier. Factom only anchors hash values of directory blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain. Factom is a good solution to the three core constraints and problems of Bitcoin: speed, cost and blockchain inflation.

Policies and incentives in Factom are similar to POS. Unlike Factom, only a small percentage of users’ rights are recognized. Only interests already submitted to the system are entitled to vote, while transferable Factoid interests are not entitled to vote, avoiding the “share wear” and “nobody POS” problems of the POS mechanism.

CryptID is an open source project that uses Factom to write encrypted identity data into the blockchain, aiming to create a new next-generation open source identity identification system. It is a low-cost, highly flexible, lightweight identity distribution and validation program that can be used by organizations of any size. Implementation language for the c #, open source address: https://github.com/CryptidID/Cryptid (20 +) Star:

Type of blockchain: public/Federation

Main development language: Go

Source address: https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomCode (200 +)

Top28: Metaverse (130+)

Metaverse is a decentralized public blockchain project. The technology architecture of the Metaverse ecosystem includes Smart Property, Avatar, and Oracle. The project will support the community to develop various financial and life applications based on smart assets on its public blockchain. In the early stage, the Yuanjie project will be developed and maintained by the Weiyou team. When the project reaches a certain maturity, its code will be open source and published on GitHub, and the Weiyou team will develop BaaS platform on the Yuanjie blockchain to provide technical and business support services for enterprise users.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main development language: C++

Open Source: https://github.com/mvs-org/metaverse (130+)

Top29: Blockstrap (Star: 90+)

Blockstrap is a blockchain application based on the HTML5 framework that provides a front-end HTML5 interface for Web applications to deliver and manipulate blockchain using external Web-accessible apis or native QT hosted directly from the source.

Main implementation language: JavaScript

Source address: https://github.com/blockstrap/framework (90 +) Star:

Top30: Bluzelle (Star: 80+)

Bluzelle, known as the Oracle of blockchain, is a decentralized distributed database network built based on blockchain technology. Committed to creating a brand new token sharing economy and storage sharing ecology, Bluzelle allows people to share their computer storage space to earn replacement coins, At the same time distributed application DAPP developers pay tokens to store their data and use that storage space as efficiently as possible (similar to ethereum using Gas to incentivize developers to write code as efficiently as possible). To put it simply, Bluzelle is a basic service, cloud storage for centralized applications, freeing DAPP developers from having to worry about data storage, since ethereum networks currently provide decentralized computing resources, and storing data on the chain is very expensive. BLZ is a token issued by Bluzelle using Ethereum, a smart contract platform.

Bluzelle features:

  • High privacy uses encryption and sharding technologies to provide privacy assurance

  • High reliability Data is stored in redundancy mode on nodes around the world, preventing single node failure

  • Enterprise-level scalability Provides enterprise-level scalability by storing data in a uniquely distributed and intelligent way

  • Using blockchain technology to store data, once recorded, it cannot be tampered with

  • High performance Fast operation Dynamically adjusts the number and location of nodes used for data sharding to meet performance specifications

  • No intruder consensus mechanism is the only way data changes can be accepted as “truth” so that they cannot be tampered with by hackers

  • Low cost eliminates the need for a data center and thus saves a lot of money. All computer resources are provided by producers in the network

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/bluzelle/bluzelle (80 +) Star:

 

Top31: MyBlockchain (Star: 50+)

MyBlockchain is a sqL-like blockchain solution Forked from mysql/ mysql-Server, which is novel and interesting.

Main implementation language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/myblockchain/myblockchain (50 +) Star:

Top32: Bubi (Star: 30+)

Bubi blockchain builds the blockchain foundation platform and a flexible and extensible application business support layer. Currently, it adopts the open source oriented within the federation chain. The consensus algorithm adopts the self-developed Pool verification Pool, which can integrate Byzantine Paxos, Byzantine, Raft and other commercial consensus algorithms. Second – level consensus verification without Gas charge. At present, Bubi blockchain is widely used in commercial points, e-coupons, prepaid cards, game equipment, insurance cards, securitized assets and other fields.

Bubi characteristics:

  • Decentralized P2P distributed storage is used and no centralized management node is available. You can configure multiple authentication nodes as required. All authentication nodes have the same rights.

  • Smart contracts currently support the JavaScript language and are executed by the efficient V8 engine. In addition, EVM VMS will be migrated.

  • Security data is verified by consensus between nodes before it can be added to the blockchain, supporting node access through certificates and encrypting communication connections, and node changes need consensus.

  • High efficiency By optimizing data structure, adopting efficient encryption algorithm and critical path multi-threaded concurrency, the performance is significantly improved, and ordinary PC nodes can reach the TPS level of ten thousand.

  • In addition to the efficient ED25519 signature algorithm, compliance also supports SM2/SM3 encryption algorithm.

Type of blockchain: Alliance chain

Main implementation language: C/C++

Source address: https://github.com/bubicn/bubichain-v3 (Star: 30 +)

Top25: TrueChain (Star: 18+)

TrueChain (TrueChain) is a public chain designed for high performance industry applications, enabling applications to efficiently publish smart contracts. It uses the underlying public chain based on PBFT, implements Permissionless PBFT consensus, and provides efficient contract publishing, monitoring, and lifecycle management tools. The design principle of Truechain is the combination of blockchain and smart contracts with digital advertising industry application (ADTure), and then the second phase of scalability to other industries. In the design of blockchain, Truechain aims to design the public chain of the industry, and carries out a two-layer design considering the characteristics of participants in the digital advertising industry and the future concurrency of multiple industries. Truechain provides the advertising industry with future, decentralized application infrastructure, while providing the blockchain industry with the first focused industry application public chain, breaking the industry fragmentation caused by performance, transaction speed, ease of use and other issues.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main development language: C++

Source address: https://github.com/truechain/truechain-testnet-core (18 +) Star:

Top34: NXT

NXT (Nextcoin) is a second-generation decentralized virtual currency written with brand new code. It is not a copycat of Bitcoin. It is the first to adopt 100% proof of stake POS algorithm, with asset transaction, arbitrary message, decentralized domain name, account lease and other functions, and partially realize the transparent forging function. The core technical framework is developed in Java language with TPS<1000.

Blockchain type: public chain

Main development language: Java

Source address: https://bitbucket.org/Jelurida/nxt/src

Unofficial mirror: https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt (Star: 30 +)

Top35: Ardor (NXT2.0)

The Ardor blockchain, built by Israeli company Jelurida and core developers and community contributors around the world, is based on the NXT upgrade, which can be seen as NXT2.0, a challenger to Ethereum. NXT future blockchain is an old blockchain service platform, based on the NXT upgrade of ADor technology in the world’s leading position, inherits NXT stable and powerful functions. Ardor main chain original token is ARDR.

There are many ethereum-like functions on The Ato system, such as creating assets and issuing tokens, but there are also many functions that Ethereum does not have, such as creating sub-chain applications, anonymous mixcoins, and decentralized point-to-point marketplaces. The main technical highlight is solving the problem of blockchain ledger bloat. Now we know that a chain of “public” are faced with the problem, all of the transaction is recorded in the block on the chain, the chain blocks of data at the speed of index rising, adel innovative attempt in this aspect, through the data of shear technology can ensure the chain block books in a small capacity is a dynamic state to better realize the decentralized deployment.

Aduo has an innovative parent chain – sub-chain architecture, different business models can be deployed by creating sub-chain, sub-chain plug and play, to ensure the flexibility and high efficiency of commercial deployment. Each person or institution can create a chain, and consensus that completed by the parent chain, the parent chain only save all sub chain within 24 hours of books information, the history of the expiration information will be cut off, in keeping with the parent chain efficiently streamline, and cut off the data by the algorithm based on the special existence proof, ensure that every historical data to prove that, traceability, and cannot be tampered with. In this way, the consensus machine and the application are layered. The two layers of data are separated, but they can still be organically connected, which enhances the flexibility of the blockchain and ensures the stability of the underlying consensus, which is also lacking in Ethereum. Ardor’s first sub-chain, called Ignis (Fire Chain), was also the migration of NXT to Ardor, and the fire chain tokens were used to support its operations.

Ethereum is too complex to pose more security risks, while Adol ARDR is more suitable for commercial landing.

Ardor Innovation features:

  • Ledger data can be cut

  • Parent – child chain structure

  • Subchains plug and play

Type of blockchain: public/Federation

Main development language: Java

Source address: https://bitbucket.org/Jelurida/ardor/src

Unofficial mirror: https://github.com/mrv777/Ardor (Star: 3 +)

Note 1: TPS, the number of transactions Per Second processed by a system, is an important technical indicator of whether blockchain can be implemented in high-value and high-concurrency businesses.

Note 2: IPFS, InterPlanetary File System, is a globally distributed, peer-to-peer version of a File System designed to complement (or even replace) the hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that currently rules the Internet. Connect all computing devices with the same file system. The idea is to replace domain-based addresses with content-based addresses, where users are not looking for an address but for content stored somewhere, without verifying the identity of the sender, just the hash of the content, making web pages faster, more secure, more robust, and more durable.

Note 3: GitHub is the most used open source project hosting platform in the world. The number of its project stars reflects the popularity and recognition of the project by the public, as well as the contribution and success of the project itself. The Star numbers of the projects listed in this paper are the statistical results on March 10, 2018.

Note 4: NXT and Ardor are open source on Bitbucket and not open source on GitHub, so they can not be ranked according to the number of stars, so they are introduced in the last two.

Note 5: Please refer to “Blockchain Snowballing (I): Core Concepts” for explanations of relevant terms in the article.

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