Blockchain in the Eyes of Developers

Abstract: The popularity of blockchain technology continues to grow rapidly in both industrial and academic fields. Most studies of blockchain focus on the improvements of security, usability, or efficiency of blockchain protocols, or the applications of blockchain in finance, Internet of Things, or public services. However, few of them could reveal the concerns of front-line developers and the situations of blockchain in practice. In this article, we investigate how developers use and discuss blockchain with a case study of Stack Overflow posts. We find blockchain is a relatively new topic in Stack Overflow but it is rising to popularity. We detect 13 types of questions that developers post in Stack Overflow and identify 45 blockchain relevant entities (e.g., frameworks, libraries, or tools) for building blockchain applications. These findings may help blockchain project communities to know where to improve and help novices to know where to start.