Blockchain development booming, says Deloitte

Blockchain was among the fastest growing technologies—expanding by 11.3% even this past winter—according consulting giant Deloitte’s new project that tracks open source software development.  

Only machine learning (13.7%) and quantum computing (12.9%) grew faster between Q4 2018 and Q1 2019, according to the Open Source Compass (OSC), a public data visualization tool designed to make complex data easy to understand. 

Blockchain was also the fourth largest technology, behind mobile development, web development, and cybersecurity. Like growth rate, its size was measured by the number of saved changes in a project. 

The OSC project is a reflection of open source software having “reached an inflection point,” the company said in a September 19 Deloitte release.“[It] is now helping shape digital strategies across the entire enterprise.”

Noting that open source software has been flourishing since the early days off the internet, Bill Briggs, CTO of Deloitte Consulting, added that it “has incited a completely new kind of collaboration and productivity—especially in the realm of emerging technology.”

Blockchain had the third “most collaborative” development community in the open source world, with about 169,000 user-submitted changes either accepted or rejected. Only mobile development (461,000) and web development (460,000) had more. 

It was ranked the sixth most active open source community, with 38.6% of all projects still ongoing.

Aimed at everyone for C-suite executives to software engineers, the OSC ranked 15 technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT) and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR). 

Among other types of data it also tracks geographic trends on development and knowledge sharing, and the growth of various programming languages.

OSC is a collaboration between Deloitte, data visualization firm Datawheel, and Cesar Hidalgo, chair of the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute (ANITI).