Analyzing the Relationship Between Project Success and Project Type for Open Source, Decentralized Finance and Web 3.0 Projects

Abstract

Decentralized applications and services are pivotal to the crypto industry. This research investigates the developmental history of over 600 open-source crypto projects using GitHub Archive data spanning from 2013 to 2023. Utilizing SQL scripts, the study extracted various project activities—such as watches, pull requests, pushes, commits, and branch creations—to construct a comprehensive history for each project. These projects were categorized into types, including crypto wallets, Dapps, L2 networks, tokens, and stablecoins, to identify trends in GitHub activity by project type. Additionally, projects were distinguished by their funding and governance models. The hypothesis posits that different project types may display distinct activity patterns, such as Dapps having more commits or token projects having more branches. Furthermore, this research examines the correlation between a project's governance and funding model and its success, measured by the level of user development and interaction on GitHub. It is hypothesized that more successful projects exhibit higher and sustained activity levels. This analysis aims to determine if certain funding and governance models, such as those of DAOs versus private companies, reliably correlate with project success, or if external factors play a more significant role. The findings provide insights into the governance of decentralized corporations and the impact of business models on project success, enhancing our understanding of the factors driving development and engagement in the crypto and open-source software communities.

This abstract is part of a collection in which the overarching large project under Dr. Jiasun Li was subdivided into discrete critical tasks that were carried out by multiple individuals or smaller teams. Abstracts in this collection read similarly given the shared project goals, but represent distinct tasks completed by the abstract authors towards finalizing the described analysis.