A Bibliometric Review of the Evolution of Blockchain Technologies

Bitcoin was created in 2008 as the first decentralized cryptocurrency, providing an innovative data management technology, which was later named blockchain. It ensured data validation without intervention from intermediaries. During its early stages, it was conceived as a financial technology by mos...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2023-03, Vol.23 (6), p.3167
Main Authors: López-Sorribes, Sergi, Rius-Torrentó, Josep, Solsona-Tehàs, Francesc
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
bibliometric analysis
Bibliometrics
Blockchain
Crypto-currencies
Digital currencies
Evolution
Financial services
Internet of Things
Review
scientific collaboration
topic analysis
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Summary:Bitcoin was created in 2008 as the first decentralized cryptocurrency, providing an innovative data management technology, which was later named blockchain. It ensured data validation without intervention from intermediaries. During its early stages, it was conceived as a financial technology by most researchers. It was not until 2015, when the Ethereum cryptocurrency was officially launched worldwide, along with its revolutionary technology called smart contracts, that researchers began to change their perception of the technology and look for uses outside the financial world. This paper analyzes the literature since 2016, one year after Ethereum, analyzing the evolution of interest in the technology to date. For this purpose, a total of 56,864 documents created between 2016 and 2022 from four major publishers were analyzed, providing answers to the following questions. Q1: How has interest in blockchain technology increased? Q2: What have been the major blockchain research interests? Q3: What have been the most outstanding works of the scientific community? The paper clearly exposes the evolution of blockchain technology, making it clear that, as the years go by, it is becoming a complementary technology instead of the main focus of studies. Finally, we highlight the most popular and recurrent topics discussed in the literature over the analyzed period of time.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s23063167