Characterizing Bitcoin donations to open source software on GitHub
This research addresses the problem of understanding cryptocurrency donation patterns for open source developers, but it is incremental as it characterizes existing data without proposing new methods.
The study analyzed Bitcoin donations to open source software on GitHub, finding limited adoption with only 8.3 million dollars donated over 10 years and a weak positive correlation (r=0.013) between donation amounts and repository popularity, particularly with forks.
Web-based hosting services for version control, such as GitHub, have made it easier for people to develop, share, and donate money to software repositories. In this paper, we study the use of Bitcoin to make donations to open source repositories on GitHub. In particular, we analyze the amount and volume of donations over time, in addition to its relationship to the age and popularity of a repository. We scanned over three million repositories looking for donation addresses. We then extracted and analyzed their transactions from Bitcoin's public blockchain. Overall, we found a limited adoption of Bitcoin as a payment method for receiving donations, with nearly 44 thousand deposits adding up to only 8.3 million dollars in the last 10 years. We also found weak positive correlation between the amount of donations in dollars and the popularity of a repository, with highest correlation (r=0.013) associated with number of forks.