software-decentralization

Tool that analyzes blockchain decentralization on the software layer

Installation

To install the software decentralization analysis tool, simply clone this GitHub repository:

git clone https://github.com/Blockchain-Technology-Lab/software-decentralization.git

The tool is written in Python 3, therefore a Python 3 interpreter is required in order to run it locally.

The requirements file lists the dependencies of the project. Make sure you have all of them installed before running the scripts. To install all of them in one go, run the following command from the root directory of the project:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Replace python with your python version if necessary, e.g. python3.9 (same for all following commands).

Execution

To run the tool, simply execute the run.py script from the root directory of the project:

python run.py

If the script is executed for the first time, it will clone the repositories of the projects listed in the config.yaml file and extract data about their commit history. These data are then used to calculate various metrics that quantify the decentralization of the projects.

The script will generate an output directory with the results of the analysis, organised in subdirectories depending on the type of output (data file or figure), contribution type (one of lines changed, commits, or merge commits), contributor type (author or committer), and number of commits per sample window.

To configure the analysis (e.g. change which repositories will be analysed or which metrics will be calculated), you can modify the config.yaml file.