Despite last year’s crackdown on initial coin offerings (ICOs), the Chinese government has demonstrated an open position to blockchain technology. With the announcement on Friday of an “independent analysis” of cryptocurrencies and global public blockchain technology via a Global Public Chain Assessment Index, it aims to provide a detailed review of projects from government, academia and industry experts. The index will evaluate government and industry-led projects from around the world and provide a benchmark view on the most popular global tokens from Bitcoin to Zcash.
The initiative will be led by the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Beijing, and the first results are expected in a matter of days on the CCID website. The inaugural batch of public chain projects being assessed are: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripoco (Ripple), Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Starcoin, NEO, Ioota, Monroe Currency, Dash, New Currency, Ethereum Classic, Quantum Chain, Nano, Application Chain, Big Zero Coin, Verge, Stratis, Cloud Storage, Stimco, Bit Stock, Bitcoin, Coin, Decred, Super Cash, hcash, Komodo and ARK.
In addition, according to a statement, an assessment will be made on a number of other companies operating in the cryptocurrency sphere: BitShares, ByteCoin, IOTA, Lisk, Litecoin, Monero, NANO, QTUM, Ripple, Siacoin, Steem, Stellar, Stratis, Verge, Waves and Zcash.
The assessment of global public blockchain technology aims to scientifically evaluate the level of development and better understand innovation trends, the statement said.
The CCID further outlined its criteria for assessing public chain initiatives, defined as projects with their own independent main chain, where nodes can be freely created and with a published block explorer where block information can easily be tracked. Additionally, it said there must be open source code and an available website where team members of the project can be contacted.
The announcement was made in a seminar hosted by Dr. Songtao Pu, from CCID’s Think Tank. Other attendees included Dr. Qian Liu from the CCID Think tank Software Institute, Dr. Tao Lv from the China Software Testing Center and Anlei Wei from the CCID (Qingdao) Blockchain Research Institute.
