In the last issue, we talked about: the consensus mechanism determines who keeps the accounts and how they keep them. Have you ever thought about—who wrote these rules? Who can change them? Don’t forget, all rules are ultimately implemented in lines of code. So, to determine whether a chain is decentralized, there’s another key point: check if the code is open source.
In simple terms, the code is the rules themselves. You run a node using this set of code; you produce blocks and validate transactions according to these rules. Now the question arises: if the code is a black box, and no one can see it, change it, or supervise it—how do you know if it has been “tampered with”?
Therefore, open source is the most basic form of transparency. You need to let others see how you operate, whether there are hidden doors in the rules, and if the logic is fair.
To determine whether a chain has truly achieved "open source code," you can look at the following steps:
First, check GitHub.
The vast majority of open-source blockchain projects will host their core code on GitHub or similar platforms. You can directly search for “project name + GitHub” to see if it’s a public repository, whether there is a detailed code structure, commit history, and developer community.
Second, look at development activity.
It’s not enough to just have a GitHub; you also need to see if anyone is actively maintaining it. You can check the recent commit frequency and the number of people participating in development to see if there are real developers involved or if it has long been “abandoned.”
Third, pay attention to whether it is truly “compilable and runnable.”
Some projects create a false impression of being open source by uploading a bunch of code that no one can run, with missing documentation, making it impossible for outsiders to reproduce. This is actually another form of “pseudo-open source.”
“Open source” is not a lofty ideal, but the minimum guarantee of your right to choose and supervise. Without open source, all consensus mechanisms and node architectures may just be superficial efforts.
In the next issue, we will discuss the fourth judgment dimension: governance mechanism—how the rules of this chain are changed, who has the final say, and whether ordinary users have the power to participate.
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