Distributed ledgers

Blockchains and the shared records and contracts built on them.

China leads distributed ledgers research, with 20.6% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; India is second with 12.4%.

Added 14 October 2026. Its top papers were checked for relevance by AI, but its keywords and topic list have not yet been reviewed by hand.

FirstChina20.6%

SecondIndia12.4%

1.7×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1CNChina20.6%2INIndia12.4%3USUnited States6.7%4GBUnited Kingdom4.8%5SASaudi Arabia4.3%6AUAustralia3.7%7ITItaly2.7%8KRSouth Korea2.6%9AEUnited Arab Emirates2.3%10CACanada2.2%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 1,799 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Healthcare and medical data	276	INIndia25.4%	CNChina14.8%	SASaudi Arabia8.8%
Supply chain and traceability	269	INIndia11.9%	CNChina11.4%	GBUnited Kingdom8.9%
IoT security, authentication and access control	230	CNChina18.6%	INIndia15.1%	SASaudi Arabia8.7%
Energy trading, smart cities and agriculture	203	CNChina20.1%	INIndia12.6%	USUnited States5.6%
Consensus, scalability, sharding and interoperability	169	CNChina38.4%	INIndia7.8%	AUAustralia4.4%
Adoption, management, governance and public sector	158	CNChina12.3%	USUnited States10.8%	GBUnited Kingdom8.0%
Smart contracts, security and privacy (incl. zero-knowledge)	148	CNChina50.6%	USUnited States5.1%	SGSingapore4.1%
NFTs, DeFi, tokens and the metaverse	118	CNChina12.4%	USUnited States10.0%	GBUnited Kingdom7.1%
Blockchain with AI and federated learning	115	CNChina25.0%	USUnited States9.4%	KRSouth Korea7.4%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

CNChina 20.8%20.4%−0.4 pts

INIndia 12.0%12.8%+0.8 pts

USUnited States 6.1%7.4%+1.3 pts

GBUnited Kingdom 6.1%3.2%−2.9 pts

SASaudi Arabia 3.9%4.9%+1.0 pts

AUAustralia 4.1%3.3%−0.8 pts

ITItaly 2.6%2.7%+0.1 pts

KRSouth Korea 2.3%2.9%+0.6 pts

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 997 papers in 2021–2023, 802 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (2,633), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

CNChina29.2%of 2026 papers have an author here
INIndia16.9%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States7.8%of 2026 papers have an author here
GBUnited Kingdom5.5%of 2026 papers have an author here
SASaudi Arabia5.5%of 2026 papers have an author here

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

CNChina 44.9%33.1%+11.8

INIndia 35.2%15.2%+20.0

USUnited States 14.7%10.5%+4.2

GBUnited Kingdom 11.9%5.9%+6.0

SASaudi Arabia 8.0%5.6%+2.4

Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1INVellore Institute of Technology University1.1%
2AEKhalifa University of Science and Technology1.1%
3CNUniversity of Electronic Science and Technology of China0.9%
4CNSun Yat-sen University0.8%
5HKHong Kong Polytechnic University0.6%
6CNBeihang University0.5%
7SAKing Saud University0.5%
8CNXidian University0.5%
9AURMIT University0.5%
10SGNanyang Technological University0.5%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	CN	IN	US
Universities	95.4%	93.1%	99.1%	94.7%
Research facilities	2.1%	3.6%	0.2%	1.9%
Government labs	0.8%	1.6%	0.6%	0.5%
Companies	0.7%	1.3%	0.1%	1.1%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

52.9% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

CNUSChina with United States79
INSAIndia with Saudi Arabia68
CNHKChina with Hong Kong54
CNGBChina with United Kingdom51
CNSGChina with Singapore43

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends
Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications, 2021AEFRGB
842citations
Blockchain for the metaverse: A Review
Future Generation Computer Systems, 2023AEHKIEINLBVN
776citations
A Survey on Blockchain Interoperability: Past, Present, and Future Trends
ACM Computing Surveys, 2021PT
765citations
Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks, and visual features
Scientific Reports, 2021DKGBITUS
714citations
Blockchain technology and the circular economy: Implications for sustainability and social responsibility
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2021GBTR
665citations

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

blockchain OR "distributed ledger" OR "smart contract"

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Blockchain Technology Applications and Security; Cryptography and Data Security. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 17,969
In the top 10%: 1,799
In the top 1%: 183
Countries with credit: 103
Credit with no known country: 4.8%

Every one of the 2,108 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 11 were left out as not about distributed ledgers

The most cited of those left out:

A Survey on Metaverse: Fundamentals, Security, and Privacy1,579 citations
Decentralized AI: Edge Intelligence and Smart Blockchain, Metaverse, Web3, and DeSci228 citations
Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption from Ring-Learning-with-Errors135 citations
Parallel Intelligence in Metaverses: Welcome to Hanoi!130 citations
Privacy Preservation of Electronic Health Records in the Modern Era: A Systematic Survey110 citations
Circom: A Circuit Description Language for Building Zero-Knowledge Applications89 citations
Exploring the Key Characteristics and Theoretical Framework for Research on the Metaverse49 citations
A Review on the Advances, Applications, and Future Prospects of Post-Quantum Cryptography in Blockchain and IoT32 citations
A hybrid ECC-AES encryption framework for secure and efficient cloud-based data protection31 citations
Cryptographic Techniques in Artificial Intelligence Security: A Bibliometric Review22 citations
A secure and energy-efficient architecture in Internet of Things–cloud computing network by enhancing and combining three cryptographic techniques via defining new features, areas, and entities17 citations

1 catalogue record left out: their titles or citation dates do not match the paper

Towards Public Verifiable and Forward-Privacy Encrypted Search by Using Blockchain264 citations. 56% of citations predate the paper by 2+ years

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method