As blockchain is gaining ground in China, developers in the country show increasing interest in exploring the potential of the emerging technology.

China Software Developer Network (CSDN),the country’s largest community website and services platform, released the China’s Developer Survey Report 2018-2019 in early march, in which it deciphered the current state of the blockchain developer community in China.

According to the report, nearly half of surveyed developers in the country are only scratched with what the blockchain technology can do. 13% of respondents said they are using blockchain to solve more or less real-world problems , while 14% said they will do so at some point in the future. 44% said they know a few concepts of the emerging tech, up from 10% in 2017. 22% of respondents noted they have some knowledge of bitcoin.

Among those in technical positions, data analysts are more keen on exploring blockchain than normal developers. 42% of surveyed data analysts said they are or will use blockchain to their businesses, followed by cyber security analysts(40%).

40% of respondents are holding digital assets, up from 27% in 2017. Interestingly, 56% of respondents who are in education/training/institutions/scientific research are crypto holders, compared with 40% from the internet industry.

The reporter also indicated that 50% of blockchain developers are engaged in the development of public chains such as Ethereum and bitcoin, 27% are dedicated to blockchain solutions and 26% are committed to developing consortium blockchains such as Hyperledger and R3 Corda (percentages equal more than 100 percent because respondents were allowed to submit more than one answer).

Ethereum and Bitcoin are two most popular blockchain development platforms in China’s developer community with 44% on Ethereum and 28% on Bitcoin.

Java and Python are the two most widely-used programming languages for blockchain developers. Java, Python and Go make up 32,32 and 31 percent of the programming languages used for smart contract development respectively. When it comes to the development of decentralized applications(DApps), 51% of developers opted to use Java.

Half of surveyed developers hope to use blockchain technology. 50% expressed their strong interest in learning more about how to apply blockchain in R&D, while 45% said they are eager to know more about the mainstream blockchain platforms.

When asked about what are the most appropriate application scenarios for blockchain, 63% chose finance, followed by intellectual property management and fighting against counterfeit goods(42%), intelligent hardware and internet of things(41%).

In addition, 79% of the respondents said they are considering to enter the blockchain world within a year.