Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba filed the most blockchain patent applications in 2019, according to research conducted by The Block’s Steven Zheng.



Tencent and its affiliates filed for 718 blockchain patents out of a total of over 5,800, while Alibaba Group filed 470. Together, they accounted for over 20% of the total.





Tencent and Alibaba were followed by WeBank, Ruize Technology, and Ant Financial, in that particular order - and all these three companies are also based in China.



Overall, about 63% of firms with over 20 blockchain patent filings are based in China. The U.S. follows next. It is worth noting that while 2019 saw over 5,800 patent applications, only 3% of them were granted in the same year.



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Update: The data used to determine the number of patent applications is based on Google Patent filters deduplicated for “Family” patents