Development Trajectory of Blockchain Platforms: The Role of Multirole

Abstract

Understanding the development trajectory of digital platforms is central to digital platform management. We develop a parametric model that investigates the development trajectories of blockchain platforms, accounting for the feedback between blockchains’ utility change and people’s adoption and abandonment behavior. We consider a typical blockchain participant to simultaneously play three roles on the platform, user, investor, and laborer, each contributing to blockchains’ multi-faceted utility: providing service for transaction/interaction, providing a medium for digital investment, and providing workspace for online labor. The model describes a three-phase development trajectory for blockchain platforms: a chaotic initial stage, a rapid growth stage, and a mature stage of stable market cycles. The model was used to match 112 token price series, demonstrating robust performance across different fitting setups and outperforming existing models. The study identifies two temporal parameters, the time delay in quitting the platform and the holding time of the platform’s token, that significantly differentiate blockchains’ development trajectories. We extend the model to study forking events; results suggest that fork launch time is more important than forking amplitude in influencing the main chain’s subsequent development and that forking can increase the exposure of the forked platform.