A Bibliometric Study of the Emerging Trends in Blockchain Research
TL;DR
The analysis shows that topics associated with earlier blockchain infrastructure, such as distributed ledgers, proof of work, and cryptocurrencies, have become less prominent, while topics such as federated learning, differential privacy, and zero-knowledge proofs have gained increasing attention.
Abstract
The field of blockchain technology is continuously expanding and attracting more research interest. Blockchain promises decentralization, transparency, traceability, and resistance to censorship, all of which have prompted a heightened adoption in a wide range of sectors. We analyzed 57,116 papers published between 2022 and 2025 to determine how the field evolved after Ethereum’s 2022 transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, a period not covered by earlier field-wide analyses. Using VOSviewer for keyword and co-authorship mapping, together with a thematic evolution analysis and a term-level trend analysis, we answer four research questions. Q1: What are the research trends in blockchain? Q2: Which countries and institutions have contributed the most to the area of blockchain research? Q3: What are the most important journals and conferences in the field of blockchain based on the number of citations? Q4: What have been the most cited works of the scientific community? The analysis shows that topics associated with earlier blockchain infrastructure, such as distributed ledgers, proof of work, and cryptocurrencies, have become less prominent, while topics such as federated learning, differential privacy, and zero-knowledge proofs have gained increasing attention. India, China, and the United States account for the highest publication output, while reviews and surveys dominate the most cited works. Beyond the bibliometric findings, this paper contributes a normalization script, developed to cluster the keywords and generate a VOSviewer thesaurus file.