# Blockchain-Oriented Software Variant Forks: A Preliminary Study

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.11083 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11083/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [AgenticFlict: A Large-Scale Dataset of Merge Conflicts in AI Coding Agent Pull Requests on GitHub](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03551/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In collaborative social development platforms such as GitHub, forking a repository is a common activity. A variant fork wants to split the development from the original repository and grow towards a different direction. In this preliminary exploratory research, we analyze the possible reasons for creating a variant fork in blockchain-oriented software. By collecting repositories in GitHub, we created a dataset with repositories and their variants, from which we manually analyzed 86 variants. Based on the variants we studied, the main reason to create a variant in blockchain-oriented software is to support a different blockchain platform (65%).