GitHub

GitHub is an online platform for storing, sharing and working together on software code, built around Git, the version control system created by Linus Torvalds in 2005. GitHub launched in 2008 and was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. Developers keep their code in repositories, propose changes through pull requests, review each other's work and track bugs as issues. It hosts a vast number of open-source projects, including the reference software of many blockchains, such as Bitcoin Core and the Ethereum client Geth. In crypto, analysts often look at a project's GitHub activity, such as the number of contributors and recent commits, as one sign of whether development is real, a part of fundamental analysis. Activity counts can be inflated or misleading, though, and copied code is common in low-quality projects. Also see smart contract.