This is a short story I wanted to share with you about how a long awaited update of one of the blockchain related website turned out a complete copy-paste from various websites. Couple of weeks ago I noticed that a big sign appeared on the blockchain info website stating that big changes are coming.
Today I went to the website and looked bewildered and quite surprised, how little things just reminded me of numerous websites - all just like in the movie The Frankenstein.
Such kind of an approach to making a sustainable product speaks for itself. As you know blockchain.info didn’t change its appearance for about 3 years. And now we know why - they had no good ideas… so they went in stealing them from the others.
So, let's analyze which sites the guys at blockchain.com copied from and added their own pinch of “creativity” to create their own Frankenstein. So you can see for yourself.
Strip.com: the payment system
What was copied:
- site menu,
- block elements display,
- icons,
- buttons,
- most of the strip website elements.
Check how the menu reacts and moves at Strip wedsite. And then go to blockchain info and you will see for yourself. Similarities are striking ))
Blockchain.com website is divided into 2 parts: corporate pages and pages with the product itself, which is a block explorer. So let's have a look at their “new” block explorer.
Here the guys just went on full throttle pushing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, not giving a damn thing ...
blockchair.com: block explorer
What was copied:
- the main page,
- display of the technical network data on the main page.
After 6 years, the guys from blockchain.com realized that people came to their website to search for a block hash, transaction or address. All this was known better and way before them by the Bitupper team. By the way, blockchain.info (or .com now) has now a few copied elements from Bitupper as well, see the screenshot.
Here is blockchair main page:
And here is blockchain info main page - now showing some stats:
Bitupper.com: blockchain portal
What was copied:
- search bar - probably they finally had an insight that the search is still the most important thing;
- display of the blocks menu with block number imitating a chain
Bitupper showing block numbers in a chain-like fashion
Blockchain.com showing block numbers in a chain-like fashion. Looks so damn similar. And Bitupper rolled out their solution before blockchain.com. So it is obvious who copied from whom...
And just a small notice regarding the list of transaction layout. This is how Bitupper show list of txs
And this is how blockchain.com show txs now in their "new" update - they had Amount in USD added...
I wanted to mention that blockchain.com added Ethereum support. Which is some development from them. Must admit, this is a good job! Ethereum support will be quite appreciated by the community. Let’s see if it can beat Etherscan.
They made the new website using React.js, but only the promotional part. Backend of the block explorer itself didn’t get any changes. It is still slow and doesn’t support the new developments in the blockchain protocol, such as SegWit (bech32 addresses).
Bech32 adoption allows cheaper and faster transactions in the network. See Bitcoin Wiki for the list of services which already support the new developments https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bech32_adoption
I’m sure if you dig more deeply you will see more of the facade changes copied from others, but not the real improvements which should have resulted after investments of $70 millions, but we can’t find them.
We can see no creativity or technical improvements which speak for itself.
So it raises quite a reasonable question:
How come you bare the name blockchain.com but you represent the technology so poorly?
I hope the guys from blockchain.com have a decent explanation… or maybe not.