Bitcoin

The decline of small-team papers in the Nature Index reflects a broader trend toward institutionalization and large-scale collaboration in research. In crypto, this parallels the growing dominance of well-funded teams and foundations over individual developers, potentially reducing the rate of disruptive, grassroots innovation but increasing the reliability and security of core protocols.

A study published in Nature reports that the proportion of one- and two-author papers in the Nature Index is declining rapidly as large-team research increases.