Bitcoin Core Annual New Stars (GitHub)
Annual new GitHub stars on bitcoin/bitcoin repo since 2009 — yearly OG builder attention wave.
What is it?
GitHub stars are the cleanest builder attention indication — each star is a developer's bookmark to track Bitcoin Core's evolution. This chart shows how many new stars were added each calendar year on the bitcoin/bitcoin repository (year-over-year delta). Reading new-stars-per-year removes the exponential 'flat-then-spike' shape of cumulative counts and surfaces the actual wave of builder enthusiasm across each Bitcoin cycle.
How to read
Histogram bars, one per calendar year. Y-axis = new stars gained that year. Tall bars = builder enthusiasm wave. Short bars = builder dormancy. Compare bar heights across cycles to gauge whether each bull market produced a wider builder wave than the previous.
Key zones
Annual delta phases : 2009-2013 small bars (organic foundational growth), 2013-2014 first mainstream wave, 2017-2018 spike around first mainstream cycle, 2020-2021 institutional wave, 2024-2025 latest cycle. Bar heights typically a few thousand stars per year at cycle peaks.
What to observe
Tallest bar of the cycle marks peak builder enthusiasm. Bear-market years that retain meaningful height = thesis-driven builders (strongest indication). Cycle-over-cycle ladder of bar peaks indicates structural builder growth across halvings.
Historical context
Bitcoin whitepaper published October 31, 2008. The bitcoin/bitcoin GitHub mirror dates from late 2010, capturing the first stargazers as the open-source eye started noticing the project. First major star wave : late 2017 (top of cycle). Sustained wave 2020-2024 driven by institutional / Lightning / ordinals narrative cycles.
Expert notes
Annual delta is a robust transformation of the underlying cumulative counter — it removes the exponential bias and lets you compare cycles on equal footing. Note v1.3 : the bitcoin/bitcoin cumulative was historically capped at 10000 by the public GitHub stargazers API (Trinity backfill ceiling). v1.3 ships seeded year-end approximations 2017-2025 from publicly observable cumulative timelines, so annual deltas are now displayed honestly across the full 16-year history. A future v1.4 enhancement will replace the seeded year-ends with real day-by-day backfill via direct GHArchive download (no BigQuery dependency). For shorter-term momentum indication, see the Builder Momentum Index which folds GitHub stars velocity into a Trinity Exclusive composite.
Common mistakes to avoid
Bigger bar = better technology ❌. Annual new stars measure attention, not quality. Some abandoned projects had huge spike-years (legacy frameworks). Cross-validate with contributions + recent commits for an active-builder gauge.
Programmatic access
REST API
curl -sS \
'https://api.trinityinsights.io/api/v1/narrative-intelligence/narrative-gh-bitcoin-core-stars/history?days=90' \
-H 'X-API-Key: $TRINITY_API_KEY'MCP server
{
"tool": "get_chart_value",
"metric_id": "narrative-gh-bitcoin-core-stars",
"timeframe": "1y"
}Required tier: free. See the pricing grid for the tier list and the MCP documentation for multi-client configuration.
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Institutional disclaimer
Trinity Insights is an educational and analytical tool. The metric above does not constitute investment advice. Trinity Insights is not a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) registered under MiCA Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. See the full disclaimer.