An ecosystem of online stores and chat groups openly sell Github stars, which users award to signal interest in a project and can be tallied to rank the most popular. For the bargain price of $6 paid in ether, the crypto token of the Ethereum blockchain, WIRED bought 50 stars for a dormant GitHub project via the straightforwardly branded site BuyGithub.com. The fake endorsements appeared in just hours.
It has become a widely followed benchmark for fast-growing open source products. The index is a good predictor of whether a company will raise a round, says Konstantin Vinogradov, a general partner at Runa. Around a third of all the companies listed in the index since its launch in 2020 have raised subsequent rounds within the next 12 months, he says. Over time, metrics can invalidate themselves, says Stuart Geiger, an assistant professor at UC San Diego.