The blockchain: Technology some of us pretend to know, and the rest don’t care about. A new study on the “state of blockchain programming” from CodeMentor underscores this take. Some 46 percent of respondents to this survey say they have no plan to learn this newer technology in the next three months, but are open to it. Another ten percent say they’re just not interested. Of those learning how blockchain works and may be applicable to their profession, only 19.5 percent began doing so "before 2017," with the highest percentage starting to learn about the new technology less than three months ago. Over half (51 percent) are doing it purely out of “personal interest,” while only 5.4 percent are doing so because they are required to for school or work. Of those not interested in the decentralized digital ledger, 38.4 percent say it’s just too early to know if it’ll be useful. Another 20.8 percent consider it a “fad” which will “go away” at some point. And 14.4 percent saddle blockchain with cryptocurrency and say ICO scams are causing them to sidestep the technology altogether – which we can understand, as one study shows around 81 percent of the cryptocurrencies introduced in 2017 were actually fraudulent. This echoes a recent Dice survey wherein 22 percent of respondents say cryptocurrency and blockchain are “nonsense.” Around 24 percent of tech pros in our survey were able to distinguish crypto from blockchain, calling the money schemes “proof of concept” for blockchain technology. Jobs aren’t safe, either. Analyzing our own data, we see job listings for blockchain dip as cryptocurrency valuations ebb. Separate findings show companies are interested in blockchain for use in their own stacks, but most are still in the discovery phase. Some 61 percent of companies report they’re “researching” blockchain technology, while 46 percent say they could conceive of using it today. Things aren't totally bleak, though. CodeMentor found 80 percent of devs have a “positive” view of blockchain, and 90 percent would like to learn it in the next few months. Two-thirds don’t consider it overrated. The positive outlook brightens as tech pros start familiarizing themselves with blockchain, too, suggesting there’s a huge upside as the environment matures.