China has rated Ethereum as the best public blockchain among 28 projects, according to rankings released by the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) on Thursday.

CCID, a research unit of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, released its first monthly Global Public Blockchain Assessment Index on 28 cryptocurriencies. The index has been developed based on three different indicators: technological capability, usefulness of the application, and innovativeness of the project

Ethereum , the typical representative of the second-generation blockchain that enables smart contracts, ranks first in the rankings with a total score of 129.4. Steemit, Lisk, NEO and Komodo takes 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place with scores of 115.9, 104.8, 103.0 and 101.5, respectively.  Steemit tops the list of infrastructure technology with a score of 82.6, while NEO, referred as the Chinese Ethereum, rates the highest for applicability with a score of 26.6.

Bitcoin, the most well-known and the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ranks only 13^th overall, although it has the best innovation performance ,getting a score of 35.6.

The CCID outlines five criteria for assessing these public blockchains: first, the project must have an independent main chain; second, nodes of the public blockchain can be freely created; third, there is a public blockchain explorer where block information can be tracked; fouth, it has open source code; fifth,  there is an available project website where team members can be contacted.

Only 15 public blockchain projects get scores in this index. CIID will update the ratings monthly.

As few completely independent ratings are available for blockchain projects and crypto assets, this assessment index of global public blockchain technology offers a model. The goal of the index is to scientifically evaluate the development level of projects to accurately grasp the trend of blockchain technology innovation, so as to provide more professional consulting services for governments, enterprises, and research institutes.

Although China has filed the most patent filings for blockchain across the world so far, the country still falls behind in the development of public blockchain technology , with only NEO and QTUM out of the 28 projects led by Chinese teams.

Although Chinese regulators have been stepping up efforts to ban ICO and crack down on cryptocurrency trading and mining since last September, the country is still ambitious about leading the world in the development of blockchain industry.Earlier this week, Chinese authorities announced that it would launch nationwide blockchian standards and guidelines by the end of 2019.