GitHub's Fake Star Economy

A CMU study (ICSE 2026) detected about 6 million fake stars across 18,617 repositories and 301,000 accounts on GitHub.

• As of July 2024, 16.66% of repositories with 50+ stars were implicated in fake star campaigns.
• AI/LLM repositories accounted for the largest share among non-malicious categories.
• GitHub stars were traded for $0.03–$0.85 each on websites, Fiverr, Telegram, and elsewhere.
• According to Redpoint's analysis, the seed-stage median was 2,850 stars, and Series A was 4,980 stars.
• In the authors' sample of 20 repositories, some projects showed 36–76% of stargazers being accounts with zero followers.

Manipulated repositories weren't simply new accounts—many were old but empty accounts. For example, blockchain-related repositories showed high zero-follower rates and ghost account rates, and their fork-to-star ratios were also significantly lower than organic repositories.

Notably, FreeDomain had very few watchers and forks relative to its 157K stars, and Union Labs ranked #1 on the Runa Capital ROSS Index but was suspected of having 47.4% fake stars according to StarScout.

In conclusion, GitHub stars have become a signal that influences discoverability, trending, and even fundraising—and that signal itself is already systematically contaminated.