Research behind implementing Schnorr signatures, lightning network, confidential transactions, efficient confidential transactions (bulletproofs), is bleeding edge research in cryptography mixed with whole bunch of other fundamentals.
Nodejs required practically no academic research while bitcoin needs it heavily today still.
For example, you have papers like above being published in the context of bitcoin. 60 pages of untrivial math, and that's just one idea of how to scale bitcoin.
Research behind implementing Schnorr signatures, lightning network, confidential transactions, efficient confidential transactions (bulletproofs), is bleeding edge research in cryptography mixed with whole bunch of other fundamentals.
Nodejs required practically no academic research while bitcoin needs it heavily today still.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1159.pdf
For example, you have papers like above being published in the context of bitcoin. 60 pages of untrivial math, and that's just one idea of how to scale bitcoin.