Key highlights:
- According to the report presented by Electric Capital for 4 years, the number of blockchain developers continues to increase steadily.
- While the Solana ecosystem saw the biggest increase, most developers are still in the Ethereum ecosystem.
- Continuing growth amid one of the toughest bear markets in history gives hope for the future of blockchain technology.
According to the annual report of Electric Capital, a crypto venture capital firm that makes early investments in blockchain projects, there has been a significant increase in the number of blockchain developers. Although we had a very harsh crypto winter in 2022, developers did not neglect to create Web3 and blockchain applications and develop protocols.
In 2022, 61,000 new developers contributed for the first time to any blockchain community. This is the highest number ever reached in a year. The number of full-time developers working in any blockchain ecosystem grew by 8% in the same year many large companies laid off their employees. This growth within the bear market is a testament to the belief in blockchain technology.
The number of active developers per month has increased from around 11,000 at the beginning of 2020 to 23,500 by the end of 2022, an increase of more than 100%.
Bitcoin Not Popular Among Developers
Within the blockchain industry, where there are hundreds of thousands of developers, only 28% of them contribute code to the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems. Bitcoin’s lack of support for smart contracts and Ethereum’s scaling problems are causing developers to turn to other blockchain platforms. Developer interest also provides insight into which cryptocurrencies should be considered in 2023.
Most developers are still on Ethereum, though. When it comes to monthly full-time active developers, Ethereum is the leader with 1,873. Polkadot follows with 752. The number of developers working in Terra, which was listed as the fastest-growing ecosystem in last year’s Electric Capital developer report, decreased by 56% after Terra’s collapse. The Terra Luna ecosystem, which collapsed in May 2022, caused great damage to both investors and developers, as well as the entire crypto ecosystem.
Solana Leads the Market
Blockchain platforms that have increased the number of developers much more than Bitcoin and Ethereum include Cosmos (ATOM), Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC), and Polkadot (DOT). While the total number of developers in Solana increased by 83%, this rate was only 40% in Polygon. Even though Solana’s native coin, SOL, lost 94% of its value in 2022, interest in the ecosystem has not waned. The blockchain industry becomes even more rewarding as diversity increases, as each blockchain has different development stages, protocols, and methods.
Electric Capital is a venture capital firm with early-stage investments in many Layer-1 blockchain platforms and crypto startups, including Near Protocol, Gitcoin, Bitwise, dYdX, and Immunefi. Electric Capital, which obtained this data by identifying 250 million code commitments in open-source pools, has been publishing a developer report for 4 years to measure the pulse of the crypto ecosystem.
