- The tech stack with the most code innovation is still EVM.
Understanding developer activity is important if developer mindshare is any measure of innovation.
For this reason, when Electric Capital publishes its annual developer report, the industry takes notice.
About 23,613 monthly active developers were working on cryptocurrency as of November 2024, making up a small portion (0.0875%) of the 27 million software workers worldwide. Although there has been a remarkable 2000% increase in the past ten years, the numbers are still below the industry’s peak of over 31,000 in 2022.
Compared to previous years, a noteworthy development among crypto engineers is the expanding worldwide distribution of talent. Eighty percent of developers were based in North America and Europe in 2015. Asia currently holds the largest developer mindshare (32%), but both continents have seen their share drop to 24% and 31%, respectively.
With 8,925 developers, or over 3.6 times the size of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) stack with 2,499 people, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) continues to be the top tech stack.
What is noteworthy, though, is that over the past 12 months, Solana has emerged as the top ecosystem for new developers. Given that Ethereum, which comes in second in terms of luring new developers, is supported by an ecosystem that includes dozens of layer-2 rollups, this is a remarkable lead.
In India, Solana developers make up about 27% of the market. Interestingly, more developers are joining the Solana ecosystem in this country than in any other, making it unique among blockchains. India is second only to the United States in terms of developer share.
Innovation in code is not always correlated with the highest developer activity. The Electric Capital developer report therefore took into account which chains have the most recently produced code.
With over 65% of new code published across its layer-1 and layer-2 ecosystems, Ethereum continues to hold the lead.
The article claims that in addition to liquidity, Ethereum is also fragmenting due to a lack of developer skill. The percentage of developers working on layer-2s has increased from 25% to 56% when Ethereum implemented its rollup-centric roadmap.
With 4,287 active developers, Base leads all active layer-2s. Arbitrum (3,450), Starknet (2,548), Optimism (2,416), Scroll (1,517), and zkSync (1,115) are next in line.
Starknet’s developer lead may come as a bit of a surprise, especially when compared to an older chain like Optimism, if developer activity is any sign of greater chain activity. Compared to the previous year, Starknet’s activity has slowed down based on the number of transactions.
How about Bitcoin?
Over the past 12 months, the number of active developers on the Bitcoin network has remained relatively stable at around 1,200 every month.
However, at least 42% of bitcoin developers are currently focusing their efforts on those areas due to the growth of Bitcoin layer-2s, NFTs, and other scaling solutions.
Lastly, there was a minor decrease in zero-knowledge developers. Currently, ZK employs 2,054 monthly active developers. Approximately 823 of them are employed full-time.
However, the number of zk contract deployments increased from 40 in 2020 to 639 in 2024, with Ethereum, Base, and Optimism accounting for the most portion.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
