The number of monthly active developers in the crypto space has dropped by 28% in a year, but some Ethereum scaling solutions have managed to grow their teams.
According to a report by Electric Capital, which analyzed 164 million crypto code commits, the total number of monthly active developers in the crypto ecosystem fell from 26,701 to 19,279 in the year ending on Oct. 1, 2023. This represents a 27.7% decrease, reflecting a wider downward trend in developer activity.
However, some platforms have bucked the trend and increased their developer counts over the same period. Among them are Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions Starknet and zkSync, which recorded increases of 3% and 6% respectively. In contrast, Ethereum, Polygon and Solana saw their counts cut by 23%, 43% and 57% respectively.
Starknet and zkSync are both based on zero-knowledge rollups, a technology that allows transactions to be verified off-chain using cryptographic proofs, reducing the load on the Ethereum network and lowering gas fees. Both projects have been working on enabling smart contract execution on their platforms, using zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) solutions.
Starknet and zkSync launch new features and products
Starknet and zkSync have also been busy launching new features and products to attract more users and developers to their platforms. Starknet, developed by StarkWare, recently launched its “Quantum Leap” upgrade, which can theoretically increase Ethereum’s transactions per second (TPS) from around 13-15 to 37 TPS consistently and up to 90 TPS in some cases.
zkSync, developed by Matter Labs, has also introduced its “Hyperchains” concept, which aims to create an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and sovereign chains using its zero-knowledge tech stack. The project also plans to launch its own token, ZKSYNC, by the end of 2023.
Both projects have also attracted significant funding from investors and partners. StarkWare raised $75 million in a Series B round led by Paradigm in May, while Matter Labs secured $200 million in a Series C round led by a16z in November.
Newcomers leave while established developers stay
The Electric Capital report also revealed that most of the departing active monthly developers were “newcomers” (less than one year), while the more “established” (more than two years) and “emerging” (one to two years) developers remained relatively steady over the last 12 months.
Enrique Herreros, a software engineer at Electric Capital, explained that this is a cyclical trend where newcomers dominate the developer market during bull markets but then fall in numbers when prices begin to plummet. He also noted that some developers may have moved to other ecosystems or private projects that are not captured by the report.
Electric Capital obtains its data from code repositories and code commits on open-source developer platform GitHub. The report covers 164 crypto projects across various categories, such as layer-1 blockchains, layer-2 solutions, decentralized applications, decentralized exchanges, stablecoins, and more.
