As Solana attracted a record number of blockchain developers in 2024, surpassing Ethereum for the first time, let’s explore where crypto projects stand in terms of blockchain developers and what are the key trends of this year.
But first, let's find out why Solana taking on Ethereum in terms of blockchain developers has caught the crypto market’s attention.
Why Solana overtaking Ethereum is significant?
This year’s blockchain developers’ data show that new developers prefer to work for the Solana ecosystem as 7625 of the 39,148 of them work here. Not just new developers, SOL has taken a lead in full-time developers as well despite price volatility which is good for the crypto market because this means the Solana ecosystem will see substantial development in the near future.
The blockchain developers count matters because the number of developers working in a network shows the growth potential of the blockchain and its overall strength as they are the ones fixing bugs, creating the decentralised applications (DApps), building smart contracts and doing the beta testing for new features.
Without the developers, there will be no new coins, especially for Solana which has launched many Solana-based meme coins. This has made it crucial for blockchains to have a good number of crypto developers for better growth. The crypto world is witnessing a move towards cost-effective high speed niche expensive transfers and blockchain developers play a crucial role in building such systems.
However, Solana’s lead doesn’t mean Ethereum has lost its popularity. It still remains the most popular blockchain in terms of monthly active blockchain developers across seven continents. Ethereum is diversifying its crypto projects and trying to gain momentum outside of the base layer.
The parent Ethereum chain still gets high-value use cases but Ethereum Layer-2 is where the action is. Layer-2 solutions like Coinbase-incubated Base have low-value use cases and have the most on-chain code innovation out of all the major EVM chains.
Latest trends in blockchain developers - the rise of India
Coming to the share of crypto developers each region has in 2024, Asia has risen to the number one spot as developers are getting evenly distributed across the world. With 32% of the blockchain developers coming from Asia, it is now at the top compared to 12% in 2015 which made the continent rank in 3rd position.
This has pushed North America down which saw a decline in crypto developers from 42% in 2015 to 24% this year. Europe on the other hand, has maintained a steady number of blockchain developers and still ranks in 2nd position with 31% of developers coming from this region. However, in 2015, Europe contributed 37% of total crypto developers.
The 2024 reports highlight how developers are getting distributed more or less evenly across the world with no particular region dominating. While the US still dominates with a 19% share of blockchain developed it has been losing a fair share of it as the US had 38% developers in 2015, revealed the Electric Capital’s report.
India is emerging as a ground for upcoming blockchain developers as it rose from 10th place to second place country-wise with a share of 12% developers, a stark contrast from the 1% reported in 2015. This could be the reason why Solana has overtaken Ethereum as the Solana ecosystem is more popular amongst blockchain developers in India while Ethereum is popular in the US.
Top blockchains with the highest number of active developers
Now, that we have got a hang of what’s working in favour of the developers in the crypto blockchain ecosystem let’s take a look at the top 5 blockchains with the highest number of developers. The developer report dashboard of Electric Capital shows that there are 7,673 full-time developers and 23,613 monthly active developers as of 2024. While the number of full-time developers declined by 4% over the year, the number of established developers increased by 27%. The top blockchain ecosystems are EVM Stack, Ethereum, SVM Stack and Solana in terms of monthly active developers, others like Polkadot, Cosmos Bitcoin and Polygon are not far behind.
Polkadot
Polkadot network stack and Polkadot have 1301 and 1245 monthly active blockchain developers although they have seen a 25.5% and 26.8% decline in full-time developers of the year respectively. Of these, 1301 developers of Polkadot network stack, 153 are established developers and 467 are full-time developers. Meanwhile, Polkadot has 150 established developers and 448 full-time developers out of its 1245 active developers of the month.
Cosmos
Next on the list is the Cosmos blockchain with 1200 crypto developers, of which 436 are full-time developers and 148 are established developers. This project too has seen a 20.4% decrease in full-time developers over the year.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin also has 1200 monthly active blockchain developers despite seeing a 9.1% decrease in the number of full-time developers which stands at 359 while the rest 112 are established developers.
Polygon
Polygon ranks lower because of its number of full-time developers even though it has 1240 active monthly developers in total, higher than Bitcoin and Cosmos. This blockchain has also witnessed a 36.8% decline in crypto developers, which stands at 330 while the rest, 104 are established developers.
Base
Base is the only blockchain in this list which has seen a surge in the number of full-time developers this year. In 2024, Base recorded 1140 total blockchain developers, of which 327 are full-time developers, a 2.5% increase from last year.
Apart from these, the other blockchains which have seen an increase in the number of full-time developers include Move Stack, Starknet, Cardano and Internet Computer which indicates where new developers are going.