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Active Crypto Developers Growing Despite Bear Market: Report

2 mins
Updated by Kyle Baird
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In Brief

  • Active developers have doubled over the past two years.
  • A quarter of all crypto devs are working on Ethereum projects.
  • Growth has slowed slightly in the bear market.
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The number of developers flocking to the crypto industry continues to grow, even in a year-long bear market.

According to a Jan. 17 report by Electric Capital, the number of active developers has doubled over the past two years. The researchers analyzed 250 million code commits and had more than 300 people contribute to the report.

At the beginning of 2021, there were around 12,000 total monthly active developers. By the end of 2022, this number had ballooned to around 24,000. Furthermore, it peaked at just over 26,000 monthly active developers in June 2022.

Around half of the active developers are part-time, it noted. More than 7,000 full-time developers were working by mid-December 2022. More than 60,000 new devs touched crypto code in 2022, it stated.

“Full-time devs account for 76% of commits and are the least likely to churn over time,” the report stated.

Monthly Active Developers Chart by Electric Capital
Monthly Active Developers Chart by Electric Capital

Crypto Developers and Repos Increasing

Nevertheless, the report did note that the number of active developers has fallen slightly since the middle of 2022. This coincided with a deepening bear market and is likely to recover when market sentiment does.

Furthermore, the number of new monthly repositories has increased by 80% over the past two years. By the end of 2022, there were 3,784 new monthly repositories, according to the data.

Ethereum remains the top ecosystem in terms of active devs. It had 5,734 total developers as of December 2022. This equates to around a quarter of the total working on Ethereum-related projects.

Polkadot and Solana were sharing second place with around 2,000 total active developers apiece at the end of last year.

Cosmos was the next ecosystem in terms of active developers, with just under 1,800, while Polygon had around 1,100. There were just 920 total active developers for the Bitcoin network by the end of 2022.

Smaller ecosystems such as Sui Network, Aptos, Mina Protocol, Starknet, Osmosis, Hedera, Optimism, and Arbitrum grew by 50% year-on-year.

Bear Market Growth

The numbers are representative of a healthy crypto dev ecosystem despite a 70% market crash in 2022.

Electric Capital investor Maria Shen said growth was slower in 2020 or 2021 but consistent with the prior bear cycle.

“Devs come in a bull and growth stalls during the bear, so we should look at growth in context of cycles.”

Top crypto projects in the US | April 2024

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Martin Young
Martin Young is a seasoned cryptocurrency journalist and editor with over 7 years of experience covering the latest news and trends in the digital asset space. He is passionate about making complex blockchain, fintech, and macroeconomics concepts understandable for mainstream audiences.   Martin has been featured in top finance, technology, and crypto publications including BeInCrypto, CoinTelegraph, NewsBTC, FX Empire, and Asia Times. His articles provide an in-depth analysis of...
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