Recent analysis of blockchain developer activity reveals a sustained influx of new talent across major ecosystems, with Ethereum maintaining its dominant position. The report, based on data from Electric Capital, highlights changing trends among developers and growing debates over how to track contributions within blockchains.
In brief
- Ethereum remains in the lead with 31,869 active developers, maintaining its dominance despite slowing growth.
- Solana attracts more than 17,000 developers, showing rapid expansion that challenges Ethereum's historic supremacy.
- Bitcoin ranks third with 11,036 developers, reflecting stable but more measured engagement.
- The debate is intensifying over the reliability of the figures and the inclusion of automated projects in the counts.
Ethereum Retains Largest Developer Base, Followed by Solana and Bitcoin
Between January and September, more than 16,000 new developers joined the Ethereum ecosystem, according to data from the Ethereum Foundation. Solana follows with more than 11,500 new contributors, although a representative from the Solana Foundation felt that these numbers could be understated. Bitcoin comes in third place, attracting nearly 7,500 new developers over the same period.
The detailed analysis shows that:
- Ethereum remains in the lead with 31,869 active developersthe largest community in the entire blockchain ecosystem.
- Solana climbs to second place with 17,708 developers, confirming strong and growing interest.
- Bitcoin comes third with 11,036 developers contributing to its network.
Ethereum's figure includes contributors to layer-1 and layer-2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Unichain), without double counting for developers active on multiple projects.
Ethereum Growth Slows, While Solana Gains Ground
Despite its dominant position, Ethereum's growth has slowed — up 5.8% year-over-year and 6.3% year-over-year. Solana, on the other hand, shows much more sustained growth: +29.1% of full-time developers in one year, and +61.7% over two years, according to Electric Capital.
Despite these numbers, Jacob Creech, developer relations manager at the Solana Foundation, says the data undercounts the number of Solana developers by about 7,800, urging developers to register their GitHub repositories to improve Solana's internal tracking.
Several community members also take issue with the method Electric Capital uses to aggregate the data. Some EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible blockchains have been grouped, others have not.
Tomasz K. Stańczak, founder of Nethermind, suggests that EVM networks such as Polygon or BNB Chain should be counted togetherbecause they share the same tools and technical skills.
Skepticism grows around the numbers
Some industry players remain cautious about interpreting the data. Jarrod Watts, Australia manager for the layer-2 Abstract project, points out that the figures can be inflated by automatically generated repositories or by ephemeral projects from hackathons.
He notes that short-lived or low-quality code, such as inactive repositories or experimental projects, could skew the statistics, while actual participation from new developers remains limited this year.
A social media user, known by the pseudonym memevsculture, also noted a discrepancy between the number of declared developers and the volume of decentralized applications actually active, believing that these figures do not always reflect significant activity.
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