Original author: Maria, Electric Capital
Original translation: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
The sixth annual ElectricCapital Developer Report, produced by 829 people since its inception, analyzed a record 902 million code commits across 1.7 million code repositories.
How will the crypto industry perform in 2024?
Summary of key points:
The crypto industry is global, and developer momentum has shifted from North America to other regions.
Developers and use cases are diversifying across ecosystems.
· The application covers all time zones, indicating widespread global adoption.
We underestimate the number of developers in the crypto space because our statistics focus only on open source development activity.
Our methodology includes:
Merge developer profiles into a single, standard identity.
Identify and exclude bot accounts.
Remove code bases such as data lists that do not reflect development activity.
Since Ethereum launched in 2015, the crypto industry has grown at an average annual rate of 39%. In 2015, there were about 1,000 monthly active developers. Today: 23,613 monthly active developers.
The number of monthly active developers has dropped slightly by 7% over the past year.
However, the number of developers who have been working in crypto for more than two years grew by 27%.
These experienced developers drive the industry forward as they contribute 70% of code commits.
How has the crypto industry changed since 2015? Let’s take a look at the global diversity of crypto developers.
The center of gravity of developer distribution has shifted from the United States and Europe, which account for 82%, to the rest of the world.
Asia is now the continent with the highest percentage of developers, with one in three crypto developers living in Asia. Europe is second. Since 2015, North America has dropped from first to third place.
We can identify the top ecosystems on these continents by the percentage of developers.
Ethereum is the number one ecosystem in every major continent by developer share.
Solana ranks second.
Polygon ranked third in Asia and South America.
Polkadot ranks third in Europe.
Base ranks third in North America.
dfinity ranks third in Africa.
The United States, India, the United Kingdom, China, and Canada account for the largest share of crypto developers worldwide.
The United States remains the country with the highest percentage of crypto developers, but this has continued to decline since 2015. India moved up from 10th place to second place.
Share of top three ecosystem developers by country:
Ethereum ranks first in the United States, United Kingdom, China, and Canada, and second in India.
Solana ranked first in India and second everywhere else.
· Base ranks third in the United States and India.
Polygon ranked third in the UK.
NEAR Protocol ranked third in Canada.
Polkadot ranks third in China.
India welcomes the highest number of new crypto developers in 2024. 17% of new crypto developers come from India.
Let’s focus on new developers — a total of 39,148 new developers explored crypto in 2024. We can break these new developers down by ecosystem.
Solana became the ecosystem with the largest number of new monthly developers joining in July 2024.
Overall new developer profile in 2024:
Solana is the ecosystem with the most new developers, ranking first.
Ethereum ranked second. Dfinity, Aptos, Base, Bitcoin, SuiNetwork, NEAR Protocol, Polkadot, Polygon, and Starknet all had more than 1,000 new developers joining.
arbitrum, BNBCHAIN, Optimism, StellarOrg, and ton_blockchain all had over 500 new developers joining.
Who is growing the fastest in total developer count? Total developer count reflects interest from new developers and hackathon attendees.
Based on data from Q3 2023 and Q4 2024, the top 10 ecosystems with the fastest growth in total developer base are:
Who is growing the fastest in terms of full-time developers? Full-time developers commit code more than 10 days per month, so they contribute a steady amount of work to the ecosystem.
Based on data from Q3 2023 and Q4 2024, the top 10 fastest growing ecosystems for full-time developers are:
Many developers are active on multiple chains — One in three crypto developers now work on multiple chains, and this trend is growing. Monthly active multichain developers increased from less than 10% in 2015 to 34% in 2024.
The chain with the most multi-chain developers shares developer resources with Ethereum.
The EVM chain shares the most developers and has significant network effects: 74% of multi-chain developers work on the EVM chain.
The percentage of EVM cross-chain deployers has grown 4x since 2021.
Base is the most popular chain among EVM multi-chain deployers in 2024, but Base deployers tend to stay on the Base chain.
Since deployers publish code to multiple chains, where is most of the original code written?
Prior to 2020, almost all original on-chain code logic on the EVM was on Ethereum.
Currently, no EVM chain has more than 30% code innovation.
Base now accounts for 25% of the original on-chain code logic on all EVM chains, the most of all major EVM chains.
This is how the Ethereum ecosystem stays ahead of code innovation — through L2 chains. 65% of innovation happens on the mainnet and ETH L2 chains.
The Ethereum ecosystem has demonstrated strong network effects through its dominance in the EVM and multi-chain developers. How is this ecosystem performing?
Ethereum’s monthly active developers are 6,244, down 17% year-over-year.
Most of the losses came from developers who joined after 2021. Among developers who have been working on Ethereum for more than 2 years, there has been a 21% increase.
More than half of Ethereum developers now work on Ethereum L2 chains, up from 25% in 2022.
The Ethereum L2 chain has experienced significant developer growth over the past 4 years. The total number of monthly active developers on the Ethereum L2 chain is 3,592, an average annual growth rate of 67% since arbitrum’s launch in 2021.
Base is the largest Ethereum L2 chain.
Arbitrum, Starknet, and Optimism all have over 2,000 developers in 2024.
In 2024, Bitcoin's monthly active developers remain stable at 1,200.
The number of experienced Bitcoin developers (those who have been developing Bitcoin for more than 2 years) has been growing steadily, with a new high of 672 experienced Bitcoin developers active per month.
42% of Bitcoin developers — almost half — are working on Bitcoin scaling solutions.
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) are a developer-centric, research-driven field. How is it developing?
More than 2,000 monthly active developers work in the ZK ecosystem, of which 823 are full-time developers committing code more than 10 days per month.
On-chain deployments of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) also grow from 40 in 2020 to 639 in 2024.
While the numbers are still relatively flat, they show clear growth. The number of deployers has also increased.
ZK is also gaining usage — contracts precompiled using ZK grew from 47 in 2020 to 680 this year.
When are Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZK) developers and users active?
Deployers of ZK Rollup contracts are active during Eastern Hemisphere business hours, as are ZK users.
ZK users and deployers appear to be concentrated in the Eastern Hemisphere, particularly in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.
NFT and DeFi are established use cases in the crypto space - most of the top smart contracts are related to NFT or DeFi. How are these use cases developing? Let's start with NFT.
Across all major NFT active chains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Zora, Base), NFT deployment has grown more than 3x year-over-year.
NFT deployments reached an all-time high. 87% of new deployments occurred on Base and Zora.
NFT activity has shifted significantly towards minting.
In 2024, NFT minting reached an all-time high, with 97% of minting occurring on Base.
Solana has 57% of minting wallets and captures 64% of minting transactions.
The increase in minting activity is because NFTs have expanded beyond the art field in 2024 to cover more application scenarios.
NFT trading remains an important infrastructure application and has expanded from OpenSea to platforms such as Magic Eden and Tensor.
Volume for NFT minting and trading peaks in different regions — suggesting there are different user groups.
3,532 monthly active developers are working on DeFi. DeFi developers are experienced — 2,097 (59%) have been working in DeFi for more than 2 years.
53% of DeFi developers work on Ethereum and its L2 chains.
In 2024, DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) grew by 89%.
Ethereum’s TVL dominates, being 7x that of the next largest chain.
Most TVL has been concentrated in Ethereum.
Non-Ethereum TVL grew from 3% to 36% in 3 years.
The biggest jump in TVL share happened on Solana
What’s driving all this TVL growth? We can categorize DeFi developers by developer type.
Restaking has grown by $29 billion in TVL over the past year.
LRTs grew to over 3.5 million ETH.
46% of LRTs are used in DeFi.
Most LRTs are deposited in money market, yield, interest rate derivatives and bridging platforms.
Eigenlayer enabled the creation of LRTs as a field. So, how is the developer ecosystem of Eigenlayer developing?
There are 252 monthly active developers working in the Eigenlayer ecosystem. Eigenlayer developers are very engaged: 39% are full-time developers and more than half of the developers have been working in the ecosystem for more than 2 years.
TVL is not the only metric we need to understand DeFi usage. Although lending platforms have 3x the TVL of DEXs, DEXs have more unique address transactions. For example - DEX vs. lending platforms: In 2024, Uniswap had 72x more unique address interactions than AAVE.
In 2024, DEX trading volume almost doubled to $209 billion per month.
Solana and Ethereum settled the most transactions — more than 2x the next largest chain.
Solana settled the most volume at $574 billion in 2024. The total DEX volume for the Ethereum mainnet and its L2 chains was $931 billion.
Solana dominates the use case for low-fee DEXs. In 2024, its transaction volume more than tripled to 646 million transactions per month.
81% of DEX transactions come from Solana.
By number of wallets transacting, excluding wallets with only 1 transaction and less than $1. Solana has the most unique wallets transacting, 7x the number of the next largest chain.
Base has the second most independent trading wallets after Solana.
Base and Solana are very popular for small transfers. Wallets on these chains have the smallest average transaction amounts.
Ethereum is the most popular for high-value transfers. Wallets on Ethereum have the largest average transaction amount.
Where are all these DEX users? We can understand the usage of DeFi through DEX because financial activities often start or end from DEX.
Global activity is distributed differently across chains — the more evenly distributed the activity is, the more global the usage is. Ethereum and Solana have the most evenly distributed usage.
Stablecoins are one of the largest crypto use cases in the world. How are stablecoins performing? Stablecoin usage is at an all-time high: $196 billion in total stablecoins in circulation, with daily trading volume at $81 billion — both all-time highs for stablecoins.
USDC and USDT account for 95% of trading volume.
Ethereum is the first stablecoin ecosystem - 59% of stablecoins are issued on Ethereum
What is the global activity of stablecoins?
Stablecoins were active throughout, but volumes increased by 2-3% during business hours in Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Although stablecoin trading peaks during Eastern Hemisphere business hours, trading volume is more skewed toward the Western Hemisphere.
Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs were launched this year, providing a convenient way for OTC capital to enter on-chain assets. Bitcoin ETF attracted more than $50 billion in net inflows, becoming one of the most successful ETFs in history.
Most of the volume in Bitcoin ETFs comes from retail investors.
Although Bitcoin ETFs are still in their early stages, institutional investors are buying spot Bitcoin ETFs at a record pace.
The Ethereum ETF was launched in July this year. Currently, the Ethereum ETF has an asset management scale (AUM) of $13 billion and attracted $3.5 billion in net inflows. This performance is comparable to the most successful ETF launch since 2022 (excluding Bitcoin ETF). This is also mainly driven by retail investors.
Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs set records. In their first year, they have already received more than 2 times the inflows of the most successful ETFs in history.
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