The cryptocurrency landscape witnessed a substantial decline in the number of monthly active developers, marking a 28% year-on-year reduction. Nevertheless, there are a few standout exceptions to this trend, with Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions Starknet and zkSync managing to increase their total monthly active developer counts over the last 12 months, albeit by modest margins.
While Starknet and zkSync achieved comparatively small increases of 3% and 6%, respectively, major platforms like Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana experienced declines of 23%, 43%, and 57% in their developer counts over the same period. This data is derived from an updated developer report by Electric Capital, offering insights.
The overall picture is one of a 27.7% decrease in total monthly active developers, falling from 26,701 to 19,279. This trend is indicative of the broader downturn experienced in the crypto ecosystem. However, some notable projects have managed to swim against the tide. StarkWare’s Starknet and Matter Labs’ zkSync are layer-2 solutions that aim to scale Ethereum through zero-knowledge rollups, an approach that has gained prominence.
Starknet has recently gained attention with its “Quantum Leap” initiative, which went live in July. This development has the potential to significantly increase Ethereum’s transactions per second (TPS), promising to elevate it from its current 13-15 TPS to a consistent 37 TPS, with spikes of up to 90 TPS in certain cases. These improvements in scalability are a testament to the innovation happening in the space, as developers seek to address Ethereum’s limitations.
zkSync’s hyperchains and crypto developer trends
zkSync, on the other hand, has been expanding its offerings. It has introduced a network of “hyperchains” aimed at creating an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and sovereign chains, all integrated into its zero-knowledge technology stack. The company unveiled this ambitious solution, with aspirations to have a functional version ready. This move toward interoperability aligns with the broader trend in the crypto space as projects strive to connect and communicate more effectively.
In a recent analysis, Electric Capital’s software engineer, Enrique Herreros, observed distinct patterns within developer categories. Newcomers (those with less than one year of experience) showed a significant drop of 58% in numbers. In contrast, the more established developers (with over two years of experience) and the emerging developers (with one to two years of experience) remained relatively stable over the past year. This cyclical trend is reflective of the developer market dynamics, where newcomers often surge during bullish market conditions but dwindle when market prices experience significant declines.
Electric Capital typically sources its data from code repositories and code commits on the open-source developer platform GitHub. These insights provide valuable information about the state of the crypto developer community, offering a comprehensive view of its evolution.
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