Ethereum (ETH) is still leading the way overall, however, Solana (SOL) is steadily gaining ground (and fast), according to new industry report.
The 2024 Electric Capital Developer Report reveals that as far as blockchain / web3 developer activity goes, there have been solid developments this year.
Blockchain professional Owen Healy noted that while they only cover open source commits – the data Electric Capital provide is quite insightful and always gives us a good idea about where we’re at as an industry.
And as we head into 2025, we can expect many more web3 projects to come forward and make meaningful contributions to the nascent crypto space. Several years ago, there was not a lot of potential for diversification into other crypto-assets besides Bitcoin and Ethereum. But this year has shown us that there are definitely more high-potential projects that can’t be ignored.
Key Takeaways from the extensive research report highlighted by Healy are:
- Solana becomes the only blockchain to break Ethereum’s 8-year streak as the top choice for new developers.
- Solana added 7,625 new developers (+83% YoY), surpassing Ethereum’s 6,244
- 42% of Bitcoin devs are working on scaling solutions.
- 1 in 3 devs are working across multiple chains. Almost 3/4 of these work on at least 1 EVM chain.
- % of EVM Multi-chain deployers 4x’d since 2021
- 56% of Eth devs work on L2s, more than doubling in 2 years
- DEX Transactions are mainly coming from Solana
- Asia is the # 1 continent by developer share. 1 in 3 crypto developers live in Asia.
- India onboarded the most new crypto developers in 2024.
- Base is responsible for 42% of the new code being written in the Ethereum ecosystem. A lot of bullish figures re. Base highlighted in the report esp. re. NFT deployments
Other key insights from the Electrical Capital report are as follows:
- Solana is the #1 ecosystem in India by monthly active developers.
- Slight decline in new devs (although it’s almost certain that there’ll be a huge increase next year).
- Most ZK users and deployers reside in the Eastern hemisphere
