An elementary condition for the success of a blockchain project development, developers give us information against their will about trends and changes that are taking place in the crypto ecosystem.
How do you ensure that a project is developing well, that it is attractive and that it will develop in the medium and long term? This is a difficult question to answer when there is no precise information on the progress of a project. Yet there is a very simple way to understand if a crypto project is developing well. We just have to look at its developer appeal. Here is some useful information about the market champions.
The great leaders are without discussion Ethereum and Solana. Ethereum leads the way with more than 16,000 developers on its ecosystem (Ethereum Virtual Machine + Ethereum). Its main competitor, Solana comes second in the race with more than 6000 developers on the ecosystem (Solana Virtual Machine + Solana). The growth trend of Solana developers in India is currently very strong. The third place is occupied by Polkadot with almost 2500 developers (Polkadot stack network + Polkadot). The rest of the projects in the top 10 are fairly evenly distributed among developers. There is obviously Bitcoin but also Cosmos, Polygon, the network Base, Movement, Arbitrum, Internet Computer.
This ranking is not very surprising except for Polkadot which despite its rather low price performance, seems to have a great potential in terms of development if we rely on this statistic. It is also important to note that XRP ranks very far behind in this ranking with barely a hundred developers despite a large capitalization.
Some AI projects, although very complex, do not have a large number of developers. This is an important element to monitor because without large human resources, it is unlikely that these projects will be successful in the medium and long term. In this category, the two big winners are ICP and NEAR with 760 and 710 developers respectively. Bittensor is lagging behind with only forty developers. So watch.
For DePIN projects, Filecoin is largely ahead with 260 developers. For the oracles, ChainLink takes the lead with 160 developers. This figure may seem small but it is worth noting that ChainLink always develops its projects in partnership with well-established actors who also have a large pool of talent.
As for the distribution of developers, it is fairly equal in the world even if two champions emerge.
The US leads with 18.8% of developers followed by India 11.7%. European countries follow closely with 4 countries in the top 10. China is behind its main competitors with 4%. This is mainly due to legal and legislative factors. The current environment is not very favourable. Most of them operate from Hong Kong. In Africa, Nigeria has taken the lead. The legislative environment is very favourable. For South America, it is Brazil that takes the lead in large measure over all its neighbouring countries. The legislative and political context is very favourable.
Asia seems to be seeing a huge increase in the number of developers. Since 2021, there are more Asian developers than North American and since 2023, more than European developers.
These statistics are interesting and tell us a lot about ecosystems and their development. The legislative context also seems to have a huge impact on the location of developers. If states want to capture the growth potential of new blockchain ecosystems, it’s time for them to clarify their legislation. The main hubs are currently located in the USA and India. If China adapts its legislation, we can expect an explosion in the number of blockchain developers in Asia. The ecosystem could then relocate to this continent but nothing is played because western countries seem to be beginning to realize the potential of this new economy.
In terms of ecosystems, Ethereum and Solana are performing impressively. It is worth noting that recently the lookout for new developers is in favor of Solana. Nothing to worry about for Ethereum because its young competitor has some catching up to do. But this statistic must be monitored closely to detect a possible change in the growth potential of these two ecosystems.
