Data: More than 1,200 new developers joined the crypto space every month in 2020

Original title: Developer Report

Original source: Electric Capital

Original translation: 0x33

According to BlockBeats, crypto venture capital firm Electric Capital recently released a blockchain developer report, which summarizes and analyzes the situation of developers in the crypto field based on Electric Capital’s proprietary data.

BlockBeats has edited the report as follows:

The Electric Capital report mainly gives the following conclusions:

1. The number of new crypto developers has increased for the first time since 2017.

In 2020, the monthly growth rate of new crypto developers reached 15%, the first increase since 2017;

More than 80% of today's active developers joined in the past two years.

2. Developers begin to pursue ecosystem quality: high-quality ecosystems are growing, while other ecosystems are shrinking.

The number of blockchain ecosystem developers ranked outside the top 200 is constantly dwindling, causing the number of monthly active crypto developers to remain stable even as new developers continue to join.

The number of ecosystem developers outside the top 200 has decreased by 30% since December 2018.

3. Developer activity is particularly active in Bitcoin, Ethereum, some Layer1 and decentralized finance fields.

The number of developers in the Bitcoin ecosystem has increased by more than 70% compared to 3 years ago;

More than 300 new developers join the Ethereum ecosystem every month;

Since January 2020, the number of active developers working on decentralized finance has grown by 67% per month.

Who left the crypto space this year, who stayed, and who joined?

In October 2020, 75% of developers contributed less than 10 days; annually, the number of people who contribute infrequently has decreased by 13%, while the number of people who contribute frequently has remained relatively stable.

In 2020, more than 1,200 new developers joined the crypto field every month; in the past 90 days, another 45% of new developers remained active; since the beginning of 2020, the number of active developers in the crypto field has remained at around 40% per month, and 80% of these current active developers have only joined the ranks of active developers since 2017.

Activity levels of different blockchain ecosystems

The number of crypto ecosystems has grown 143% since 2017, yet the number of active ecosystems has decreased by 18% in 2020.

The reason for the reduction in ecosystems is that small ecosystems (with 2-10 developers) are shrinking rapidly; while the size of ecosystems with more than 100 developers has not changed significantly and remains at the original ecological scale.

However, the data shows that ecosystems with 31-50 developers in the third quarter of 2019 were the most vulnerable to developer loss: more than 70% of teams with 31-50 developers saw a decline in team size in the third quarter of 2020.

Let’s look at the situation of small and independent development teams: 25% of ecosystems with less than 10 developers and 56% of ecosystems with only 1 developer will die after one year.

Developer size in Q3 2020 vs. developer size in Q3 2019

By comparison, we can draw the following conclusions:

1. Since the third quarter of 2019, Ethereum has averaged more than 300 new developers per month.

2. Polkadot, Tezos, and Cardano had more than 100 developers in the third quarter of 2019 and attracted more developers in the third quarter of 2020.

Among them, the number of Polkadot developers has more than doubled;

The number of Filecoin developers has tripled, entering a giant ecosystem with more than 100 developers;

3. Bitcoin, Cosmos, Lightning, and Hyperledger all remain the same size.

4. Among the top-ranked blockchains, Eos has a more obvious developer loss, with an average loss of 88 active developers per month.

Small and medium-sized development ecosystem

In the third quarter of 2019, the number of developers of companies such as Oasis and Chainlink more than doubled;

In the third quarter of 2019, the number of developers of companies such as Near, Flow, Avalanche Protocol, Uniswap, Balancer, and Arweave more than tripled;

In the third quarter of 2019, the scale of projects such as Holo, Omisego, Zilliqa, Ark, and SKALE remained basically unchanged;

In the third quarter of 2019, the number of developers on projects such as Algorand, Solana, Thorchain, Synthetix, etc. will nearly double.

Top 10 in the blockchain ecosystem

Ethereum is the biggest winner, with the most developers; followed by Polkadot and Tezos, and Filecoin ranks fourth.

Rhythm sees that among the blockchain developers with 30 or fewer in the ecosystem, the top five in terms of growth momentum are: Avalanche Protocol, Balancer, Uniswap, Yearn.finance, and Arweave.

Ethereum and Bitcoin ecosystem developer status

Looking back at the two largest blockchains in the crypto ecosystem, the development of both ecosystems is very healthy, and has basically maintained an increasing momentum.

Since 2019, the number of Bitcoin developers has remained constant, with more than 100 active frequent contributors per month. Since the bull run in 2017, the number of new developers joining Bitcoin has increased, with 45 to 120 new developers contributing to Bitcoin each month. Moreover, Bitcoin developers are very stable and "long-lasting". For Bitcoin Core alone, 50% of monthly code commits come from developers with 5 years or more of experience.

Looking at the development ecosystem of Ethereum, according to the Electric Capital report, the number of monthly active developers continues to increase.

Specifically reflected in:

1. Since October 2019, other ecosystems are losing developers, and many developers tend to concentrate in large ecosystems.

2. Since January 2020, Ethereum’s infrequent contributors have increased by 22% and frequent contributors have increased by 13%;

3. Since 2018, more than 300 new developers have joined the Ethereum ecosystem every month;

4. About a quarter of new crypto developers contribute to Ethereum’s ecosystem;

In short, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polkadot, Cosmos, Tezos, Cardano, and EOS are the largest first-level ecosystems. Among the small and medium-sized ecosystems, Near, Oasis, Flow, Avalanche Protocol, Dfinity, and Mobilecoin developers have increased by an average of 100% per month.

Celo, Nervos, Near, Oasis Labs, and Algorand grew into the 51-100 developer category in Q3 2020;

BitcoinCash, NEO, XRP, Waves, and Ethereum Classic dropped out of the 51-100 developer category in Q3 2020.

The State of Decentralized Finance Developers

Monthly active DeFi developers have increased by 67% since January 2020. Since 2019, DeFi developers have increased by 110%, while developers in other fields have decreased by 8%. Since 2020, both frequent and infrequent DeFi developers have increased.

The number of developers of Uniswap, Balancer, Yearn, MCDEX, and Acala increased by 200%; in the third quarter of 2020, Yearn and Acala were the largest new DeFi ecosystems. Rhythm learned that most DeFi ecosystems have fewer than 25 developers.

The DeFi market is attracting more and more developers, and the reward mechanism for developers in its ecosystem will likely further improve and expand its ecosystem.