Solana Leads in New Developer Growth in 2024 According to Electric Capital
Developer activity is a key indicator of innovation in the cryptocurrency sector, as highlighted by Electric Capital's annual developer report.
As of November 2024, the crypto ecosystem hosts approximately 23,613 monthly active developers, representing 0.0875% of the global software developer population of 27 million. This marks a 2000% increase over the last decade, though it reflects a decline from the peak of about 31,000 in 2022.
A significant trend is the global distribution of developer talent. In 2015, 80% of developers were based in North America and Europe. By 2024, this has shifted to 24% in North America and 31% in Europe, with Asia leading at 32%.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) remains the dominant technology stack, with 8,925 developers, approximately 3.6 times larger than the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), which has 2,499 developers.
Solana ranks first for attracting new developers over the past year, outperforming Ethereum, which includes multiple layer-2 rollups in its ecosystem.
In India, Solana developers make up roughly 27%, the only country where new developers are joining the Solana ecosystem more than any other blockchain. India ranks second overall in developer share, behind the US.
While high developer activity does not always correlate with code innovation, Ethereum leads with about 65% of new code written across its layer-1 and layer-2 ecosystems.
Since Ethereum's adoption of a rollup-centric roadmap, the percentage of developers working on layer-2s has increased from 25% to 56%. Base has the largest active developer base among layer-2s at 4,287, followed by Arbitrum (3,450) and Starknet (2,548).
Starknet's developer activity is notable despite lower transaction counts compared to older chains like Optimism.
The Bitcoin network has around 1,200 monthly active developers, a stable figure over the past year. With the emergence of Bitcoin layer-2s and NFTs, 42% of Bitcoin developers are now focused on these areas.
Zero-knowledge developers number 2,054, with 823 in full-time roles. Zero-knowledge contract deployments have risen from 40 in 2020 to 639 in 2024, primarily driven by Ethereum, Base, and Optimism.
