Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions Starknet and zkSync are among the few platforms to increase their total monthly active developer counts over the past 12 months, data shows.
While Starknet and zkSync only recorded increases of 3% and 6% respectively, Ethereum, Polygon and Solana saw their numbers drop by 23%, 43% and 57% respectively over the same period, according to an updated developer report from Electric. Capital, which provided data up to October 1.
The total number of monthly active developers fell 27.7% from 26,701 developers to 19,279, reflecting a broader downward trend in developers over the past twelve months.
Monthly active developers in the cryptocurrency ecosystem since 2015. Source: Electric Capital
Chainlink, Stellar, Aztec Protocol, and Ripple also increased their developer counts as of October 1, although their total monthly active developers were lower than those of zkSync and Starknet.
StarkWare’s Starknet and Matter Labs’ zkSync are layer 2 solutions aimed at scaling Ethereum via zero-knowledge rollups, which have become a focal point in 2023.
Much of Starknet’s attention lately has revolved around the “Quantum Leap” – which went live in July. It can theoretically increase Ethereum’s TPS (transactions per second) from around 13-15 to 37 TPS and in some cases up to 90 TPS.
Starknet and zkSync have also been working on zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) solutions to further scale Ethereum in 2023.
Developers at zkSync have also built a network of ‘Hyperchains’ to create an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and sovereign chains as part of the zero-knowledge tech stack. The company unveiled the solution in June and hopes to have a working version of it by the end of 2023.
Related: 48% fewer new crypto coders last year: report
In a thread on “emerging developers” ” (one to two year) developers have remained relatively stable over the past twelve months:
“We see a decline of -58% among newcomers, a moderate increase of +11% among emerging developers and a slight increase of +5% among established developers,” said Enrique.
The October update for .@electriccapital developers is here! This is a lighter update as we prepare for our annual report.
We inspected over 164 million crypto commits to find:
• 19.3k monthly active open source developers as of October 1, 2023
• Developers are down -27% year over year
•… pic.twitter.com/bHyMHx29El— Enrique ⚡ (@eherrerosj) October 18, 2023
Enrique noted that this is a cyclical trend where new entrants dominate the developer market during bull markets, but then decline in number when prices start to fall.
Electric Capital typically obtains its data from code repositories and code commits on the open-source developer platform GitHub.
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