Analysis
From 2018 to 2024, Electric Capital published annual developer reports providing comprehensive analysis of open-source crypto developer activity. With Open Dev Data now publicly available, these historical reports remain valuable resources for understanding how the crypto developer ecosystem has evolved over time.
2024 Developer Report
Analyzed 902 million code commits across 1.7 million repositories. Crypto developer and user activity is more global and more cross-chain than ever, with 1 in 3 crypto developers working on multiple chains. Total developers declined 7% in 2024, but established developers (2+ years tenure) reached all-time highs, growing 27% year-over-year and committing 70% of all code.
2023 Developer Report
Analyzed 485 million code commits across 818K repositories. While developers overall were down 24%, the most valuable segment of developers (2+ year tenure who contribute the most code) continued to steadily grow at 52% annualized over the past 5 years, and crypto became clearly multi-chain with 30% of developers supporting more than one chain.
2022 Developer Report
Analyzed 471,000+ monthly code commits toward open-source crypto projects. Crypto developers grew 5% year-over-year despite a 70%+ decline in prices, with monthly developers increasing 297% since 2018 and full-time developers contributing 76% of all code commits.
2021 Developer Report
Analyzed nearly 500K code repositories and 160 million code commits across Web3. Web3 developers reached all-time highs with 18,000+ monthly active developers and 34,000+ new developers joining in 2021—the highest in history—while several vibrant ecosystems emerged beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
2020 Developer Report
Analyzed 276,000+ code repositories and 89 million code commits. New monthly crypto developers grew 15% in 2020, increasing for the first time since 2017, with a notable flight to quality as high-quality ecosystems grew while developer activity outside the Top 200 ecosystems decreased by 30%.
2019 Developer Report
Analyzed 27,000+ code repositories and 22 million code commits. Despite market downturns in 2018, full-time developers increased 13% year-over-year in June 2019, consolidating around high network value projects, with Smart Contracts, Infrastructure, and DeFi ecosystems continuing to gain developers.
2018 Developer Report
Analyzed 20,000+ code repositories and 16 million code commits covering developer activity from January 2018 to February 2019. The number of developers working on public coins doubled in the last 2 years with 4,000+ developers per month contributing code, and developers continued to build despite an 80%+ market decline.