Ethereum continues to be the leading blockchain network for developers, with a significant majority of new contract codes being deployed on it first. According to Electric Capital’s 2023 Crypto Developer Report, Ethereum hosts over 70% of these new smart contracts, solidifying its position as the preferred blockchain for developers. Concurrently, there has been a steady increase in developers working across multiple blockchains.
The report highlights a tenfold growth in multi-blockchain developers since 2015, with their numbers rising from 3% to 34% in 2023. This trend is not surprising given the cross-utilization between Ethereum and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchains, including BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, and several Layer-2 networks, which all share Ethereum’s smart contract logic.
Cross-development between BNB Chain, Polygon, and Ethereum is prevalent, with each of these blockchains sharing at least 30% of their multi-chain developers. BNB Chain leads with 39% of developers working on both BNB and Ethereum, followed by Polygon at 36%, and Arbitrum at 24%, with Avalanche at the lower end with 18%.
The total number of blockchain developers, one-fourth of whom are working on either Ethereum or Bitcoin, saw a 25% decrease in monthly active developers as of December 2023. Bitcoin’s ecosystem experienced a 19% drop in active developers, with the decline primarily attributed to part-time and multi-chain developers. However, dedicated Bitcoin developers are likely to continue contributing to the network, which has attracted over 1,000 developers since 2017, with the highest influx occurring in 2022.
Despite a surge in Bitcoin transaction volumes in 2023, following the revival of the Ordinals space, only 3% of Bitcoin developers work on the project, with 40% focusing on Bitcoin Layer-2 networks and other scaling solutions. Outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum, over 9,300 active developers were working on the top 200 crypto ecosystems by market value as of December 2023, marking a 31% decrease from 2022 records.