According to an annual report published by Electric Capital, the number of crypto developers in 2024 remains largely unchanged, while some latecomers to the industry have left and more experienced developers have generally remained in the industry.

The report noted that the total number of developers working in the crypto space worldwide remained stable, with a statistically insignificant 7% decrease from last year. The number of monthly active developers reached 23,613 in November.

Solana ecosystem, known for the Memecoin craze, emerged as the most popular blockchain among new developers, with an 83% increase in its ecosystem compared to the previous year.

In July, this community gained more developers than Ethereum for the first time since 2016. Solana attracted 7,625 new developers in 2024, the highest number of any chain, surpassing Ethereum by nearly 1,000 developers.

This highlights Ethereum’s challenge to rival smart contract platform Solana, which attracts investment and talent with its low transaction fees and fast transactions.

According to Maria Shen, general partner at Electric Capital, the proportion of developers who have been working in the crypto industry for more than two years has increased in 2024. The majority of those leaving the industry were relatively new developers.

“These are people who essentially joined the industry during the bear market and haven’t seen anything else since,” Shen said, calling the stability of the developer population a positive sign.

“When we look at established developers, it is growing and looks pretty healthy,” Shen also said. He added that the decline in full-time developers was only 4% year-on-year, with this segment showing the least decline.

Despite Solana’s huge increase in new developer earnings, Ethereum still remains ahead of its competitors. “Ethereum is absolutely dominant,” Shen said. “Ethereum has a very deep network effect and you can see it in the data.”

The monthly number of Ethereum developers has decreased by 17% in the last year to 6,244. However, Ethereum still has the largest developer ecosystem.

Much of the development in Ethereum comes from layer-2 networks, where many developers work, such as Base, Optimism and Arbitrum. According to Electric Capital, more than 56% of Ethereum developers work on layer-2 networks.

Ethereum’s restaking protocol Eigenlayer introduced major innovations in the developer ecosystem, becoming the fastest growing developer ecosystem with a 167% increase in the number of monthly developers in 2024. It was also emphasized that crypto is becoming increasingly global.

While Asia became the continent with the most blockchain developers, North America fell from first to third. However, the USA is still the number one country for developers with a share of 19%.

India became the country with the most new crypto developers in 2024, attracting 17% of new developers. Shen stated that hackathons and training programs in India are supporting this growth.

“The continued dominance of the US and North America is not only possible, but also somewhat undesirable,” Shen said, stating that global developer diversity is a positive trend for crypto. “You want to see crypto become more globally diversified and beyond borders.”