Developer Report (Published: August 2019)

Developer Report
January - June 2019

The Developer Report is built on proprietary data from Electric Capital
Electric Capital is a digital asset management ﬁrm. We invest in programmable money and blockchain
applications based on innovative technology, market adoption, and real use cases. We compile code, do security
audits, run nodes to programmatically inspect the blockchain, have market intelligence based on proprietary
software, and more.
electriccapital.com
Follow us on Twitter: @ElectricCapital
Data Pipeline
Curtis Spencer
Twitter: @jubos
Contributor
Avichal Garg
Twitter: @avichal
Contributor
Ken Deeter
Twitter: @puntium
2
Author
Maria Shen
Twitter: @MariaShen

Why analyze developer activity?
3
1. Crypto networks are new open platforms on which a new generation of applications will be built.
2. A clear, early signal for an emerging platform is engagement from developers. Developers build
the applications that deliver value to end users and customers, and set off a virtuous cycle attracting
more developers.
3. The base layers of the crypto stack are uniquely open source, allowing us to analyze and understand
developer engagement in an unprecedented way.
4. Electric Capital tracks developer adoption as a leading indicator of where future value will be
created and captured.

Electric Capital indexed 27,000+ code repositories
...analyzed 22M commits to ﬁnd original code authors
...across 3,400+ crypto ecosystems.
The Developer Reports compile ﬁndings from our ongoing research.
4

Help map the crypto ecosystem
We’ve opened our ecosystem map on GitHub so that anyone can contribute:
1. Submit a pull request in https://github.com/electric-capital/crypto-ecosystems
2. or email info@electriccapital.com
We will use this data for our reports going forward.
For more details on our methodology, consult our appendix.
5

Executive Summary
1. Despite market downturns in 2018, Full Time developers increased 13% year-over-year in June 2019
and are consolidating around high network value projects.
2. Code commit volume is consistent but total monthly active developers are down 10% Y/Y.
3. 80% of developer loss came from One Time per month and Part Time developers.
4. The biggest developer drop-off came from projects outside of the Top 100 by network value.
5. Smart Contracts, Infrastructure, and DeFi ecosystems continue to gain Full Time developers.
6. Overall crypto ecosystems are approaching the size of well known open source projects such as Apache,
but still has plenty of space to grow.
6

During Crypto Winter, code commits across 27k repositories remained ﬂat
8

But at ﬁrst glance, open source crypto developers appear to be down...
9
June 2018: 7,671 monthly developers
Today: 6,842 monthly developers

Why does developer count appear to be down?
Let’s segment by:
1. Frequency of Contribution
2. Top 100 Projects by Network Value
3. Project Category
10

Part 1
Type of Developer (Full Time, Part Time, One Time)
11

Crypto ecosystems lost 800+ developers in the last year...
12

How frequently do these developers contribute?
13

Let’s bucket developers into One Time per month, Part Time, and Full Time
14
Part Time Full Time
1x/month

Most developers contribute infrequently and 29% contribute 1x/month
15
Developers contributing only 1 day
January: 2,350
March: 2,364
June: 1,973

Almost 50% of developer loss came from these 1x/month contributors
16
Developers who contributed 1 day fell by 377 compared to January 2019

Almost 80% of Developer loss came from Part Time or 1x/month Contributors
17
77% of developer loss from devs active fewer than 10 days

Full Time developers stayed constant through H1 2019
18
Full Time developers stayed relatively
constant through 2019
Jan 2019: 2,444
Jun 2019: 2,455

Zooming out to look at historical trends...
19

Full-Time developers increased YoY while infrequent contributors left
20
Full-Time Developers increased by 13% from
June 2018 to June 2019
Part-Time Developers fell 18%
One-Time Developers fell 30%

Since Full Time devs contribute the most, overall commit volume is consistent
21

Is this consistent across top coins and projects?
22

Part 2
Top 100 Ecosystems by Network Value
23

Top 100 projects lost 4% of their devs vs. Outside Top 100 lost 19% of devs
24
Outside of Top 100 lost
19% of developers from
June 2018 to June 2019
Top 100 projects
lost 4% of
developers

In absolute numbers, Top 100 lost 139 devs vs. Outside Top 100 lost 824 devs
25
Outside Top 100
June, 2018: 4,323
June, 2019: 3,499
“Top 100” ecosystems
June, 2018: 3,675
June, 2019: 3,536

A return to normal as ICO projects die? Top 100 have 50% of all developers
26
Number of Top 100 developers have historically been
equal to or more than the number of developers
outside of Top 100
ICO boom drove
developers to long
tail projects. Many
have stopped
committing code.

Looking at just Bitcoin and Ethereum Ecosystems
27

Bitcoin ecosystem is consistently healthy: 100+ developers/month since 2014!
28
Jan 2014: 106
Jan 2016: 168
Jan 2018: 339
Today: 314

Bitcoin has almost the same Active Developer count in 2019 vs 2018
29
June 2018: 318
June 2019: 314

1.2k+ developers are working in the Ethereum ecosystem
30
Monthly Ethereum developers in
June 2019: 1,243

Ethereum ecosystem gained 79 developers vs. June 2018
31
June 2019: 1,243
June 2018: 1,164

All: 6,842
Eth: 1,243
18% of all open source crypto developers work in the Ethereum ecosystem
32

B
B
B
B
B
B
Ethereum ecosystem has ~4x the developers of the next biggest ecosystem
33
Monthly average Ethereum
developers: 1,156
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem

Most ecosystems have < 250 developers
34
Most Top 100 ecosystems
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem
B
B
B
B
B
B

Removing Ethereum and Bitcoin as outliers,
and switching graphs to log scale...
35

EOS stands out with a high number of ecosystem developers
36
EOS: 224
B
B
B
B
B
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem
Note: Not all projects in Top 100 are shown. Closed source ecosystems are not shown.

Grin has the most developers for ecosystems under $50M
37
Grin: 33 average monthly developers
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem
B
B
B
B
B

B
B
B
B
B
Several ecosystems stand out with 40+ developers
38
EOS, Cardano, Monero, Stellar,
Steem, IOTA, Tezos, Basic
Attention Token, Status, Waves,
Tron, Cosmos, Maker, NEO,
Aeternity, XRP have 40+
developers
B
B
B
B
B
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem

Looking at on-chain transaction count...
39

EOS: 224 monthly average
developers in H1 2019
EOS has 224 developers supporting ~5M average daily transaction count
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem
40
Transaction Data Source: CoinMetrics
Note: Not all projects in Top 100 are shown. Not all ecosystems have openly
available transaction data or ecosystem may be closed-source.

Tron: 67 monthly average
Tron has 67 developers supporting 2M daily transactions
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem
41

XRP: 51
Tron: 67
EOS: 224
EOS, Tron, XRP have 100k+ daily transactions and 40+ developers
42
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem

Switching from transaction count to on-chain
transaction volume...
43

Bitcoin has 310 developers supporting ~$5B USD daily transaction volume
Bitcoin: 310 monthly average
B
B
B
B
B
B
44
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem

Bitcoin Cash has 38 developers supporting ~$1B daily transaction volume
Bitcoin Cash: 38 average monthly
developers
45
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem
B
B
B
B
B
B

Only three ecosystems > $1B daily transaction volumes
Most ecosystems have <$1B USD daily transaction volumes over H1 2019
B
B
B
B
B
B
46
Top 100 ecosystem
Top 10 ecosystem

Removing Ethereum and Bitcoin as outliers,
and switching to log scale...
47

7 open source ecosystems have > $100M daily transaction volume
EOS, Cardano, XRP,
Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV,
Dogecoin, Litecoin have
>$100M daily transaction
volume
B
B
48
Top 100 ecosystem

Stellar, Tron, NEO, Maker,
BAT, Tezos, Aeternity,
Waves, and Status have
40+ devs, but under
$100M daily transaction
volume
Stellar, Tron, BAT, Waves, Status, Aeternity have 40+ devs and < $100M volume
49
Top 100 ecosystem
B
B

How did ecosystems change over the last year?
To smooth things out, let’s look at average developers...
50

Average monthly developers in H1 2019 fell 5% vs H2 2018
51
Jun - Dec 2018: 7,836 average monthly developers
Jan - Jun 2019: 7,407 average monthly developers

52
19 of Top 100 ecosystems averaged 40+ monthly developers

Majority of 40+ dev ecosystems lost developers
53

In percentage terms: Maker gained the most, Bitcoin Cash lost the most
54

In raw numbers: Maker gained the most developers, EOS lost the most
55

Slicing Maker, Bitcoin Cash, and EOS by
Full Time, Part Time, and One Time developers...
56

Maker grew
from 9 to 23
Full Time
developers
Maker Full Time developers more than doubled since June 2018
57

EOS ﬂuctuated between 60 to 90 Full Time developers
58

Bitcoin Cash Full Time developers dropped from 24 to 11 in January 2019
59

One Time Developers
Full Time Developers
Though overall devs are ﬂat, Ethereum gained 34% in Full Time devs v Jun 2019
60

Many projects gained Full Time developers (some despite overall developer loss)
Cardano
61
Bitcoin Monero Basic Attention
Token
WavesStellar Maker IOTA

Looking at days when a developer committed code...
62

Each row (y-axis) is a dev. Each day (x-axis) that dev committed code has a dot
63
Ethereum Bitcoin EOS Cardano Tron Status Cosmos BAT Steem
Monero Stellar Waves Tezos Aeternity Maker IOTA XRP NEO

Ethereum has the highest number of Full Time developers
64

Ethereum and Bitcoin have many Full Time developers committing consistently
65

Many ecosystems have a dedicated core group of frequently committing devs
66

Many projects also have long term but infrequent committers
67

Some projects have many Part Time developers
68

Most projects have One Time contributors
69

Ethereum, Bitcoin, EOS have new highly active, Part Time developers joining
70
Ethereum Bitcoin EOS
New Part-Time developers joined as contributors this year

Test Nets and Launches drive engagement...
71

Tron token
migration
Sun Network
Testnet
Tron Monero
Grin
Cardano
Shelley testnet
release June 22,
2019
CosmosAeternity
Beryllium Bullet
release
Network upgrade
Token Migration
Phase 0 Grin Launch
Game of Stakes started
72
Game of Stakes ends
Test Nets and Launches drive engagement...

Are the trends consistent across all categories,
even outside top 100?
73

Since 2010, developers worked on 27k repos across 3.4k projects
75

Let’s just consider the last year...
76

6.5k developers contributed to 15.3k repos across 1,140 ecosystems...
77

Of 1,140 ecosystems, 748 had at least 1 sustained developer...
748 ecosystems had 1
“sustained” developer, or 1
consistent developer for 6+
months
78

Active Ecosystems: 583 have 2+ developers for at least 6 months
161 (21.5%) ecosystems had 1
sustained developer
587 (78.5%) had 2+ sustained
developers. We call these
“Active Ecosystems”
79

Focusing only on these Active Ecosystems...
80

Slicing Active Ecosystems by category: Smart Contracts, Money, dApps, Infrastructure, & Deﬁ
81
Smart Contract: e.g. Ethereum, EOS, Tron
Application: e.g. Bittorrent, Basic Attention Token, Decentraland, Bread
Infrastructure: e.g. Cosmos, Chainlink, Arweave, ZepplinOS, Siacoin
Money: e.g. Bitcoin, Monero, Stellar, XRP, Nano
Deﬁ: e.g. Maker, 0x, dYdX

Smart Contracts and Applications are losing developers
82
Smart Contracts and Application
developers declining the most by raw
numbers

Smart Contract Platforms still account for ~40% of all developers
83

Full Time Deﬁ developers increased since 2019
Deﬁ
Beginning of 2019
June 2019
84

Full Time Infrastructure developers are increasing
Infrastructure
85

Full Time, Part Time, and One Time developers are decreasing for other dApps
Applications
86

All developer types are decreasing in Money ecosystems...
Money
87

...while in Smart Contracts platform devs are down, full time devs are increasing
Smart Contract
88

Bonus Section
Developer Growth in Context
89

90
As Network Value increases, Developer growth rises at a faster rate (2nd derivative)
Growth multiple of 1 = No growth YoY
When Network Value accelerates,
Developer Growth accelerates a
few months later

91
When Network Value shrinks, Full Time dev growth continues, just more slowly
Growth multiple of 1 = No growth YoY
Full Time developer growth
continues, but at a slower rate
Part Timers and One Timers
decrease Y/Y during bear
markets

How do we put crypto and blockchain developers in
context of other ecosystems?
92

93
Crypto and Blockchain compared to other large Open Source ecosystems
1243 monthly active Ethereum developers as of June 2019
1615 contributors to Apache projects in Q1 2019 [1]
1900 Linux Kernel developers[2]
6842 total monthly active crypto developers as of June 2019
… still plenty of room to grow ...
4M+ NodeJS package manager users[3]
6M+ developers target Android [4]
1 - report, 2 - estimated, 3 - 2017 report, 4 - report

If the next 4 years of developer growth look like the last 4 years...
94
6.8K Today
70K in March 2023

Executive Summary
1. Despite market downturns in 2018, Full Time developers increased 13% year-over-year in June 2019
and are consolidating around high network value projects.
2. Code commit volume is consistent but total monthly active developers are down 10% Y/Y.
3. 80% of developer loss came from One Time per month and Part Time developers.
4. The biggest developer drop-off came from projects outside of the Top 100 by network value.
5. Smart Contracts, Infrastructure, and DeFi ecosystems continue to gain Full Time developers
6. Overall crypto ecosystems are approaching the size of well known open source projects such as Apache,
but still has plenty of space to grow.
95

Danny Aranda
@daranda
Alex Bosworth
@alexbosworth
Dan Elitzer
@delitzer
Kincaid O'Neil
@kincaidoneil
Marc-Antoine Ross
@marcantoineross
Yin Wu
@yinyinwu
Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback on early drafts!
Robert Bent
@robbiebent1
Thiago Canellas
@eosriobrazil
Steve Lee
@moneyball
Kevin Owocki
@kevinowocki
Riccardo Spagni
@ﬂuffypony
Linda Xie
@ljxie
Spencer Bogart
@CremeDeLaCrypto
Jill Carlson
@jillruthcarlson
Scott Moore
@notscottmoore
Justin Rice
@StellarOrg
Elizabeth Stark
@starkness
96

Protocol Developers
Ecosystem Developers
1. Ecosystem Developers are
working on dapps,
documentation, tooling,
wallets, and anything else
furthering the project.
2. Protocol Developers
include developers working
only on the core protocol.
We’ve expanded the Developer Report to include all types of crypto developers
98

For example, how do we break down the Bitcoin ecosystem?
Bitcoin
1. Ecosystem:
○ light clients like Electrum...
○ layer 2 solutions like
Lightning...
○ libraries like libbitcoin...
○ Bitcoin documentation
like Mastering Bitcoin...
○ apps that are built with
Bitcoin…
○ and anything that
advances Bitcoin.
2. Protocol:
○ Bitcoin Core
○ btcsuite/btcd
○ ...and more.
Protocol Developers
Ecosystem Developers
99

Ecosystems can live inside other ecosystems
MakerDao
0. Parent Ecosystem:
Ethereum
1. Maker Ecosystem:
○ xDai
○ awesome-makerdao
○ Market-maker-keeper
○ daipay
○ ...and more.
2. Maker Protocol
○ makerdao/sai
○ ...and more.
Protocol
Developers
Ecosystem
Developers
Parent Ecosystem
100

Commit Counting Methodology: Not all code commits are created equal.
101
1. Forks: Only new code counts towards developer activity. We omit code and developer activity from
merging changes from the upstream codebase.
2. Fingerprinting: Fingerprinting is a technique used to identify commits originating from upstream projects.
We look at the ﬁles and lines changed, the commit message, committer, author and associated dates.
3. Commits from Integrating Open Source Libraries: Integrating common libraries does not count toward
code activity.
4. Branches: We look at commits from all branches (master/development, etc.) and tags. We look beyond
Github's default view, which can be misrepresentative.
5. Limitations: We only look at open source repositories. There are many teams that are not yet open source.

How are developers counted?
1. Developers: We count original code authors as developers. This means that a developer who merges a pull
request is not counted as an active developer on the project, but the original authors of the commits are.
2. Full Time developer: contributed code 10+ days out of a month
3. Part Time developer: contributed code 2-9 days out of a month
4. One Time developer: contributed code 1 day out of a month
5. 3-month rolling window: We look at the last 3 months of a developer’s activity to determine their category.
102

103
1. We consider open source repositories only. There are many more developers working on important closed
source projects or ecosystems. Some teams will open source their code later.
2. This methodology undercounts developers in other roles besides original code contribution such as
backporting, testing, release engineering or code review/feedback that aren’t reﬂected in git repositories.
3. It will require more than just software engineers to build product and reach mainstream adoption.
4. Not all commits are created equal. Some may be routine, mechanical changes, whereas others represent
hours of accumulated research and analysis.
Despite these caveats, we consider the analysis in this report directionally accurate and indicative of the overall
health of the ecosystem.
We are always looking to improve so please share feedback with us at info@electriccapital.com
Caveats

Disclaimer
The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment,
ﬁnancial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this report constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Electric Capital
or any third party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other ﬁnancial instruments in this or in in any other jurisdiction in which such
solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.
104

Developer Report (Published: August 2019)

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