Data Map Comprehensive Scan of Web 3 Development Ecosystem: Currently at an All-Time High, Adding 3,000 Developers Monthly

Original Title: "Web3 Development Ecosystem Annual Report"

Author: Electric Capital

Compiled by: Foresight Ventures

Summary

• Web3 is at an all-time high: 18,000 developers per month, 2,500 active DeFi developers per month, and 3,000 new Web3 developers each month.
• Several emerging blockchain ecosystems are growing faster than Ethereum did during the same period.
• 20% - 25% of the new Web3 developers will flow into the Ethereum ecosystem.

Report Background

This report is produced by Electric Capital and authorized for translation by Foresight Ventures. The original report link is at the end of the article.

The report analyzes 500,000 code repositories and countless code submissions, producing over 100 charts in the original text.

The report focuses on open-source code, so it undercounts many of the total developers in Web3; it also focuses on non-copy-paste effective code.

Overview of the Web3 Ecosystem

Total Number of Developers Grew 75% in 2021

Web3 has over 18,400 developers, a 75% increase compared to 2021. This is a significant growth after nearly two years of stagnation.

Developer numbers rise with coin prices

It is easy to see that the growth in the number of developers rises with the price.

Surprisingly: the number of active developers peaked after the recent price surge. After the last surge, developers only peaked a year after the price reached its peak.

Most surprisingly: during the downturn, the overall number of developers remained stable. In a bear market, new developers tend to leave at a balanced rate.

Web3 developers' monthly growth reaches an all-time high

Over 3,000 new developers are trying Web3 each month — this is a historic high.

While many of these developers are amateur attempts at Web3 and will leave the web, some will pursue it as a full-time career in the future.

As @cdixon said, "What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years."

Half of Web3 developers entered in 2021

The rapid growth in new developers means that 60% of developers in Web3 entered the field last year.

By counting developers who were active for more than ten days each month, we find that 45% of full-time Web3 developers joined in 2021.

Almost half of the developers in Web3 are fresh blood.

10% of new Web3 developers will stick around for a year

How many Web3 developers are likely to stay in Web3?

10% of all developers will stick around until the end of the second year.

30% of full-time developers will continue to work full-time in Web3-related jobs for four years.

Web3 developer retention rates are related to entry time

Data shows a correlation between when developers enter Web3 and their eventual retention rates.

Developers who experienced a bull market tend to stick around during a bear market. Those who joined at the peak of the bull market are more likely to leave eventually.

Comparison of Layer1 Development Ecosystems

Top 200 networks' ecosystems are growing faster than Ethereum and Bitcoin

In the past year, the top 200 networks by market cap grew over 66%, while projects beyond the top 200 grew even faster, reaching 86%.

These growth rates surpass those of Ethereum and Bitcoin, possibly reflecting that developers see more opportunities in ecosystems with smaller market caps.

In a bear market, only Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to grow

Historically, once a bear market arrives, the top 200 ecosystems cannot maintain the same high growth, while the development ecosystems of Bitcoin and Ethereum have shown sustained growth over the years.

Bitcoin and Ethereum's development ecosystems grow steadily

Bitcoin's full-time developers grew by 8%, with 100 new developers contributing to Bitcoin's ecosystem each month. Ethereum's total developers grew by 42%, with a 24% increase in full-time developers, contributing approximately 700 new developers to the Ethereum ecosystem each month.

Ethereum's ecosystem maintains strong appeal

Ethereum continues to attract developers: 20-25% of new developers entering Web3 are going to the Ethereum ecosystem. For those full-time developers, they tend to stay within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Comparison of developer numbers in Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems

Looking ahead at Bitcoin and Ethereum, how have their ecosystems developed?

By comparing December 2020 (X-axis) with December 2021 (Y-axis). The steeper the slope of the line connecting the origin and the number of ecosystem developers, the faster the growth rate.

Ethereum's development tools, applications, and protocols are 2.8 times larger than the second-largest ecosystem

Ethereum continues to have the largest ecosystem of development tools, applications, and protocols. Ethereum's scale is 2.8 times that of the second-largest Polkadot ecosystem.

Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, and Bitcoin are the top five ecosystems. Given that Bitcoin lacks on-chain smart contracts, it is reasonable that other smart contract platforms have larger ecosystems.

Solana and NEAR achieve over 4 times growth

In addition to the growth of Ethereum and Polkadot, in 2021, Solana grew over 4.9 times, and NEAR achieved over 4 times growth, becoming the sixth-largest ecosystem. As mentioned earlier, the growth of ecosystems in the report may be underestimated, as it only considers open-source code repositories.

Other mainstream ecosystems also saw significant growth

The number of monthly developers in Polygon doubled, while Cardano grew by 90%, BSC by 80%, Cosmos by 70%, and Bitcoin by 10%. The growth of Cosmos and Cardano is relatively unique, as they started to gain traction later than other protocols.

New ecosystems are growing even faster

For ecosystems with 50-300 developers, we see:

Quadrupled: Terra, ICP, Fantom, and Harmony

Tripled: AVAX, Algorand

Comparison of ecosystem growth during the same period

All these projects were launched at different times. To visually compare the growth of ecosystems during the same period, we compare based on the date of the first submission in that ecosystem.

New ecosystems can attract developers from earlier ecosystems

Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, and Bitcoin have taken different paths to develop their ecosystems. New ecosystems can attract developers from earlier ecosystems.

The entire Web3 developer ecosystem is much larger than it was 5-10 years ago, so absolute numbers are growing faster.

During the same period, most of the top ten Layer1 achieved higher growth than Ethereum

We also considered the top ten Layer1 based on market cap, using the date of the first public code submission as a benchmark. Polkadot, Solana, BSC, Near, AVAX, and Terra grew faster than Ethereum.

Most communities take 2 years to reach over 100 developers

While the Web3 ecosystem continues to grow and is larger than ever, building a true community takes time.

EVM compatibility may lead to rapid ecosystem growth

One way teams can accelerate growth is through compatibility with Ethereum's EVM. These EVM-compatible Layer1s are growing faster than Ethereum (+120% compared to Ethereum's +42%).

Using EVM compatibility as a strategy to guide ecosystem development is feasible. AVAX and Celo seem to have been able to leverage EVM compatibility to kickstart their ecosystems and guide their own ecosystem developers to focus on their own chains.

Comparison of DeFi Development Ecosystems

DeFi development ecosystem growth aligns with overall Web3 growth

The DeFi development ecosystem grew by 76%, consistent with the overall growth of Web3. Each month, 500 new developers submit code to DeFi projects.

New DeFi ecosystems can launch faster

OlympusDAO grew from 0 to 60 developers in its ecosystem.

Traderjoe and Osmosis grew from 0 to 30 developers.

ComposableFin grew from 0 to 23 developers.

Many DeFi projects achieved over double growth

Over double growth: @mangomarkets, @BalancerLabs, @uniswap, @synthetix_io, @AcalaNetwork, @InjectiveLabs, @beefyfinance, and @SetProtocol.

Over triple growth: @anoma, @RariCapital, @JetProtocol, @Instadapp, @CurveFinance, @pangolindex.

NFT, DAO, and blockchain game development ecosystems

The data noise for these types of projects is too high, and it is difficult to analyze based on the number of developers and developer submission activity. The report chooses not to analyze these.

Conclusion

In the past few years, the number of developers in Web3 has grown very robustly.

However, considering the number of software engineers in the world, Web3 still has a long way to go.

Web3 has just begun.