9 out of 10 multichain devs work on the EVM chain: Electric Capital

Ethereum Virtual Machine-based (EVM) blockchain networks are the most popular networks for developers, with nearly 9 out of 10 multichain developers working on at least one EVM-compatible chain, according to a developer report from Electric Capital.

In an extensive January 17 report on crypto development activity over the past year, Electric Capital shed new light on overall developer activity for the fourth quarter of 2023.

The report found that “unsurprisingly” EVM-compatible chains shared most of their developers with other EVM networks. A total of 87% of multi-chain developers have worked on EVM-compatible chains, with Stargate, Polygon (MATIC), Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum (ARB) being the most cross-platform.

EVM-compatible blockchains are a group of networks that run the Ethereum virtual machine and execute smart contracts on Ethereum. These networks include Starknet, Tron (TRON), Binance's BNB Chain (BNB), Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon.

BNB Chain and Polygon witnessed the most “cross-pollination” of Ethereum multichain developers, with 37% of Ethereum multichain developers deploying code on BNB and 35% deploying code on Polygon.

Maria Shen, general partner at Electric Capital, told Cointelegraph that one of the findings of the report was the steady growth of established developers despite a slide in general developers.

While total monthly active developers slipped 24% from 29,611 to 22,411 in the last quarter, total “experienced” developers – meaning those who have worked in crypto for more than a year – grew by 16. % by 2023

“When prices are appreciating, a lot of people come in and when prices don't appreciate, some people leave. But there's a core group of people who stay through it all and it's really new every time. People flow in, many stay,” Shen said.

Ethereum leads the pack in attracting new developers, with more than 16,700 “newcomers” shipping code by 2023. That's nearly three times the 6,200 new developers on Polygon and four times more than Solana (SOL)'s 4,705.

Shen added that in 2010 The influx of new entrants in 2023 – despite an extended bear market – has demonstrated fundamental strength in the crypto ecosystem.

“It's amazing to see this great ecosystem that's been so successful in bringing in all these developers. So there's 17 ecosystems in total, pulling in over a thousand developers.”

Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a 19% drop in development activity year over year, now commanding over 1,000 monthly active developers.

While overall developer numbers have declined for Bitcoin in general, Layer-2 networks and network-based solutions now account for more than 40% of all open source Bitcoin developers, an increase of more than 400% since January 2016.

Related: Solana now boasts over 2,500 monthly active developers.

The report also notes that crypto developers are increasing their skills to work on multiple different chains, and multichain development activity has grown by 1,000 percent since 2015.

In the year By the end of December 2023, 30% of all monthly active developers will work on at least two blockchains, a number that has grown by about 125% since 2018.

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