More than 16,000 new developers joined the Ethereum ecosystem between January and September this year, according to data from Electric Capital cited by the Ethereum Foundation.
Solana ranked second, attracting over 11,500 developers contributing to its ecosystem, though a Solana Foundation representative noted that the figures may be outdated.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin recorded close to 7,500 new developers during the same period..
This makes the Ethereum ecosystem the largest active developer community among all blockchain networks, with 31,869 developers. In comparison, Solana ranks second with 17,708 developers, while Bitcoin follows with 11,036.
The Ethereum ecosystem’s figures include both the Ethereum layer-1 network and its layer-2 solutions — such as Arbitrum, Unichain, Optimism, and others listed on L2Beat — without double-counting developers contributing to multiple networks within the ecosystem.
Solana’s Rapid Two-Year Growth
Although Ethereum remains the leader, its full-time developer base has grown modestly — up 5.8% over the past year and 6.3% over the past two years, according to Electric Capital’s developer tracker.
In contrast, Solana has seen remarkable expansion, recording a 29.1% increase in full-time developers over the past year and a 61.7% surge in the last two years.
Solana Foundation Challenges the Data
Jacob Creech, head of developer relations at the Solana Foundation, argued that Electric Capital’s report undercounts the network’s actual developer numbers by roughly 7,800.
Creech encouraged Solana developers to submit their GitHub repositories to ensure accurate tracking by Solana’s crawlers, which compile Solana-related activity across GitHub.
Some industry figures have also questioned the data’s methodology, noting inconsistencies in how networks were grouped. For example, Nethermind founder Tomasz K. Stańczak argued that EVM-compatible chains like Polygon and BNB Chain should be analyzed together, given the shared tools and skill sets across EVM ecosystems.
Could AI Be Inflating Developer Counts?
Jarrod Watts, head of Australia for Layer-2 network Abstract, raised doubts about whether AI-assisted coding and short-term hackathon projects might be artificially inflating developer numbers.
“In my opinion, this data probably includes a ton of casual or one-off hackathon repos that are never revisited,” Watts said. “I don’t think I can name a single new crypto developer who actually started this year.”
