There are reportedly more developers working to improve the Ethereum (ETH) protocol and its blockchain platform than any other cryptocurrency network.
This, according to a report published by digital asset management firm Electric Capital, in which it noted that more than 20,000 code repositories and 16 million Github commits had been fingerprinted. Data from the commits and repositories shows there are around 216 blockchain developers that submit source code to Ethereum’s repositories each month.
Bitcoin And Ethereum Have The Most Developers
According to Electric Capital, the data it has accumulated “is undercounting the number of Ethereum developers since we do not include ecosystem projects like Truffle.” Other data from Electric Capital’s report has revealed that Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s most dominant cryptocurrency, also has a fairly large number of developers working to improve its base protocol.
Although not as many as Ethereum, there are an average of 50 developers contributing to the Bitcoin Core codebase every month, Electric Capital’s report noted. Moreover, the report mentioned the number of BTC developers may have also been undercounted because it did not take into account the various other ecosystem projects (which are not directly related to upgrading Bitcoin’s base layer).
When only counting contributions to the core protocol, “Ethereum is [still] by far the most active at 99 monthly developers on average”, the report mentioned. Meanwhile, there are about 47 core protocol contributors per month to Bitcoin’s codebase.
4.000 Developers Working On Over 2,800 Projects
Other large cryptocurrency networks such as Cardano (ADA), EOS, and Tron (TRX) each have more than 25 developers making contributions to their respective core protocols each month.
The report from Electric Capital further noted that despite crypto prices falling by an average of 80% from their all-time highs (set in late 2017 and early 2018), the total number of active blockchain developers has only decreased by about 4%.
Significantly, the report has revealed the number of developers actively working to make updates to public blockchain networks has doubled in the past two years. Notably, there are currently more than 4,000 developers each month that submit new source code to over 2,800 digital asset projects.
Many Crypto Forks Being Abandoned
The authors of Electric Capital’s study clarified the findings from their report did not take into account the private crypto projects that developers may be working on – which includes some of the contributions being made to the layer-two payment solution, the Lightning Network (LN) protocol.
According to the report, there are “many [crypto] projects [that] are being abandoned by developers [which] are forks of high network value coins.” For example, there are very few developers contributing to the Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin’s (DOGE) platforms.
In the past year, the number of Litecoin developers has dropped from around 40 to only three per month, the report revealed.
The report also noted that Bitcoin Gold (BTG) and Bitcoin Diamond (BCD), both of which are BTC forks, have only received contributions from just five developers since October of 2018.
