How Solana Beat Out Ethereum to Nab New Crypto Developers in 2024 - Ep. 749
The 2024 Developer Report from Electric Capital reveals many shifting dynamics. For starters, for the first time in eight years, Ethereum was not the top chain for new developers—Solana was. Meanwhile, Asia has emerged as the leading hub for crypto development, taking the top spot from North America, which dropped to third.
In this episode, General Partner Maria Shen explores how Ethereum's Layer 2 solutions are bolstering its position despite fierce competition, why the Bitcoin developer ecosystem remains steadfast, and how emerging projects like EigenLayer are capturing builders’ attention.
She also delves into the top crypto technologies that are fascinating devs, and how their usage and development activity differ across the globe.
Show highlights:
Maria’s top takeaways from the report
Whether the developer migration from the U.S. will stop under a friendlier regulatory environment
How Ethereum has maintained its dominance despite its high fees and the rise of Solana
What the steadiness of the Bitcoin developer ecosystem shows
Which other smaller ecosystems are growing the most
How ZK contract usage has been increasing over time
Why, despite what one could think, NFT minting activity is higher than ever
How stablecoin usage differs from token to token and also across countries
Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com
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Polkadot
Guest
Maria Shen, General Partner at Electric Capital
Previous appearance on Unchained: Why Crypto Developer Activity Continues to Grow Despite the Bear Market
Links
Unchained: A Big 2024 Crypto Trend: Solana Attracts More New Developers Than Ethereum
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:02 Key findings from Electric Capital’s Developer Report
08:28 Could a friendlier U.S. regulatory environment reverse the developer migration?
12:54 How Ethereum could stay dominant amid rising competition from Solana
17:48 Insights from the Bitcoin developer ecosystem
21:33 Emerging smaller ecosystems gaining traction
23:41 The steady growth in ZK contract usage
27:39 Why NFT minting activity is at an all-time high
32:31 How stablecoin usage varies across tokens, chains and countries
36:22 News Recap
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Why Crypto Developer Activity Continues to Grow Despite the Bear Market - Ep. 445
Maria Shen, partner at Electric Capital, unpacks the venture firm’s latest Developer Report. Hotly anticipated among crypto observers, the annual report captures which chains developers are building on. Despite 2022’s price carnage, the report finds developer interest remains strong. Ethereum is the leading chain by far but EVM-compatibility is emerging as a major force in winning developers’ hearts and minds. Shen unpacks Bitcoin’s stability, Terra’s implosion, and many more insights from crypto’s open-source code repos.
Show highlights:
why the report "undercounts" developers and how it defines active developers
how developers represent a fundamental measure of the health of emerging technologies like crypto
the meaning of developer numbers going up even when prices plummet
why in recent years the speed of developer growth jumped so drastically
what happened after the number of developers reached an all-time high in June 2022
the role of Terra in the decline of developer activity in 2022’s second half
why Ethereum dominates the ecosystem and whether it will continue to be the leader
the benefits of being part of “the EVM universe”
why the number of Bitcoin developers has remained flat over the last year
whether looking at the number of developers in the NFT ecosystem is even relevant
Thank you to our sponsors!
Crypto.com
Guest
Maria Shen:
Twitter
Electric Capital Developer Report
Full report
Maria’s 2022 thread
2021 report
2020 report
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65% of Active Developers Joined Web3 in 2021 - Ep.306
Electric Capital’s Maria Shen dives into her company’s recently published research report about Web3 open-source development in 2021 and shares her thoughts and insights on how developers are flocking to Web3 in a manner that goes far beyond just Bitcoin and Ethereum. Show topics:
Maria’s biggest takeaways from the Electric Capital Developer Report
how developer growth is affected by asset price
which ecosystems are growing fastest
why Maria thinks the growth in Bitcoin development has slowed down
why Maria is so impressed by Ethereum’s performance in terms of retaining developers
how closed-source development on, for example, Solana or Flow could affect the report’s findings
the significance of Polkadot, Solana, NEAR, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, and Terra growing faster than Ethereum did at similar points in its history
developer growth in DeFi during 2021
why Electric Capital did not study developer growth for NFTs, DAOs, or gaming
why Maria is so interested in studying community growth going forward
what Maria will be watching for in 2022
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Avado: ava.do
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Episode Links
Maria Shen
https://twitter.com/MariaShen
Previous Unchained appearance: https://unchainedpodcast.com/electric-capital-on-the-coins-punching-below-their-weight/
Electric Capital
https://www.electriccapital.com/
Electric Capital Developer Report (2021)
https://medium.com/electric-capital/electric-capital-developer-report-2021-f37874efea6d
Previous reports: https://medium.com/electric-capital
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