Solana becomes the leader in the number of new developers

What’s new? Solana Layer 1 (L1) blockchain has become the most popular among new developers who joined the crypto industry less than two years ago: the year-over-year figure grew by 83%. According to Electric Capital analysts, Solana attracted 7625 new programmers in 2024, significantly outpacing other projects, including more than 1000 ahead of Ethereum.

Material by CoinDesk

What else is known? The results underscore the challenge Ethereum faces as the low fees and fast transactions of rival smart contracts platform Solana attract investment and talent. In July of this year, Solana became the first blockchain to overtake Ethereum in terms of the number of developers since 2016.

Solana is experiencing explosive growth in activity amid the hype around meme tokens that began last year. The network is the most popular for creating such assets, helped in part by the PumpFun launchpad, where anyone can launch their own meme coin with a few clicks and a small fee.

Many of the largest meme tokens in terms of capitalization were launched on Solana, including those using PumpFun. Their shares of the sector’s total capitalization are 15,3% and 5,4%, respectively. Considering that the share of the oldest meme token DOGE on its own blockchain of the same name is 45%, Solana has a high performance.

Earlier this month, one of the developers of Consensys criticized Ethereum for its inability to quickly implement improvements and adapt to a changing market, unlike Solana.

Consensys developer criticizes Ethereum and announces a move to the Solana blockchain

Max Resnick noted that many programmers in the ecosystem are unhappy with Ethereum’s inability to implement improvements quickly

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Electric Capital writes that overall, the number of active blockchain developers worldwide fell 7% year-over-year, with 23 613 in November.

According to Electric Capital’s general partner Maria Shen, the percentage of developers who have been in the crypto industry for more than two years has increased in 2024. Among those who left the industry, newcomers accounted for the largest share. She called the stability of developers a good sign.

Despite leading the way in terms of new developer growth, Solana ranks second in terms of total number of programmers. Although Ethereum’s number of active programmers per month fell 17% year-over-year to 6244, the network still dominates in terms of the total number of developers worldwide.

Ethereum’s leadership is mainly due to the emergence of a large number of Layer 2 (L2) networks based on it, such as Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum. According to Electric Capital, 56% of Ethereum developers are engaged in the development of L2 networks.

The fastest-growing developer ecosystem (+167%) was the EigenLayer ETH restaking protocol, which brought a number of innovative technologies.