Several protocol ecosystems are outpacing the largest developer ecosystem, namely ethereum, says a report by early-stage crypto investment firm Electric Capital. It highlighted that Solana, Polkadot, Terra and Avalanche have brisker initial ecosystem growth than ethereum.
Over the past year, Solana, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Terra have risen as new hubs for decentralized finance. Their networks are open to peer-to-peer lending and swaps etc. As such, their token prices have rocked the crypto market positively.
According to the report, more than 2,500 developers are working on DeFi projects and less than 1,000 full-time developers are responsible for over $100 billion in total value locked in smart contracts. It noted that monthly active developers have historically increased when prices increase. But it stays flat when prices fall. Monthly active developers, across 2018 and 2019, stayed flat around 11,000. This was even when prices dived more than 80% from reaching a peak.
Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana and Bitcoin, as per the report, are the five biggest developer ecosystems. It said Solana grew 4.6x+ in 2021, while NEAR – the sixth largest ecosystem in 2021, registered a 4x+ growth. Cardano witnessed a +90% growth, Cosmos by +70%, BSC by +80%, and Bitcoin only saw a +10%. And Polygon had its monthly developers grow more than 2x.
The DeFi ecosystem has registered a significant growth. It grew +76% in line with the overall Web3 growth. Moreover, 500+ new developers showed immense interest and committed code to a DeFi project. This was recorded in every month of 2021, except January that is. The report says that DeFi full-time monthly active contributors expanded by 64%.
