Despite the crypto market turmoil, active contributors to top projects in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana have increased an average of 71.6% annually since January 2018, according to a new report.
These findings come from a report sent to Cointelegraph by technology investment firm Telstra Ventures on Aug. 2, which found that Solana had the most significant annual increase in the number of monthly active contributors, compounded since Jan. 1, 2018. The growth rate was 173%.
Contributors are developers who push code updates on GitHub, a repository of computer program code.
Ethereum is second, with a compound annual growth rate of 24.9% in the number of monthly contributors since 2018, and Bitcoin is third, with a "slow and steady" annual growth rate of 17.1%.
Telstra also noted that it found ethereum to be the network with the "largest and strongest" developer community of the three blockchains. The network had nearly 2,500 monthly active contributors in April, dropping to just over 2,000 contributors in July amid the cryptocurrency price drop.
The higher number of active contributors may be due to the need for more output for the upcoming merger (transition of the Ethereum network to proof-of-stake consensus).
In July, Ethereum’s monthly active contributors were more than 4 times higher than Bitcoin’s 400 contributors, and nearly 7 times Solana’s (350).
Total contributors to top Ethereum projects: Telestra
However, the report notes that the number of contributors has dropped by 9 percent since November, which coincides with the drop in cryptocurrency prices since their peak.
The tech investment firm also found that around 40 percent of the top 10 fastest-growing projects in bitcoin, ethereum and Solana are not backed by any venture capital, meaning investment opportunities are still plentiful.
These projects include Ethereum-based investment protocol OlympusDAO, smart contract developer ApeWorx, maximum extracted value (MEV) researcher Flashbots, and Solana-based NFT standard MetaPlex.
According to Cointelegraph research from July this year, in 2022, venture capital investment in the crypto space has shifted its focus from decentralized finance (DeFi) to Web3 applications. Investments in Web3 accounted for 42 percent of the $14.67 billion invested in crypto projects in the second quarter, bringing the total for the first half of the year to $29.33 billion.
Telstra Ventures is a technology-focused venture capital firm with 84 companies in its portfolio and $30 billion in assets under management. It has invested in blockchain firm Blockdaemon and FTX exchange.
Data comes from 1,000 active organizations contributing to over 30,000 open source projects on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Research-eligible projects have at least 100 stars in the GitHub repository and are active between January and April 2022.
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