Ethereum, Asia, DeFi and everything else that stood out in Electric Capital’s annual developer report

Electric Capital released its annual developer report for the sixth year in a row. The report, gathered through open-source code activity, compiled notable industry developments in 2024 so far. The 2024 report includes data from StablePulse.org, NFTpulse.org and CodeSlaw.app. 

Electric Capital’s report confirmed perceptions about the significant growth the crypto industry has witnessed across multiple sectors and on a global scale this year. The continued adoption and adaptation of the industry has had a great impact on the world and shown the industry’s capacity to innovate. 

One of these notable trends in this year’s report is the Asian developer momentum. The population of programmers from that part of the world has increased, taking over North America’s dominance. Asia now ranks first, while North America is third in line after Europe. 

Back in 2015, 81% of crypto developers were in North America and Europe. Now, that stat has dropped to 55%.

India and Ethereum were the biggest winners this year 

Despite Asia taking the lead over other continents, the US remains the country with the highest concentration of developers, with 19%. However, the country is down from 38% in 2015. India, on the other hand, has seen the most growth and is now the country with the second-highest developer share. The South Asian nation has come a long way from its 10th position in 2015. The country also onboarded the most new crypto developers in 2024, contributing 17% of new talent. 

Top five countries for crypto developers. Source: Electric Capital Developer Report 2024

Established developers with 2+ years of experience grew by 27% and now account for 70% of code commits. 39,148 new developers explored crypto this year, according to the Electric Capital report. Developers in the crypto space are also extremely diverse, with 1 in 3 developers working across multiple ecosystems. In 2015, less than 10% of developers had a similar level of diversity. 

Crypto developers have grown 39% per year since Ethereum’s launch in 2015, and it remains the leading ecosystem by developer share globally, boosted by the growth in Layer 2 adoption. 

EVM compatible chains continue to dominate, accounting for 74% of multi-chain developers. 

This year, Solana emerged as the favorite ecosystem of new developers, with over 57% of minting wallets. It grew by 83% YoY. 

NFTs and DeFi made strong recoveries, but ETFs and stablecoins led the way 

The data collected by Electric Capital indicates that different parts of the world gravitate toward different crypto use cases and ecosystems.

Average daily NFT activity distribution on various networks. Source: Electric Capital Developer Report 2024

Stablecoin transactions are consistently active, rising by 2-3% during Asian, European, and African work hours. NFT trading peaks during American work hours, while minting peaks during Asian work hours. 

According to Electric Capital’s report, Base and Solana lead in low-fee use cases for NFTs, making them ideal for high-volume minting and trading. 

Base owns 97% of NFT minting volume, while Solana owns 64% of NFT mint transactions. NFT minting volume reached an all-time high of $1.5B this year. Minting wallets grew to 67M in 2024, with most of the activity on Solana (57%), Polygon (24%), and Base (13%).

The all-time high volume for unique minting wallets was 23M. Minting transactions grew from 153M in 2023 to 568M in 2024, with the most activity on Solana (64%) and Base (26%).

This year, NFT mints went beyond arts. The top NFT collections included finance, rewards, identity, gaming and more. NFT deployments tripled YoY, with Base and Zora leading in minting activity by 87%. 

DeFi also had a big year. Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi grew 89% this year, with Ethereum taking the lead with 53%. Ethereum had 7x more TVL than Solana, its strongest competitor, with $16B.

Restaking emerged in 2023 and grew to $30.6B this year. It has now become the largest sector in DeFi. EigenLayer spearheaded the growth in restaking as it saw its developer count grow more than twofold in 2024. 53% of EigenLayer developers are established and 39% of them are committed devs. 

Electric Capital’s report also shows stablecoins closing the year at an all-time high of $196B in circulation and $81B in daily transaction volume. Tether’s USDT is the runaway leader in stablecoin dominance, accounting for 72% of fiat-pegged tokens in circulation this year. Circle USDC’s 20% is its closest competition. Ethereum and TRON hosted the most issued stablecoins, with 59% and 35%, respectively. 

Arguably the catalysts for one of the best crypto years on record, Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs had record-breaking launches. Bitcoin ETFs attracted $50B+ net inflows, while Ethereum ETFs achieved $13B in assets under management (AUM) since July. 

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