Starknet and zkSync Buck Trend as Crypto Ecosystems Shed Devs by 28%

Ethereum Layer-2 Scaling Solutions Stand Out in Developer Report

New data shows that Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions Starknet and zkSync have defied the trend of decreasing developer counts in the crypto ecosystem. While other platforms like Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana have experienced significant drops in developer counts, Starknet and zkSync have actually seen increases of 3% and 6% respectively over the past year. This information comes from an updated developer report by Electric Capital, which analyzed data up to Oct. 1.

Overall Decrease in Developer Counts

The report also revealed a wider downward trend in developer counts in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The total monthly active developers fell by 27.7% from 26,701 developers to 19,279 over the past 12 months.

Starknet and zkSync vs Other Platforms

While Starknet and zkSync showed increases in developer counts, other platforms like Chainlink, Stellar, Aztec Protocol, and Ripple also experienced growth. However, their total monthly active developers were still lower than those of zkSync and Starknet.

Starknet's Quantum Leap

Starknet has recently made headlines with its "Quantum Leap" feature, which was launched in July. This feature has the potential to significantly increase Ethereum's transactions per second (TPS) from around 13-15 to 37 TPS consistently, and up to 90 TPS in some cases. Starknet has been actively working on zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) solutions to further scale Ethereum.

zkSync's Hyperchains

zkSync, on the other hand, has been focused on building a network of "Hyperchains" to create an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and sovereign chains. This is part of their zero-knowledge tech stack. The company unveiled the solution in June and aims to have a working version by the end of 2023.

Understanding the Trends

According to Electric Capital software engineer Enrique Herreros, the departure of active monthly developers is mostly comprised of "newcomers" (less than one year of experience). However, the number of "established" developers (more than two years of experience) and "emerging" developers (one to two years of experience) has remained relatively steady over the past year. This cyclical trend reflects the dominance of newcomers in the developer market during bull markets, followed by a decline in numbers when prices start to plummet.

It is worth noting that Electric Capital obtains its data from code repositories and code commits on the open-source developer platform GitHub.