3% of All Blockchain Developers Globally are in Africa, Reveals Latest Report

While the United States and Europe make up close to 60% of all blockchain developers globally, Africa lags with a mere 3% of developer talent globally.

The number of monthly active Web3 developers increased by 5.4% to over 23,300 in the last year despite a nearly 70% decrease in cryptocurrency prices, a recent report indicates.

The report also reveals that only 3% of all blockchain developer globally are in Africa. Here is the breakdown of blockchain developer distribution worldwide as of March 2023:

  • United States (US) – 29%
  • Europe – 29%
  • Asia – 13%
  • United Kingdom (UK) – 6%
  • India – 6%
  • LATAM – 5%
  • Canada – 4%
  • Africa – 3%
  • Oceania – 2%
  • Russia – 2%

According to the 2022 Electric Capital Developer Report:

 

  • ‘Full-time’ developers, who make up 76% of GitHub commits increased by 15.2% to over 7,000, while
  • ‘One-time’ developers fell by 6.2% to over 3,500

between December 2021 and December 2022.

In fact, developer activity only began to decrease in June 2022 after hitting an all-time high of approximately 26,500 active developers. The crypto market’s capitalization on the other hand started declining from its peak of $2.9 trillion in November 2021.

In the illustration below, the fall in developer activity can be linked to the decline in developer activity on the Terra ecosystem following its catastrophic collapse in May 2022.

 

Overall, the report established that there are over 23,343 monthly activity developers in crypto, which represents a 5% YoY growth despite 70%+ decline in prices.

Besides the growth in monthly active developers, the report had more major findings showcasing the expansion and resilience of web3 development and creativity in 2022.

All three findings are highlighted as follows:

 

1.) Monthly active developers grew +5% year-over-year, despite 70%+ decline in prices:

  • 23,343 monthly developers as of December 2022
  • 471,000+ monthly code commits are made monthly toward open-source crypto
  • +8% YoY growth in full-time developers. Full-Time developer growth is the most important growth signal to track because they contributed 76% of code commits
  • All-time high of 61,000+ developers contributed code for the first time in 2022

 

2.) Crypto network value is back to January 2018 levels, but monthly active developers have increased +297% since 2018. Comparing the previous crypto winter to today:

  • 3x growth in Bitcoin monthly active developers, from 372 to to 946
  • 5x growth in Ethereum monthly active developers, from 1,084 to 5,819
  • Solana, Polkadot, Cosmos, & Polygon grew from fewer than 200 devs to 1,000+ developers

 

3.) Major ecosystems are emerging beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum:

  • 72% of monthly active devs work outside the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems
  • Solana, NEAR, and Polygon grew 40% YoY and have 500+ total monthly active developers
  • Sui, Aptos, Starknet, Mina, Osmosis, Hedera, Optimism, and Arbitrum grew 50%+ YoY and have 100+ total monthly active developers
  • 3,901 developers work in DeFi every month across multiple chains, +240% since DeFi summer
  • 50% of DeFi developers are outside of Ethereum
  • 900+ developers write code monthly in NFTs across chains, +299% since 2021

 

According to Electric Capital, the above findings are a result of tracking over 9,000 ecosystems and over 163,000 repositories specifically dedicated to crypto, comprised of over 124 million lines of code.

 

 

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