Ethereum scaling solutions Starknet and zkSync have defied the overall downward trend in monthly active developers over the past year. According to Electric Capital’s latest developer report, Starknet and zkSync were among the few platforms to increase developer counts between October 2021 and October 2022.
While Starknet and zkSync only saw gains of 3% and 6% respectively, Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana’s developer counts dropped 23%, 43%, and 57% over the same period.
The data, current as of October 1st, reflects an overall downward trend in developers over the past year, with total monthly active developers falling 27.7% from 26,701 to 19,279. However, Chainlink, Stellar, Aztec Protocol, and Ripple also managed to increase developer counts, though lower than Starknet and zkSync.
As layer 2 solutions, StarkWare’s Starknet and Matter Labs’ zkSync aim to scale Ethereum through zero-knowledge rollups, a key focus in 2023. Starknet’s “Quantum Leap” upgrade went live in July, theoretically boosting Ethereum’s transactions per second. Both platforms are also building zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines.
zkSync is additionally developing a network of “hyper chains” for an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and sovereign chains using its zero-knowledge tech stack, slated for late 2023.
Per Electric Capital, departing monthly developers were mainly newcomers, while established and emerging developers remained relatively steady over 12 months. This reflects a cyclical trend where newcomers surge during bull markets and then decline in bear markets. The data is obtained from code commits on GitHub.
#Ethereum #Starknet #zkSync #Developers #Blockchain
