Developer activity on Bitcoin and Ethereum plunged in 2022
Blockchain developers have slowed their contributions to top crypto projects amid the prolonged market downturn, with Bitcoin and Ethereum experiencing a drop of over 30% in developer activity over the past three months.
According to dev activity tracker platform GokuStats, developers made a total of 12,200 commits, which are the smallest unit of work for developers, to the Ethereum network during the last week of August, almost flat in one month and down over 30% in three months .
Furthermore, as the leading and strongest crypto community, Ethereum had 1,850 weekly developers for the week ending August 27. This number is down 11% in one month and down more than 30% in the last three months.
Similarly, the leading cryptocurrency has seen a decline in the number of developer contributions. In the last week of August, developers made 1,600 commits to the Bitcoin blockchain and its sub-ecosystem, which is down more than 35% in one month and 38% in three months.
Furthermore, Bitcoin had a total of 293 active weekly developers for the week ending August 27. This figure represents a drop of around 13% in Bitcoin’s active weekly developers over one month and a drop of around 33% over three months.
Aside from Bitcoin and Ethereum, other blockchains and crypto projects have also seen a plunge in developer activity. Polkadot, Solana and Cosmos have been hit the hardest, losing around 50% of their weekly developers over the past three months.
Crypto Winter continues to rage
The decline in developer activity comes amid the prolonged crypto winter, characterized by depressed cryptocurrency values. The current crypto winter arguably started in early May, when the collapse of Terra‘s algorithmic stablecoin UST exacerbated the market crash.
Terra’s implosion sent ripples throughout the crypto industry, leading to the failure of some prominent crypto firms that Celsius and Three Arrows Capitalwhich wiped out around $2 billion from the total crypto market cap.
Still, major cryptocurrencies have since failed to recover. For example, Bitcoin has traded around $20,000 in the past three months. The leading cryptocurrency is currently trading at over $21,500, up more than 6% in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum, on the other hand, has performed much better, thanks in large part to the hype and chatter surrounding the upcoming merger. The second largest cryptocurrency is currently trading around $1,700 USD, up around 3% in the last 24 hours.
