40% of Bitcoin Open-Source Developers Focused on L2s and Scaling in 2023 - Report
Electric Capital fingerprinted 485 million code commits across 818k open-source bitcoin and 'crypto' repositories to create a 2023 Developer Report.
- The report finds 1071 monthly active open-source developers working on Bitcoin in 2023.
- The number of monthly active Bitcoin developers fell from 1322 to 1071 (-19%) over the course of 2023.
- Established developers (people who contributed for over 2 years) increased by 7%.
- Most of the developers who left were part-time contributors.
- Bitcoin-only developers are more likely to stay compared with multichain developers.
- 1852 developers contributed to bitcoin projects in 2023.
- Most developers worked on 'other bitcoin' projects while 40% contributed to layer 2 and scaling solutions.
- Ordinals developers accounted for 3% of all bitcoin developer activity.
Other takeaways:
- The US continues to lose general bitcoin and 'crypto' developer share:
- 72% of 'crypto' developers are outside of North America.
- The US has lost -14% developer share since 2018 and is now only 26% of crypto developers.
- South Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Africa, and Southern Europe collectively grew developer share by +20% since 2018.
