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Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana, who has the most active developer ecosystem?

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Since 2014, Ethereum managed to maintain its first-mover advantage, while the development of Cosmos, Polkadot and Solana started to increase significantly after 2018.

Original title: "On the Importance of Continuous Code Development - Do layer 1 protocols like Polkadot have a healthy developer ecosystem?" "

Original author: Mihai Grigore, Messari

Original compilation: Tao of Yuan Universe

How can technology platforms capture and increase their value in the long run?

According to a16z, the core template for value capture in the Web3 protocol is between developers and users The consistency of the incentive mechanism among them. This often translates into a positive feedback loop between code development and application usage. On the one hand, continuous code development facilitates the creation of widely used applications; on the other hand, the widespread use of applications stimulates the further development of new protocol features.

This positive feedback loop is different from the ad-based value capture model found in Web2 platforms like Amazon, Youtube or Uber. While the value of Web 2 platforms is typically generated by content creators, only a portion of advertising revenue flows back to content creators. In order to be able to maintain and increase value in the long run, Web 2 platforms usually incentivize content creators to continuously generate valuable content in the long term.

In contrast, Web 3 platforms have more straightforward incentives, thanks in part to Open source software develops more transparent features. The mechanism of this incentive is as follows: applications are developed by the open source community on the basis of the Web3 protocol. As these applications are adopted by users, more money flows back into the protocol. Therefore, the value is captured at the protocol layer. This often translates into advanced protocol features that enable new applications. As these new applications are adopted by more users, developers are incentivized to build further on top of "composable" Web3 protocols. As Layer 1 protocols gain adoption, continued code development is critical to creating a lock-in effect that “expands the pie” over time.

However, when analyzing the success of Web3 protocols over the long term, few analysts have systematically assessed Code development activities. In fact, most analyzes focus on the on-chain metrics used (e.g. number of wallets, number of applications, money flows, transaction volume, public sentiment or media visibility). While most on-chain analysts agree on the importance of code development to the long-term success of Web 3 protocols, the topic is still largely considered abstract.

The Missing Piece: Effective Development Metrics

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To help address this gap, Santiment and CoinGecko offer custom developer activity metrics. These metrics attempt to independently capture the progress of code development in GitHub repositories on an individual project basis. A recent report from Galaxy Digital argues that an alternative Layer 1 is approaching Ethereum’s footsteps when it comes to code development. While acknowledging the difficulties in quantifying development activity, the report provides a static comparison of the number of bookmarks to the GitHub core repository as a proxy for the current concentration of talent.

Another recent report from The Block that provides a comparison of Layer 1 protocols frame. The report acknowledges the importance of developer activity in understanding growth prospects. As a proxy for developer community size, the report uses social media following from static snapshots of Github and Discord data. What's missing from both reports, however, is an aggregated, longitudinal understanding of ongoing code development trends. To address this deficiency, let's analyze GitHub's open source code development from the following perspectives:

- Development Activity: Summarizes the number of code contributions in GitHub

- Developer Community: Summarizes the number of developers who have written at least one code contribution

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Below we include these metrics as part of a comparative study of four of the most mature Web 3 protocols (ordered by age): Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana. One can apply the same approach to any other Web3 protocol that gains traction.

Protocol Development Activities

Overall development activity is healthy, with positive trends across all four protocols. Since 2014, Ethereum has managed to maintain its first-mover advantage, while the development of Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana started to increase significantly after 2018.

While Solana has had a high number of monthly code contributions (about 500) over the past three years, Polkadot is on the rise in 2021. From this perspective, Polkadot has outpaced Cosmos since Q1 2021 and is on par with Solana since Q3 2021. The uptick in Polkadot protocol development activity appears to be happening within the launch timeframe ahead of the first parachain slot auction in November 2021. Meanwhile, Cosmos appears to be on a long-term steady pace.

This trend is consistent when comparing year-over-year contributions below. In this sense, Polkadot will see a significant increase in development activity in 2021 compared to Cosmos, Solana, and Ethereum.

Next, let's look at the scale of the contribution, measured in the number of lines of code contributed (added or modified). When accounting for differences between programming languages, larger contributions tend to correspond to more substantial changes in the code. Therefore, the size of code contributions can serve as a suitable proxy for substantial code development. In this sense, Ethereum is clearly the beneficiary of larger contributions compared to Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana. However, it should be noted that both Polkadot and Ethereum show clear year-over-year upward trends. This is consistent with the findings above regarding the number of code contributions.

Community of Protocol Developers

Each of the four protocols of active developer communities are continuing to rise. Ethereum has close to 250 monthly active developers, while Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana are relatively flat at around 50. Interestingly, Polkadot, Cosmos, and Solana have all managed to attract more and more monthly active developers recently. This is consistent with the current migration of capital and talent from Web 2 to Web 3.

This upward trend in the size of the development community is good news for the blockchain space: developers will continue to work hard and further push ongoing protocol development.

Ecosystem View

Having said that, protocols themselves will only generate value if they have a thriving ecosystem of useful and used applications. These application ecosystems are developed by the open source community on top of the protocol itself. In order to quantify development activities at the application ecosystem level, we: ① all the top 300 projects in CoinGecko by market capitalization, corresponding to each protocol ecosystem (Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana), ② removed cross-chain projects. The result of this is: In the Cosmos ecosystem, 15 projects entered the top 300; in the Polkadot ecosystem, 9 projects entered the top 300; in the Solana ecosystem, 13 projects entered the top 300, as of November 2021 1 day. Note that Ethereum is excluded from this comparison. The reason is that, given the rapid growth and sheer size of the Ethereum ecosystem, it is impractical to count all the new projects currently being developed on Ethereum.

Ecosystem Development Activities

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While all three ecosystems have steady development activity, the Cosmos ecosystem stands out. The graph below shows that platforms and applications built on top of these three protocols attract a significant amount of development effort. This development will continue for some time.

Zooming in, when comparing year-over-year contributions, development activity in the Polkadot ecosystem has intensified year-over-year, especially relative to the Cosmos and Solana ecosystems. Again, this intensification of Polkadot ecosystem activity comes ahead of the first parachain slot auction in November 2021.

In terms of the size of the contributions (measured as additions or modifications to the code), on a year-over-year basis, the Polkadot ecosystem (+32%) is relatively strong relative to Solana (+9%) and Cosmos ( +5%) ecosystems stand out on the upside. This finding is consistent with the trend in the number of contributions described above.

Ecosystem Developer Community

In the Ecosystem Developer Community In terms of growth, all three ecosystems seem to be attracting more and more developers, especially the growth of the Solana and olkadot ecosystems. While many factors could be at play, one potential explanation for this adoption is that application development on the Solana and Polkadot blockchains is done in Rust — the developer’s favorite coding language. Rust is a coding language that the general developer community is very familiar with. This could make it easier for developers to build more applications, potentially contributing to year-over-year growth in the development of the Polkadot and Solana ecosystems.

Conclusion

Continuous code development holds value for Web 3 protocols in the long run is the most important. Despite the hype surrounding the Web3 protocol, code development is healthy for all major protocols and their ecosystems.

From a protocol standpoint, Polkadot and Ethereum are both showing a clear upward trend. Meanwhile, developer communities have shown healthy growth across all major protocols, with Ethereum clearly the largest and most active developer community. Currently, Ethereum maintains its first-mover advantage over all other major protocols.

From an application ecosystem perspective, development activity in the Polkadot ecosystem has been picking up lately , consistent with the parachain auction. Meanwhile, the uptake of the developer communities of the Solana and Polkadot ecosystems may be due to the relative ease of building applications on these two blockchains.

In short, developers are here to stay and develop through continued Web 3 protocols Come "make a big cake". This is great news for the application ecosystem built on top of the major Web3 protocols.