Ethereum Attracts Developers Like a Magnet: 16,000 New Programmers Joined in Just Nine Months

Ethereum remains the world’s largest developer ecosystem, even as its growth pace slows down. Between January and September 2025, more than 16,000 new developers joined its community — significantly outpacing Solana and Bitcoin, according to data from Electric Capital.

Ethereum Still Reigns Supreme According to the latest GitHub data analyzed by Electric Capital, the Ethereum ecosystem now has 31,869 active developers.

Solana ranked second with 11,500 new developers, while Bitcoin followed with around 7,500 new contributors. Ethereum’s dominance continues, supported by its open development model, abundant toolkits, and a thriving network of Layer 2 projects such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Unichain. “Ethereum remains the world’s largest technological playground, attracting brilliant minds who want to build and innovate every day,” the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a post on X.

Solana Grows Faster — But the Numbers Differ While Ethereum leads in total figures, Solana’s developer growth is accelerating rapidly. Its base expanded 29% year-over-year, whereas Ethereum’s full-time developer growth slowed to 5.8%.

However, Jacob Creech, Head of Developer Relations at the Solana Foundation, argued that Electric Capital’s data underreports Solana’s true numbers. According to him, about 7,800 developers are missing from the dataset because their GitHub repositories were not captured. “The data here is unfortunately incomplete — many of our repositories are missing. If you’re building on Solana, please submit your repos so EC can have the full picture,” Creech urged on X.

Overlapping Technologies and Ecosystems Tomasz Stańczak, Co-Director of the Ethereum Foundation, noted that the classification of ecosystems should also reflect technological overlaps between blockchains sharing similar architectures.

He suggested that EVM-compatible chains like Polygon and BNB Chain should be considered part of the broader Ethereum family, since developers can easily reuse their tools and skills across them. “EVM chains should be grouped together. We share the same DNA — and that’s key to interoperability and growth,” Stańczak said.

Slower Growth, But Ethereum Still Dominates Even with slower momentum, Ethereum’s numbers remain impressive.

Full-time developer participation grew 5.8% year-over-year and 6.3% over two years, while Solana’s developer count surged over 60% during the same period — the fastest expansion among major blockchain ecosystems. Despite that, Ethereum retains the largest and most influential developer community, even though it pays less.

According to Protocol Guild, which represents Ethereum’s core developers, the average annual salary for core contributors is around $140,000, roughly 50–60% below private-sector rates.

Comparable blockchain roles in the corporate world average $359,000 per year. Yet some developers choose to stay out of conviction.

One anonymous Ethereum contributor reportedly turned down a $700,000 offer to continue working on open-source Ethereum infrastructure — a testament to the community’s enduring ethos.

Ethereum Expands Its DeFi Investments The Ethereum Foundation is also expanding its DeFi treasury strategy.

In recent weeks, it invested 2,400 ETH (about $9.6 million) and $6 million in stablecoins into the Morpho lending protocol. “Morpho is pioneering permissionless DeFi protocols and consistently upholding the principles of free/libre open-source software (FLOSS),” the foundation wrote on X. Through this move, Ethereum not only supports innovation within its own ecosystem but also reaffirms its commitment to open-source development and decentralization.

Summary: Ethereum Leads, But Competition Tightens Ethereum continues to set the pace for global blockchain innovation. Even as growth slows, its community remains the largest, most active, and most influential in the entire crypto industry.

With over 31,000 active developers and growing DeFi investments, Ethereum solidifies its role as the technological leader of the Web3 era. Whether it can maintain that dominance in 2026 will depend on how fast it can innovate, adapt, and keep developers inspired as new blockchains fight for attention.

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