Blockchain May Be Down, But It is Not Out

Since January, a 60% loss in crypto market cap wiped $1.3 trillion, and VC investments tumbled 25.6% to about $9.3 billion, down from a record $12.5 billion invested during last year’s first half, according to Crunchbase News.

Unflustered by prices and investments declining across the board, Telstra Ventures conducted health checks on 3 top blockchain ecosystems — Ethereum, Solana and Bitcoin – by applying data science tools and methodologies to open-source developer communities. Led by Donghai He, PhD, Telstra Ventures’ data science team analyzed 1,000 active organizations contributing to more than 30,000 open source Web3 projects (see last slide for full methodology), reveal:

• Blockchain developers’ participation in Web3 communities remains robust, as measured by compound annual growth rates in the number of unique active contributors per project and per ecosystem each month.
• Venture and corporate investors are well aligned with 7 of the top 10 most active projects across key ecosystems.
• Only 4 to 5 of the top 10 most active projects in each ecosystem are backed by venture and corporate investors, suggesting unfunded opportunities remain.

According to General Partner Yash Patel, blockchain developers’ commitment to Web3 ecosystems forms the basis for the sector’s medium- and long-term viability, despite short-term price fluctuations. He contends developers’ decisions about which protocols to use will be driven by use case and will point to the winning protocols.

Web 3 Developer Ecosystem Continues to Thrive

Ethereum remains the largest and strongest developer community

• Ethereum’s contributor community has grown at a 24.9% compound annual growth rate over the past 4 years since January 1, 2018.
• Since Ethereum’s peak of price in November 2021, the number of monthly active contributors has a drawdown of 9.0%.

Solana is growing rapidly and is on the heels of Ethereum

• Solana’s contributors have grown at a 173.0% compound annual growth rate over the past 4 years since January 1, 2018.
• Since Solana’s peak price of $204.35 in November 2021, the number of active contributors has declined 21.0%.

Bitcoin continues slow and steady growth through price volatility

• Bitcoin has seen a 17.1% compound annual growth rate in the number of contributors during the past 4 years since January 1, 2018.
• Since the peak of price of crypto Bitcoin in October 2021, the number of active contributors has grown 8.2%.

Institutional investors are aligned with robust blockchain development in each of the 3 primary ecosystems, and investment opportunities remain

• 7 of the 10 fastest growing projects are backed by VCs or by corporations.
• 4 or more of the 10 fastest-growing repositories in each ecosystem are backed by VCs or corporate investors.

Click here to down the full report including tables and charts

Methodology

Telstra Ventures’ data science team analyzed 1,000 active organizations contributing to more than 30,000 open source Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana projects in the Web3 ecosystem, as defined by Electrical Capital in their 2021 report.

To be considered in the study, projects have a minimum 100 stars in related GitHub repositories and had active contributions between January and April 2022.

Monthly active contributors were tabulated at the repo level based on the number of unique contributors to that repo in a month. At the organization level, total unique contributors were tabulated based on the total unique contributors who committed to any organic repos (not forked from other repos) within that organization in a month. For a Web3 ecosystem, the total unique contributors who contributed to any organic repos (not forked from other repos) were tabulated within that ecosystem in a month.

GitHub activity growth rate is defined as the aggregated 1-month and 12-month percentage change in the total number of stars, forks, commits and unique contributors for each repo.