Blockchain ecosystems are losing developers across the board, while artificial intelligence projects dominate growth on GitHub, the world’s largest platform for hosting and collaborating on software code.
Weekly crypto commits (publishing new code) to repositories have fallen by around 75% since the start of 2025, from around 850,000 to 210,000, while active developers have declined by 56% to around 4,600, according to data from analytics platform Artemis.
Repositories track where developers write code, build tools, and launch new projects, they offer one of the clearest signals about where software innovation is happening.
This contraction stands in stark contrast to the broader software ecosystem. GitHub added about 36 million developers in 2025 alone, bringing its global base to more than 180 million, with platform-wide engagements increasing about 25% year-over-year, according to GitHub’s Octoverse report.
Much of this growth is in artificial intelligence. GitHub now hosts over 4.3 million AI-related repositories.
The number of large language model SDK repositories has jumped about 178% to more than 1.1 million over the past year, while generative AI projects now attract more than 1 million monthly contributors.
The numbers suggest that developers are reallocating time to AI infrastructure rather than blockchain.
Repositories using Jupyter Notebooks, commonly used for machine learning experimentation, have increased by approximately 75%. Dockerfile repositories used to deploy AI applications jumped about 120%. TypeScript, the programming language that underpins much of the modern web and many AI tools, has overtaken Python and JavaScript to become GitHub’s most used language after gaining more than a million contributors in a single year.
Within crypto, the decline is broad but uneven.
Ethereum’s weekly active developer count fell 34% over three months to 2,811, according to Artemis. Solana lost 40% to 942 developers. Base, the Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 that was among the fastest growing ecosystems in 2024, fell 52% to 378 developers.
The newer chains that attracted speculative interest during last year’s bull market are faring the worst. Aptos lost around 60% of its developers, BNB Chain’s engagements plunged 85%, and Celo fell 52%.
The only category of significant size that continues to grow is wallet infrastructure, which increased by approximately 6% to 308 active developers per week.
Nonetheless, the data suggests that crypto may be consolidating rather than collapsing.
Electric Capital’s annual developer report shows the sector peaked at around 31,000 monthly active developers in 2022 before falling to around 23,600 in 2024, with estimates suggesting further declines to around 18,000 by mid-2025.
The composition of the remaining workforce is also changing. Developers with more than two years of experience have seen ~27% year-over-year growth and now produce ~70% of commits. The exodus is concentrated among part-time contributors and newcomers with less than 12 months of experience, a group that declined by 58% during a single tracking period.
Crypto development has historically followed market cycles, and activity could rebound if another bull market sets builders back.
But previous recessions offered fewer alternatives for displaced developers. In 2025, generative AI represents a rapidly expanding frontier with significant venture funding and immediate commercial demand, raising the question of whether this cycle’s talent drain is proving harder to reverse.
