Blockchain Builders Report — Q3 2024

5 min readOct 18, 2024

The Global Need for Developers

Our digital economies are rapidly changing from centralized trusted systems to decentralized, zero trust systems.

This new digital economy is fundamentally changing the way businesses, governments, and individuals exchange value, verify identity, and transfer ownership.

When the internet was popularized in the 1990s with Web 1, our world was revolutionized with a wave of innovation in the way information was shared and transmitted.

Web 1.0 gave rise to Web 2.0 companies like Ebay and Amazon that changed how we buy and sell goods. For the first time, we bought goods not through “brick and mortar” store-fronts, but on websites through screens, delivered directly to our front doors.

The next evolution of ecommerce is underway from Web 2 to Web 3, which will provided the next evolution to our global economy that is structurally changing finance. With the advent of Bitcoin in 2008, blockchain technology, previously relegated to niche research paper discussions, was thrust into the global spotlight.

In the same way Web1 and Web2 was built through the keystrokes of developers, the construction of Web3 is being built the same way and the war for attracting, developing, and retaining developers in these Web3 blockchain ecosystems will be paramount to the success into our next evolution of ecommerce.

Many organizations are vying for the opportunity to build the next stage of digital infrastructure that will define the next generation.

These organizations need talented developers to secure these monetary networks, develop UX, implement new features, fulfill and maintain compliance with local, federal, and international laws.

In the same way that our previous economic evolutions eventually required millions of developers, Web.v3 will be no different.

It is my belief that by understanding the present state of DLT builders for Web.v3 projects, we can understand where our global evolution into Web 3.0 might lead and which projects will be successful long-term.

None of the data in this report is being sold as investment advice.

Summary

The blockchain builders report includes the number of active developers who are committing code to active projects within a particular blockchain organization for a given period.

Key Terms

Active Developer — Any individual contributor who has at least one commit within a particular blockchain project within a particular quarter.

Active Project — Any project listed within a blockchain organization with at least one commit within a particular quarter.

The top blockchain projects by market cap for a particular quarter are examined.

For the purposes of making this report timely the top coins by market cap value were determined four weeks prior to the release of the report.

Quarter Definitions

January 1st — March 31st (Quarter 1)
April 1st — June 30th (Quarter 2)
July 1st — September 30th (Quarter 3)
October 1st — December 31st (Quarter 4)

For Us. For Blockchain.

This work did not come cheap. It’s only me producing it outside of my full-time job and personal life with family.

It is truly a labor of love.

I also understand that It is also not perfect. There maybe mistakes. I did my best to verify the results of this process and I welcome your feedback.

If I got something wrong, which is certainly possible. Please let me know. (DM me on X) “@ApexCryptoAlpha”

Enjoy the Blockchain Builders Report Q3 2024. Thanks for reading it.

APEX Crypto-

Improved Data Reporting Features in the Q3 2024 Report

Removing Contributions by Automation Tools — Based upon feedback my scripts now exclude any bot contributors. On average this would scew the data by less than 1 developer on average per project, but for some larger projects, the screw was as high as 8 bots.

Unique contributors to projects now exclude any merge commits by automation tools / bots.

Forked Projects within an Organization are now Excluded — Forked projects are still included UNLESS their fork data happened within the reporting data time-frame of the quarter.

Forking codebases is a common thing in software development and allows other projects to avoid starting from a blank slate.

Additionally, sometimes disagreements emerge amongst teams as the the best path forward for a codebase which often resulting in forking a project.

Commits to forked projects within an organization still matter insofar as they are maintained by the organziation. Therefore, unique contributors to forked projects are still counted UNLESS they were forked during the current quarter.

Blockchain Builders Report — Q3 2024

Tokens with Unknown Active Development (Source Code is not publically accessible)

Tether, UNUS SED LEO, FTX Token USDD, First Digital USD, ApeCoin, Gas, Huobi Token, Tether Gold, SATS, Blur, Ronin, GMT, APENFT PayPal USD, SuperVerse, MX TOKEN, LCX, Memecoin, Echelon Prime, Bitcoin BEP2, HEX, Huobi BTC, WeBuy, L7, Oasys, Assemble Protocol, Venus BTC, FLEX, Open Campus, Powerledger, Sleepless AI, Vulcan Forged (PYR), Big Time, Yield Guild Games, Tectum, ConstitutionDAO, & NFPrompt