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Ethereum remains the undisputed leader in the blockchain developer ecosystem, even as Solana captures headlines for its explosive growth, according to Electric Capital’s 2024 Developer Report. From January to September 2025, Ethereum developers added 16,181 new contributors, more than any other blockchain network.
The Ethereum Foundation confirmed the network hosts 31,869 active developers, nearly double Solana’s 17,708. Despite Ethereum’s size, Solana’s 83% year-over-year growth adding 11,534 new developers has fueled the perception that it is the fastest-growing blockchain ecosystem.
The numbers show Ethereum’s maturity and stability, but Solana’s growth narrative has captured the community’s imagination, said Maria Shen, Partner at Electric Capital, in an interview.
Bitcoin ranked third with 7,494 new developers and 11,036 total active contributors, underscoring the widening gap between general-purpose smart contract platforms and older blockchain protocols.
The data also revealed that while total crypto developers declined 7% in 2024, those with two or more years of experience grew by 27%, now accounting for 70% of all code contributions.
Despite their dominance, Ethereum developers face a stark compensation gap compared to market averages. According to Protocol Guild, Ethereum core contributors earn a median salary of $140,000 nearly 60% below market rates, which average $359,000 in the broader tech and crypto industries.
One veteran developer even turned down a $700,000 package from a competing blockchain to remain with Ethereum core. “The passion for open-source development outweighs the pay gap for many of us,” the developer told The Block under anonymity.
Protocol Guild has distributed over $33 million since May 2022 to support Ethereum’s open-source contributors. The median annual payout from the Guild, combined with external funding, brings total compensation to $207,121 still 33% below industry standards.
Meanwhile, rival networks have aggressively recruited Ethereum’s top talent. Nearly 40% of core developers received job offers from competing ecosystems in the past year, offering higher salaries and token incentives.
“Ethereum remains the heartbeat of blockchain development,” said Tim Beiko, Ethereum Foundation core contributor. “But we have to ensure that Ethereum developers are not undervalued or we risk losing the very people who built this ecosystem.”
The latest data also show a dramatic reshaping of global developer demographics. Ethereum retained the #1 ecosystem on every continent, but Asia has now overtaken North America as the largest contributor region.
India led the world in onboarding new crypto developers in 2024, while the U.S. share dropped from 38% in 2015 to 19% in 2025.
A growing trend among Ethereum developers is multi-chain collaboration. One in three now contributes to multiple blockchain ecosystems up from just 10% a decade ago. Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 solution, accounted for 42% of the new code committed within Ethereum’s ecosystem in 2025.
Latin American developers also showed strong loyalty to Ethereum and Polygon, according to a Sherlock Communications report. The study found that Ethereum accounted for 75% of blockchain activity across the region between June 2024 and June 2025.
Developers in Latin America are showing strong technical maturity, said Luiz Eduardo Abreu Hadad, a blockchain researcher at Sherlock. They focus on solving real-world problems within trusted ecosystems rather than chasing hype-driven platforms.
Even as developer counts rise, compensation trends across the broader Web3 industry show growing inequality. A Dragonfly Capital report found that crypto salaries declined across most technical roles in 2024–2025 despite Bitcoin’s record rally.
Entry-level engineers saw the sharpest pay cuts, while executive compensation surged which is what Dragonfly called a “barbell effect.” International engineering executives earned between $530,000 and $780,000, outpacing U.S.-based peers for the first time.
Product management executives led the compensation charts with $390,000–$484,000, while founder pay rose 37% year-over-year to an average of $197,000.
For Ethereum developers, pay varies sharply by region. Salaries in North America range between $120,000–$250,000, compared to $82,000–$185,000 in Europe and $70,000–$150,000 in Asia-Pacific.
Specialized expertise remains highly valued. Zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptographers command up to $300,000 annually, while smart contract engineers earn $160,000–$250,000 for senior roles.
Talent is still the scarcest commodity in Web3, noted Tom Schmidt, Partner at Dragonfly. The best Ethereum developers and cryptographers remain in high demand, regardless of market cycles.
As Ethereum continues to scale with EIP-4844 and next-generation rollup architectures, the developer community remains its core strength. Despite salary disparities and rising competition from Solana, Ethereum’s long-term focus on decentralization, interoperability, and research leadership continues to anchor its position.
For now, Ethereum developers remain the backbone of the decentralized economy motivated not by market trends, but by the pursuit of open innovation and global inclusion.
