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 about 75% since the beginning of 2025, from about 850,000 to 210,000, while active developers decreased by 56% to about 4,600, according to data from analytics platform Artemis.
Repositories track where developers write code, create tools, and release new projects; They offer one of the clearest signs of where software innovation is happening.
The 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, and commits across the platform increased about 25% year over year, according to GitHub’s Octoverse report.
Much of that growth is flowing into artificial intelligence. GitHub now hosts more than 4.3 million AI-related repositories.
The number of repositories importing large language model software development kits has increased by approximately 178% to more than 1.1 million over the past year, while generative AI projects now attract more than 1 million monthly contributors.
The figures suggest that developers are reallocating time towards AI infrastructure instead of blockchain.
Repositories using Jupyter Notebooks, commonly used for machine learning experimentation, grew by approximately 75%. Dockerfile repositories used to deploy AI applications increased by approximately 120%. TypeScript, the programming language that underpins much of the modern web and many artificial intelligence tools, surpassed Python and JavaScript to become GitHub’s most used language after gaining more than 1 million contributors in a single year.
Within cryptocurrencies, the decline is broad but uneven.
Ethereum’s weekly active developer count fell 34% in three months to 2,811, according to Artemis. Solana lost 40% until it was left with 942 promoters. Base, the Layer 2 incubated by Coinbase that was among the fastest growing ecosystems in 2024, fell 52% to 378 developers.
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 commitments plummeted 85%, and Celo fell 52%.
The only category of significant size that continues to grow is wallet infrastructure, which increased about 6% to 308 weekly active developers.
Still, the data suggests that cryptocurrencies 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 falls to around 18,000 by mid-2025.
The composition of the remaining workforce is also changing. Developers with more than two years of experience grew approximately 27% year over year and now produce approximately 70% of commits. The exodus is concentrated among part-time contributors and newcomers with less than 12 months of experience, a group that declined 58% in a follow-up period.
Cryptocurrency development has historically followed market cycles, and activity could pick up if another bull market pushes back builders.
But previous crises offered fewer alternatives for displaced developers. In 2025, generative AI represents a rapidly expanding frontier with huge venture funding and immediate commercial demand, raising the question of whether this cycle’s talent drain will prove harder to reverse.
