Developers are leaving the blockchain ecosystem rapidly. Many of those who have left are heading into the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
A recent CoinDesk report, citing data from code hosting platform GitHub, said weekly code commits to crypto projects fell 75 percent from early 2025, from about 850,000 to 210,000. The number of active developers also declined to about 4,600.
Developer numbers fell across all major blockchain ecosystems. Developer counts for Ethereum, Solana and Base dropped sharply, while Aptos fell about 60 percent and BNB Chain code commits declined about 85 percent. Only wallet infrastructure maintained a slight growth trend.
The make-up of developers remaining in the crypto sector has also changed. The share of senior developers among total contributors has risen.
GitHub's Octoverse report shows the broader platform picture is different. GitHub attracted more than 36 million new developers in 2025, and annual code commits rose about 25 percent from a year earlier. AI-related repositories and large language model (LLM) development tools are shown to be growing rapidly.
Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)
delight@d-today.co.kr