GitHub data reveals a large-scale exodus of crypto developers since 2022, with AI becoming the new destination for developer migration

Mars Finance News: On March 12, data from GitHub, the world’s largest code hosting platform, shows that the blockchain ecosystem is experiencing a widespread loss of developers, while AI projects are driving platform growth. According to data from the analytics platform Artemis, since early 2025, the weekly number of crypto-related code commits has decreased by approximately 75%, from about 850,000 to 210,000; the number of active developers has dropped by 56%, currently around 4,600. Code repositories are where developers write code, build tools, and start new projects, making them one of the clearest signals of software innovation trends. This contraction contrasts sharply with the growth of the overall software ecosystem. GitHub’s Octoverse report indicates that in 2025 alone, GitHub added about 36 million new developers, with the global user count surpassing 180 million, and total code commits across the platform increasing by approximately 25% year-over-year. Most of this growth has flowed into the AI sector. GitHub now hosts over 4.3 million AI-related code repositories. Over the past year, the number of repositories importing large language model SDKs has surged by about 178%, exceeding 1.1 million. Meanwhile, generative AI projects attract over 1 million contributors each month. These figures suggest developers are reallocating their time from blockchain to AI infrastructure. Repositories for common machine learning experiments using Jupyter Notebooks have grown by about 75%. Repositories for deploying AI applications with Dockerfiles have increased by roughly 120%. The programming language TypeScript, which supports modern web pages and many AI tools, gained over 1 million new contributors in a year, surpassing Python and JavaScript to become the most used language on GitHub. In the cryptocurrency space, the decline in developer numbers is widespread but varies in severity. Artemis data shows that Ethereum’s weekly active developers decreased by 34% over three months, down to 2,811; Solana decreased by 40%, to 942; and Coinbase’s Layer 2 network Base, one of the fastest-growing ecosystems in 2024, fell by 52%, to 378. The worst-hit during last year’s bull market were emerging public chains that attracted speculative interest. Aptos lost about 60% of its developers, BNB Chain’s code commits plummeted by 85%, and Celo declined by 52%. The only category still growing is wallet infrastructure, with weekly active developers increasing by about 6%, reaching 308. However, data also indicates that the crypto sector may be undergoing consolidation rather than collapse. Electric Capital’s annual developer report shows that the industry’s monthly active developers peaked at around 31,000 in 2022, dropped to about 23,600 in 2024, and further declined to approximately 18,000 by mid-2025. The composition of remaining developers is also changing. Developers with over two years of experience increased by about 27% year-over-year, now contributing roughly 70% of code commits. The main losses are part-time contributors and newcomers with less than 12 months of experience, who decreased by 58% during a tracking period.