The Electric Capital Developer Report: The Ultimate 2025 Guide & FAQ for Blockchains

The Electric Capital Developer Report is the gold standard for measuring blockchain ecosystems' health and growth. This influential annual report analyzes developer activity across blockchain protocols and ecosystems, making it a vital benchmark for protocols to demonstrate their traction, appeal to investors, and attract developer talent.

1. Why Does the Electric Capital Report Matter?

• Developer Activity as a Health Metric: The EC Report tracks full-time, part-time, and new developers, providing crucial insights into ecosystem sustainability and growth potential.

• Visibility and Credibility: A strong position in the Electric Capital Report enhances a protocol’s credibility, directly influencing investor confidence and developer recruitment.

• Strategic Growth and Investments: Investors, stakeholders, and strategic partners rely heavily on Electric Capital rankings to guide their decisions and investments.

2. Electric Capital Developer Report At A Glance

• • 1.7 million repositories analysed (in 2024 edition)
  • 902 million commits fingerprinted (in 2024 edition)
  • The data collection process starts on the 1st of January each year
  • The report is published around Mid December

3. How Does Electric Capital Build The Dataset?

Electric Capital runs every repository through a five-stage pipeline:

1. Sourcing: The team begins by assembling a pool of “candidate repositories” drawn from crowd-submitted PRs, targeted keyword searches, and automated scrapes of ecosystem-project lists and hackathon sites.

2. Classifying: Machine-learning classifiers then score each candidate repo using heuristics - keywords in code, READMEs, commit messages, file extensions, and dependency graphs - to decide which blockchain ecosystem (or ecosystems) it most likely belongs to.

3. Crawling: Accepted repos are fully cloned, and Electric Capital crawls every branch and tag to capture the complete Git history and all commit metadata

4. Cleaning: Automated filters deduplicate forks, identify and exclude bot accounts, and fingerprint code so that copy-pasted commits are credited only to the original author

5. QA / Feedback: Finally, the data is vetted in collaboration with ecosystem foundations and open-source contributors, who flag mis-classifications, supply missing repos, and help reconcile the numbers with their internal metrics

4. How Does EC Classify The Developers?

Electric Capital classifies developers based on their activity within the tracked repositories. These classifications help measure community and ecosystem health.

• • Monthly Active Developer (MAD): A developer who made at least one code commit in a public crypto-related repository in a rolling 28-day window
  • Full-Time Developer: A developer who makes code commits 10+ days out of a month.
  • Part-Time Developer: A developer who makes code commits 2-9 days out of a month.
  • One-Time Contributor: A developer who made only one commit in a rolling 3-month window
    

These definitions are based on publicly observable individual Git commit activity. 

4. What Is The Rule For Multi-chain Attribution?

Starting from the developer level:

• • A single-chain developer is someone who, in the past 28 days, has only worked on repos linked to one chain, or contributed to that chain’s “core” repo (e.g. ethereum-optimism). Core repos are always counted as single-chain to avoid losing those devs in multichain counts.

• • A multi-chain developer is someone who, in the past 28 days, has contributed to repos tied to more than one chain, or worked on an ecosystem that is by definition multichain (e.g. Sushiswap, Alchemy). Ecosystems connected to 10+ chains are automatically treated as multichain.

Clear chain mentions in the README (“Deployed on XYZ Network”) keep you out of the generic EVM bucket.

5. How to Submit Repos to Electric Capital Report: Step by Step

1. Create a list of repos you want included.
- Check each one is public on GitHub, clearly tied to your chain, and not already in the taxonomy.
- Make sure the commit history is intact (no single “mega-commit” dumps).

2. Fork electric-capital/crypto-ecosystems to your own GitHub account.

3. Create a working branch in that fork (e.g., add-my-chain-repos).

4. Add the repos.
- Navigate to the appropriate ecosystem .toml file (or create a new migration file if you prefer the DSL*).
- Insert each repo in strict alphabetical order within its section; this is what the CI test checks.

5. Open a Pull Request from your branch back to the upstream repo.

6. Ensure the PR passes the automatic CI check (it validates alphabetical order and duplicate entries).

7. Wait for manual review, typically 3-5 weeks.
- Respond quickly to any reviewer questions; once the PR is merged, your repos will appear at the next monthly dashboard refresh and be back-filled into all historical months.

(Optional) If the PR workflow feels heavy, you can instead use Electric Capital’s public Airtable submission form; the data team will file the PR for you, following the same review timeline.

* Refer to https://crypto-ecosystems.xyz/

6. Best-practice Checklist for Electric Capital Submissions

• • The project must be public and open-source on GitHub.
    E.g. submit the root repo URL https://github.com/0xPellNetwork/go-tss, not a deep-folder link like …/tree/main.

• • The README (or project description) must clearly name the network it targets.
    A one-liner such as “Built for XYZ Network (testnet 0x…)” or a GitHub Topic tag (xyz, abc, etc.) is enough. On-chain deployment is optional. It helps reviewers but is not required for inclusion.

• • Maintain a sensible folder structure and README.
    Clean docs aren’t enforced by CI, but they speed up manual review and reduce follow-up questions.

• • What Electric Capital extracts from every repo:
       • Recent commits → timestamps the activity window
       • Time between commits → classifies Full-Time / Part-Time / One-Time developers
       • Author metadata → infers country / region
       • Cross-repo links → maps each developer to all ecosystems they touch
       • README / .toml keywords → confirms the target network

• • Timing notes:
       • The public dashboard refreshes monthly; once your taxonomy PR is merged, historical commits show up at the next refresh.
       • The annual report aggregates data from 1 Jan – 1 Dec. PRs merged after 1 Dec will still back-fill historical months but won’t influence headline tables until the following year.

7. How Rise In Helped Aptos Bring 16% of 1,600+ new developers in Electric Capital Report 2024

When the 2024 Electric Capital Developer Report landed, Aptos posted 1,695 new developers, impressive for a young, non-EVM layer-1. Even more striking: 264 of those developers (≈ 16 %) were graduates of Rise In programs.

With our 7 multi-week “Move on Aptos” bootcamps across India, 900+ developers are up-skilled in Move and Aptos tooling. Organized 10+ university road-shows, Spheron Super Move Tour, Code Collision global hackathon support to reach 1500+ total participants, 407 new projects built on Aptos.

Read the detailed success story to learn all of our best practices for Electric Capital submissions through a real partnership. 

Detailed FAQ

Q: How does EC categorize developers?

Developers are categorized as full-time (10+ actively code committed days/month), part-time (<10 days/month), or new (first-time active in a given ecosystem)

Q: Can a developer belong to multiple ecosystems?

Yes, developers can contribute to multiple ecosystems, and EC captures these cross-ecosystem engagements accurately.

Q: What counts as developer activity?

Developer activity includes code commits, pull requests, issues opened and resolved, documentation updates, and other active contributions.

Q. How can a protocol be sure all of its repos are included?

Provide EC with:

1. A master list of protocol related repositories (core, SDKs, tooling, dApps, etc.)

2. Search terms/regexes that reliably surface related protocol's repos (e.g., org:xyz-labs, "XYZ Hackathon 2025" in:readme).

Either open PRs directly to EC’s open-source taxonomy repo or share the list so EC can file the PRs themselves.

Q. Where should hackathon projects live so EC can find them?

1. Three workable options (pick one and keep it consistent):

Single GitHub org (e.g., xyz-hackathons) that hosts every submission.

2. Template/fork model, participants fork an official starter repo that contains “XYZ Hackathon 2025” in the README.

3. Require a distinct string (e.g., Deployed on XYZ) in each project’s README so EC’s crawler can match it.

Q.  Do projects have to be deployed on-chain to count?

No. On-chain deployment just makes attribution easier. EC counts any repository that clearly indicates the protocol usage in code or documentation.

Q. We mirror private repos to GitHub at milestones. Is that okay?

Yes, as long as you preserve the full commit history. Avoid collapsing years of work into a single “initial public commit.” Squashing PRs during normal review is fine; obliterating granular commits is not.

Q. Will EC penalise us for rejecting public PRs?

No. EC doesn’t look at PR status, only the commits that end up on the default branch. Automatic PR closures in mirrored repos are harmless.

Q.  How does EC attribute multi-chain projects?

Projects are counted as multichain if their repos show activity across more than one chain. Some ecosystems (like Sushiswap or Alchemy) are considered multichain from the start, and any ecosystem connected to 10 or more chains is automatically categorized as multichain.

Developers contributing only to a chain’s core repos are still attributed to that single chain, even if the ecosystem spans multiple chains.

Clear READMEs help EC keep projects in the right column.

Q.  What wording confuses EC’s classifiers?

Hardhat or Foundry config files listing 100+ RPC endpoints without any mention of the target chain. Counter this by adding a one-liner in README:

“This project is developed for XYZ Network and deployed at 0x…”

Q.  Are forks automatically excluded?

Fingerprinting removes pure forks; only new code counts.

Q.  What if my protocol is brand-new and not in the Top 200 by market cap?

Submit anyway. EC shows long-tail data on the live dashboard. selection for the “Top Ecosystems” table follows eligibility rules

Q.  How often does the public dashboard update?

Monthly for commits/developer charts, taxonomy additions appear the month after PR merge

Q.  Can I submit closed-source repos?

Not today. EC tracks only open-source Git histories, but on-chain telemetry integration is on the roadmap.

Q.  Does EC partner formally with foundations?

No, we don't have any formal partnerships, just Telegram groups where foundations and data contributors can:

• Ask taxonomy questions

• Flag mis-attributions

• Share new repo lists