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 (releases of new code) to repositories have fallen about 75% since the beginning of 2025, falling from about 850,000 to 210,000, while active developers fell 56% to about 4,600, according to data from analytics platform Artemis.
Repositories track where developers write code, build tools, and launch new projects, offering one of the clearest signals 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, with platform-wide pledges up about 25% year over year, according to GitHub’s Octoverse report.
Much of that growth flows into artificial intelligence. GitHub now hosts more than 4.3 million AI-related repositories.
The number of repos importing software development kits for large language models increased by about 178% to more than 1.1 million over the past year, while generative AI projects now attract more than 1 million monthly contributors.
The numbers suggest that developers are reallocating time to AI infrastructure instead of blockchain.
Repositories using Jupyter Notebooks, commonly used for machine learning experimentation, grew about 75%. Dockerfile repositories used to deploy AI applications jumped about 120%. TypeScript, the programming language that underpins much of the modern web and many AI tools, overtook Python and JavaScript to become GitHub’s most used language after gaining more than 1 million contributors in a single year.
In crypto, the decline has been broad but uneven.
Ethereum’s weekly active developer count fell 34% over three months to 2,811, according to Artemis. Solana lost 40% to 942 developers. Base, the Coinbase-incubated Tier 2 that was among 2024’s fastest-growing ecosystems, fell 52% to 378 developers.
Newer chains that attracted speculative interest during last year’s bull market are faring the worst. Aptos lost about 60% of its developers, BNB Chain commits fell 85%, and Celo fell 52%.
The only category of meaningful size still growing is wallet infrastructure, which rose about 6% to 308 weekly active developers.
Still, the data suggests crypto 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 declines to around 18,000 by mid-2025.
The composition of the remaining workforce is also changing. Developers with more than two years of tenure grew about 27% year over year and now produce about 70% of commitments. The exodus is concentrated among part-time contributors and newcomers with less than 12 months of experience, a group that fell 58% in one tracking period.
Crypto development has historically followed market cycles, and activity could pick up if another bull market pulls back developers.
But past recessions offered fewer alternatives for displaced developers. By 2025, generative AI represents a fast-growing frontier with deep venture funding and immediate commercial demand, raising the question of whether this cycle of talent extraction will prove harder to reverse.
