Telstra Ventures – the investment arm of Australian telecommunications giant Telstra – released a health report on three top blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, by studying the level of developer participation in each ecosystem. With the highest number of monthly active contributors, the Ventures noted, Ethereum is the “strongest and largest community” of the three.
The report also found that there are still unfunded opportunities in the aforementioned ecosystems, with venture and corporate investors betting on only about half of the top 10 projects in each.
Ethereum in Reign
The number of active contributors is an important metric that reflects the power of blockchain networks. With the increase in popularity and usage scenarios, they are also attracting more regular contributors. Telstra Ventures analyzed the compound annual growth rate of unique active contributors across three major blockchains, stating that Ethereum’s community has grown 24.9% in the past four years since January 1, 2018.
Despite the sharp price drop since last November, the number of monthly contributors fell by only 9% in July this year, indicating that the ongoing crypto winter has not eroded developers’ overall confidence in the network.
In addition, the upcoming Merge, poised to complete the transition from PoW to PoS, has stabilized the general interest as the number of monthly active developers has remained above 2,500 each month since the first half of 2021.
Compared to Ethereum, Solana has experienced explosive growth over the same period, with a compound annual growth rate of a staggering 173%. However, it fails to maintain the stability that Ethereum does. Since the original token SOL climbed to its peak price of $204 last November, the number of active contributors has fallen by 21%, to just over 250 in July.
Unlike the two Layer 1 networks, the Bitcoin ecosystem has witnessed an 8% growth in monthly active contributors since BTC’s peak in November. Overall, it has seen steady growth in attracting new developers over the past eight years, the report said.
Opportunities still available
While the bear market fends off crypto VCs’ enthusiasm – noticeable in Coinbase Ventures’ Q2 deal activity down 34% from 34% – Telstra Ventures believes that many opportunities within the top ecosystems are still open to institutional investors.
After researching more than 30,000 open source Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana projects in the Web3 ecosystem, the company noted that 70% of the fastest growing projects are backed by VCs or by companies.
In addition, only 4 to 5 of the top 10 most active projects in each ecosystem are backed by venture and corporate investors, suggesting that about half of high-potential projects still remain untouched by institutional investors.
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