Highlights : 2023 Solana Developer Ecosystem Report
Highlights : 2023 Solana Developer Ecosystem Report
Spoiler Alert: There's a lot more than 75 devs
Developer activity is a leading indicator of user adoption in public blockchains. In this post we’ll share highlights from the 2023 Solana Developer Ecosystem Report & a few resources to help you get started on Solana.
Developer Ecosystem Metrics
The report highlights the following key ecosystem metrics:
There were at least 2500 - 3000 monthly active developers on Solana through 2023. The methodology for measuring this is publicly documented here.
Developer retention grew from ~30% to over 50%. A developer is defined as retained if they have made at least one commit in 3 consecutive months after starting.
~52% of developers have 3+ years of dev experience. This is measured by surveying over 1000 Hacker House participants from across the globe.
With each hackathon, the number of project submissions has increased. The most recent hackathon, Solana Hyperdrive, had more than 900 submissions. Hackathon submissions is a top indicator for developer activity growth.
Community Sourced DevList
While it’s great to have official stats from the foundation, it’s even better to have public goods shipped by the community which take the ecosystem forward.
The team at Solfate has shipped a public Solana Dev List. Anyone can connect their Solana Wallet, GitHub & Twitter account and claim a free & non-transferrable member NFT to become a part of the list.
This is a valuable airdrop list for projects looking to engage the Solana developer community. We wrote more about this in a previous essay — that airdrops should be targeted to producers & contributors, and not just consumers.
In little over a week since launch, nearly 400 people have been verified and added to the list. If you’ve built on Solana but haven’t claimed your NFT yet, do it now.
And if you’re looking to airdrop to the devs who are on this list then check out Dust by Underdog — a no-code tool that allows you to go from idea to airdrop with just a few clicks and in under 5 minutes.
Getting Started
Solana is designed to get out of the way. It does this by providing a fast, cheap & predictable execution layer while retaining global state.
Developers who build on Solana will find an abundance of content, tooling and demand to help them succeed.
Content: You can start with the official docs, some program examples or the community sourced Cookbook. If you prefer a more structured approach you’ll find a buffet of self-serve courses or instructor led programs to choose from.
Tooling: It’s not just about Rust or smart contracts, there’s a wide range of SDKs & UI frameworks you can work with to build on Solana.
Demand: There were 41 new jobs added to jobs.solana.com in Dec alone. You can also find a range of bounties, gigs and projects on Superteam Earn.
Enterprise. The team at Helius Labs has prepared this comprehensive guide for enterprises that are looking to integrate a blockchain for their products & services.
It talks about the key attributes of Solana — speed, cost, predictability, energy efficiency, decentralization & state compression — and how they influenced companies like Visa, blockchain projects like Helium & even EVM solutions like Eclipse to build on Solana.
If you have an idea of how to improve the Solana developer ecosystem here are some grants you can apply for to support your work. You can also share feedback on the developer ecosystem and how the experience can be made better.
If you found this useful, please share it with any developers in your circle who might enjoy it too.