Web3 Developer Marketing: Why the Most Valuable User Writes Code

Web3 developer marketing competes for a pool of roughly 23,600 monthly active crypto developers, and that pool is shrinking. Who they are, where they live, and how to run developer acquisition like a real funnel.

By AnkhLabs Research, Growth research team··6 min read

Key takeaways

  • Web3 developer marketing competes for a tiny workforce, since Electric Capital counted 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, and code activity has fallen sharply since as builders moved to AI.

  • Asia is now home to 32% of crypto developers and 81% live outside the US, so developer relations built around San Francisco and New York events misses most of the market.

  • Ethereum, Solana and ETHGlobal run developer acquisition as a funnel of hackathons, grants and docs, while most protocols building on top of them run no developer funnel at all.

Web3 developer marketing is aimed at the most valuable user in crypto, and it's the one user who never shows up in a marketing dashboard. A developer who builds on your chain or protocol brings their product, their community and their users with them, and they tend to stay for years. The whole industry runs on a surprisingly small pool of these people. Electric Capital, whose annual report is the standard census, counted 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, which is the entire global workforce this trillion-dollar industry competes for.

The competition is fierce enough to turn into public arguments. When Electric Capital's 2025 data showed Ethereum attracting 16,181 new developers against Solana's 11,534, the Solana Foundation publicly disputed the count, claiming thousands of its developers were missing from the data. Ecosystems argue over developer numbers the way companies argue over market share, because that's exactly what they are.

A campaign buys you users one at a time. A developer brings theirs with them.

How many web3 developers are there?

There are roughly 20,000 active web3 developers worldwide. Electric Capital counted 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, down 7% on the year, and later estimates put the number near 18,000 by mid-2025, so the entire workforce behind a trillion-dollar industry would fit inside one large stadium.

The trend since then has been down, not up. In March 2026 CoinDesk reported that weekly crypto code commits had fallen roughly 75% since early 2025, from about 850,000 to 210,000, while Electric Capital's 2024 count of 23,600 was estimated to have slipped to around 18,000 by mid-2025. The same report found GitHub adding 36 million developers in 2025 alone, with most new talent going to AI projects, so crypto now competes for builders with the hottest field in software as well as with other chains.

The people who stayed are the committed ones. Electric Capital found that while total developers fell 7% in 2024, developers with two or more years of experience grew 27%, hit an all-time high, and now write 70% of all the code. The tourist era is over, and the builders left have seen every ecosystem pitch before, which raises the bar for any web3 developer marketing that relies on hype.

Where do crypto developers live now?

Most crypto developers now live outside the United States. Electric Capital's data shows Asia is the largest continent for crypto developers at 32% of the total, up from 13% in 2015, while 81% of all crypto developers live outside the US and India alone supplied 17% of new crypto developers in 2024.

Those figures come from Electric Capital's geography report, which also shows America's share has fallen by half, and from its count showing that India supplied 17% of all new crypto developers in 2024. It echoes what we found when we looked at users, because most web3 teams are marketing to the same ten million people while the growth is happening somewhere else. If your developer relations program is a series of events in San Francisco and New York, you're fishing where the fish were a decade ago.

The winners also play a long game. Ethereum recently crossed a million lifetime contributors, a number built over ten years of docs, education and community rather than any single campaign.

How do blockchains attract developers?

Blockchains attract developers with a funnel of hackathons for discovery, grants for the first real project, and documentation and community for everything after. The biggest ecosystems fund this at scale, with the Solana Foundation alone putting more than $100 million into over 500 projects, but very few measure it with the discipline they would apply to any other funnel.

The machine is real. ETHGlobal, the hackathon organizer, has run more than 95 events that produced 14,000 projects, and companies born at those events have gone on to raise over $350 million. Solana's hackathons draw over 10,000 participants from 140 countries, producing 1,412 finished projects in a single event, and the Solana Foundation has put more than $100 million into over 500 projects, with $10,000 microgrants aimed at builders in emerging markets.

Look at it as a marketer would and it's a plain funnel, with awareness at the hackathon, activation at the first deployed project, and retention in the grant and community layer. The ecosystems rarely describe it in those terms, which means most of them run it without targets, and most protocols building on top of these chains don't run a developer funnel at all.

What we'd tell a founder about web3 developer marketing

Treat developers as a funnel with stages, and measure it like one. Track how many developers discovered your protocol this month, how many deployed something, how many shipped to production and how many are still building on you a quarter later. Those are acquisition, activation and retention, and everything we've written about keeping users you paid to acquire applies. Most teams can't answer any of the four questions, which means their developer strategy is a vibe.

Your docs are your landing page, so staff them like one. A committed developer's first session with you is your documentation, and they will judge your whole company by whether the quickstart works. There's a second reason to care now, because 84% of developers use or plan to use AI tools in their work, and those tools read your docs when someone asks how to build something. Being the clean, complete answer is developer marketing you do once and benefit from every day.

Go where the new developers actually are. Seventeen percent of the world's new crypto builders came from India in 2024, and the fastest-growing communities are across Asia, Africa and Latin America. A local hackathon sponsorship, translated docs and a regional community lead cost a fraction of one Western conference booth and reach the people actually entering the industry.

Judge hackathons by what survives, not what ships. A weekend produces demos, and most demos die. The number that matters is how many hackathon projects are still active three months later, and the follow-up program that drives that number, meaning grants, mentorship and a path to users, is worth more than the event itself.

The users who compound

Nearly everything else in crypto growth, from paid users to rented attention, stops working when the spending stops, and developers are the exception. A builder who chooses your ecosystem creates products that attract users, who attract more builders, and that loop keeps turning years after the grant that started it. With the pool shrinking and AI pulling talent away, every committed developer is worth more than they were two years ago, which is why the smartest money in crypto fights over a census of about twenty thousand people and why the cheapest growth you may ever buy is a better quickstart guide.

Frequently asked questions

Which blockchain has the most developers?

Ethereum. In Electric Capital's 2025 data, Ethereum attracted 16,181 new developers against Solana's 11,534, and it has passed a million lifetime contributors. Solana is the clear second and disputes parts of the count, saying thousands of its developers are missing from the data. Bitcoin and newer chains trail well behind both.

What is developer relations in crypto?

Developer relations, or DevRel, is the work of attracting and keeping the engineers who build on a blockchain or protocol. In crypto it usually covers hackathons, grants, documentation, technical content and community support. Done well, it works like a marketing funnel for builders, moving them from discovering a chain to shipping a live product that brings its own users.

Are crypto developers leaving for AI?

Many are. CoinDesk reported in March 2026 that weekly crypto code commits had fallen about 75% since early 2025, while GitHub added 36 million developers in 2025, mostly into AI projects. Experienced crypto developers have stayed, but newcomers are far more likely to choose AI, which makes each committed crypto builder more valuable.

How much do blockchains spend on developer grants?

The largest ecosystems spend hundreds of millions of dollars. The Solana Foundation reports more than $100 million in funding across over 500 projects, and ETHGlobal has handed out more than $13.5 million in grants to community projects on top of its hackathon prizes. The better question for any grant program is how many funded projects are still active a year later.



Web3 Developer Marketing: Why the Most Valuable User Writes Code

Web3 developer marketing competes for a pool of roughly 23,600 monthly active crypto developers, and that pool is shrinking. Who they are, where they live, and how to run developer acquisition like a real funnel.

By AnkhLabs Research, Growth research team··6 min read

Key takeaways

  • Web3 developer marketing competes for a tiny workforce, since Electric Capital counted 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, and code activity has fallen sharply since as builders moved to AI.

  • Asia is now home to 32% of crypto developers and 81% live outside the US, so developer relations built around San Francisco and New York events misses most of the market.

  • Ethereum, Solana and ETHGlobal run developer acquisition as a funnel of hackathons, grants and docs, while most protocols building on top of them run no developer funnel at all.

Web3 developer marketing is aimed at the most valuable user in crypto, and it's the one user who never shows up in a marketing dashboard. A developer who builds on your chain or protocol brings their product, their community and their users with them, and they tend to stay for years. The whole industry runs on a surprisingly small pool of these people. Electric Capital, whose annual report is the standard census, counted 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, which is the entire global workforce this trillion-dollar industry competes for.

The competition is fierce enough to turn into public arguments. When Electric Capital's 2025 data showed Ethereum attracting 16,181 new developers against Solana's 11,534, the Solana Foundation publicly disputed the count, claiming thousands of its developers were missing from the data. Ecosystems argue over developer numbers the way companies argue over market share, because that's exactly what they are.

A campaign buys you users one at a time. A developer brings theirs with them.

How many web3 developers are there?

There are roughly 20,000 active web3 developers worldwide. Electric Capital counted 23,613 monthly active crypto developers in 2024, down 7% on the year, and later estimates put the number near 18,000 by mid-2025, so the entire workforce behind a trillion-dollar industry would fit inside one large stadium.

The trend since then has been down, not up. In March 2026 CoinDesk reported that weekly crypto code commits had fallen roughly 75% since early 2025, from about 850,000 to 210,000, while Electric Capital's 2024 count of 23,600 was estimated to have slipped to around 18,000 by mid-2025. The same report found GitHub adding 36 million developers in 2025 alone, with most new talent going to AI projects, so crypto now competes for builders with the hottest field in software as well as with other chains.

The people who stayed are the committed ones. Electric Capital found that while total developers fell 7% in 2024, developers with two or more years of experience grew 27%, hit an all-time high, and now write 70% of all the code. The tourist era is over, and the builders left have seen every ecosystem pitch before, which raises the bar for any web3 developer marketing that relies on hype.

Where do crypto developers live now?

Most crypto developers now live outside the United States. Electric Capital's data shows Asia is the largest continent for crypto developers at 32% of the total, up from 13% in 2015, while 81% of all crypto developers live outside the US and India alone supplied 17% of new crypto developers in 2024.

Those figures come from Electric Capital's geography report, which also shows America's share has fallen by half, and from its count showing that India supplied 17% of all new crypto developers in 2024. It echoes what we found when we looked at users, because most web3 teams are marketing to the same ten million people while the growth is happening somewhere else. If your developer relations program is a series of events in San Francisco and New York, you're fishing where the fish were a decade ago.

The winners also play a long game. Ethereum recently crossed a million lifetime contributors, a number built over ten years of docs, education and community rather than any single campaign.

How do blockchains attract developers?

Blockchains attract developers with a funnel of hackathons for discovery, grants for the first real project, and documentation and community for everything after. The biggest ecosystems fund this at scale, with the Solana Foundation alone putting more than $100 million into over 500 projects, but very few measure it with the discipline they would apply to any other funnel.

The machine is real. ETHGlobal, the hackathon organizer, has run more than 95 events that produced 14,000 projects, and companies born at those events have gone on to raise over $350 million. Solana's hackathons draw over 10,000 participants from 140 countries, producing 1,412 finished projects in a single event, and the Solana Foundation has put more than $100 million into over 500 projects, with $10,000 microgrants aimed at builders in emerging markets.

Look at it as a marketer would and it's a plain funnel, with awareness at the hackathon, activation at the first deployed project, and retention in the grant and community layer. The ecosystems rarely describe it in those terms, which means most of them run it without targets, and most protocols building on top of these chains don't run a developer funnel at all.

What we'd tell a founder about web3 developer marketing

Treat developers as a funnel with stages, and measure it like one. Track how many developers discovered your protocol this month, how many deployed something, how many shipped to production and how many are still building on you a quarter later. Those are acquisition, activation and retention, and everything we've written about keeping users you paid to acquire applies. Most teams can't answer any of the four questions, which means their developer strategy is a vibe.

Your docs are your landing page, so staff them like one. A committed developer's first session with you is your documentation, and they will judge your whole company by whether the quickstart works. There's a second reason to care now, because 84% of developers use or plan to use AI tools in their work, and those tools read your docs when someone asks how to build something. Being the clean, complete answer is developer marketing you do once and benefit from every day.

Go where the new developers actually are. Seventeen percent of the world's new crypto builders came from India in 2024, and the fastest-growing communities are across Asia, Africa and Latin America. A local hackathon sponsorship, translated docs and a regional community lead cost a fraction of one Western conference booth and reach the people actually entering the industry.

Judge hackathons by what survives, not what ships. A weekend produces demos, and most demos die. The number that matters is how many hackathon projects are still active three months later, and the follow-up program that drives that number, meaning grants, mentorship and a path to users, is worth more than the event itself.

The users who compound

Nearly everything else in crypto growth, from paid users to rented attention, stops working when the spending stops, and developers are the exception. A builder who chooses your ecosystem creates products that attract users, who attract more builders, and that loop keeps turning years after the grant that started it. With the pool shrinking and AI pulling talent away, every committed developer is worth more than they were two years ago, which is why the smartest money in crypto fights over a census of about twenty thousand people and why the cheapest growth you may ever buy is a better quickstart guide.

Frequently asked questions

Which blockchain has the most developers?

Ethereum. In Electric Capital's 2025 data, Ethereum attracted 16,181 new developers against Solana's 11,534, and it has passed a million lifetime contributors. Solana is the clear second and disputes parts of the count, saying thousands of its developers are missing from the data. Bitcoin and newer chains trail well behind both.

What is developer relations in crypto?

Developer relations, or DevRel, is the work of attracting and keeping the engineers who build on a blockchain or protocol. In crypto it usually covers hackathons, grants, documentation, technical content and community support. Done well, it works like a marketing funnel for builders, moving them from discovering a chain to shipping a live product that brings its own users.

Are crypto developers leaving for AI?

Many are. CoinDesk reported in March 2026 that weekly crypto code commits had fallen about 75% since early 2025, while GitHub added 36 million developers in 2025, mostly into AI projects. Experienced crypto developers have stayed, but newcomers are far more likely to choose AI, which makes each committed crypto builder more valuable.

How much do blockchains spend on developer grants?

The largest ecosystems spend hundreds of millions of dollars. The Solana Foundation reports more than $100 million in funding across over 500 projects, and ETHGlobal has handed out more than $13.5 million in grants to community projects on top of its hackathon prizes. The better question for any grant program is how many funded projects are still active a year later.