The number of new developers involved in cryptocurrency projects fell by about 1,900, the lowest level since 2017, according to data from the website Developer Report. However, Lorenzo Valente, research director at ARK Invest, suggested that this indicator could quickly lose relevance as a result of the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In this regard, the executive emphasized that this statistic is “one of the indicators that we have always promoted in the cryptocurrency space, and I think it will soon become completely irrelevant.”
According to Valente, the onboarding of new developers has traditionally been key to assessing the health of networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. “At the time, this was very important for understanding the health of a Layer 1 or Layer 2 network,” he explained.
The logic was as follows More developers means more experimentationstrengthen our commitment to more products and human capital.
“Historically, the number and activity of developers has been important because writing code is expensive,” he said. “When a network has a large number of actual developers creating wallets, protocols, tools, infrastructure, and applications, that usually indicates there is real interest and experimentation.”
While he acknowledged it was an imperfect metric, he clarified: This served as a reasonable approximation of the effort invested in the ecosystem.
The impact of artificial intelligence on development
According to ARK managers, the relevance of the number of collaborators is changing for the following reasons: The emergence of artificial intelligence. These tools can automate code generation and reduce the time and resources required to develop software, but they also come with their own risks to protocol security and effectiveness.
“Code generation is now basically free, and one developer can now create something that previously required several people.” This logic reduces the number of developers. This does not necessarily mean a decrease in production.. Furthermore, he opined that “fewer developers should be able to produce better products.”
Furthermore, Mr. Valente introduced additional arguments related to the nature of this sector. “The cryptocurrency ecosystem is open source. You don’t need millions of developers rewriting the same thing to create a new product,” he says.
Bitcoin is an example of a lack of developers.
In a recent analysis of Bitcoin Core, the software that most nodes run, It shows a continued decline in the production developer base.
Of the 7,604 people who have contributed to this code in the past 15 years, Only 935 are still active. This means that approximately 88% abandoned the project after at least a year of inactivity.
Furthermore, participation is often superficial. 42.5% contributed only once and never came back, while 68.3% never suggested any direct changes to the code.
Attrition rates are high even among experienced developers. Companies with high change acceptance rates also have abandonment levels above 80%.
This behavior points to an aspect that artificial intelligence cannot solve: technical governance. Bitcoin Core requires not only writing code, but also reviewing it, validating it, and adjusting changes based on rigorous standards.
Unlike other more centralized environments, this process relies on informal coordination between peers and a small group of maintainers. When that base decreases, the load concentrates.
While this data does not suggest any immediate risk to Bitcoin, it does create structural tensions. Artificial intelligence can double the ability to generate code, but it will not automatically replace validation, review, and decision-making within distributed systems.
(Tag Translation) Blockchain
