Fewer Developers, Fewer Changes: Is Crypto Finally Maturing?

Today, CoinDesk published a summary of some interesting statistics compiled by Artemis Analytics: developer activity in cryptocurrency projects has dropped by 75% over the past year.

The data refers to the number of weekly code change proposals submitted to blockchain-related repositories on GitHub. A year ago there were about 850,000 of them; now there are roughly 210,000. The number of active developers in the crypto space has also declined - from around 10,200 to about 4,600.

And this decline cannot simply be explained by a bear market. Roughly half of the period in question actually fell during bullish months, when both Bitcoin and the broader crypto market reached new all-time highs more than once.

So it seems people are not leaving because the money has disappeared from the sector. But they are leaving this particular field - cryptocurrency development. Overall developer activity on GitHub is still growing: in 2025 alone the platform added 36 million new users, and the number of new code change proposals increased by 25%.

Still, I would not rush to sound the alarm. Take Bitcoin, for example: it has been working reliably for many years. And if something already works well, why change it? Perhaps other blockchain projects are gradually reaching the same stage.

Are you satisfied with the cryptocurrency you usually use? Does it do everything you expect from it?

• If yes, then there is nothing wrong with fewer changes happening in its codebase.
• And if not - welcome to Rabbit.io, where you can swap it for something that has been working reliably for years.