On December 14, 2024, Solana has emerged as the leading blockchain ecosystem for new developers, surpassing Ethereum for the first time since 2016. According to a report by Electric Capital, 7,625 new developers joined Solana in the past year, contributing to an impressive 83% year-over-year growth with over 2,000 monthly active developers.
Solana's rapid adoption, particularly in Asia, has positioned it as the top developer ecosystem in India and second in the US, UK, Canada, and China. It is also gaining traction in Africa, notably Nigeria, thanks to its grassroots approach focused on decentralization and talent development.
The network has become a preferred platform for building cost-effective applications, powering 81% of decentralized exchange (DEX) transactions and 64% of NFT minting across all blockchains. In 2024, Solana facilitated transactions from 1.7 million unique wallets, significantly outpacing its closest competitor.
Moreover, Solana's DeFi ecosystem has seen on-chain settlement volumes exceed $574 billion in 2024, with its share of total value locked (TVL) outside Ethereum rising from 3% to 25%. Despite Solana's growth, Ethereum remains the largest blockchain ecosystem in terms of overall developer activity, although its monthly active developers fell by 17% to 6,244.
Ethereum’s layer-2 solutions have thrived, with a 67% increase in activity since 2021, while Base has captured 25% of all original on-chain code logic in 2024.