A structural shift in developer talent is resetting the competitive landscape among Layer 1 blockchains, with Solana’s developer base expanding to 23% of the market while Ethereum’s share has fallen to 31%, according to a new report from Syndica.
The migration is driven by tangible performance metrics, with developers moving to the chain offering lower transaction costs and higher throughput. “The transactions are happening on Solana. Activity moved to where the cost and speed make sense,” Ben Nadareski, CEO and co-founder of Solstice, a DeFi protocol on Solana, said in a statement.
Data from the report, which tracks developer distribution, shows a stark divergence. Ethereum’s mindshare among active blockchain developers has collapsed from a peak of 82% in 2020 to 31% today. In contrast, Solana attracted 4,100 new developers in 2025, compared to 3,700 for Ethereum. Solana now accounts for 60% of all weekly active developers in the non-EVM category, more than the next five competing chains combined. At its current price of $83, SOL has yet to fully price in this fundamental shift, while Ethereum (ETH) trades at $2,300.
This trend suggests the industry’s “integrated chain” thesis is gaining ground. Ethereum’s pivot to a rollup-centric roadmap has fragmented its developer experience across multiple Layer 2 networks like Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism, each requiring separate tooling and liquidity. While these L2s are innovating, with networks like the recently launched RISE promising speeds of over 100,000 transactions per second, the approach creates complexity. Solana’s monolithic architecture, which keeps talent and capital in a single execution environment, appears to be a more efficient model for attracting and retaining builders. The data shows Solana’s developer base is also more distributed, with the top 1% of developers accounting for 31% of code commits, compared to 51% on Ethereum, indicating a healthier, less centralized ecosystem.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
