Steve Ballmer once said, “The key to .net’s success is developers, developers, developers.” This is the only meaningful metric when building a new ecosystem. A strong network of developers builds applications, which in turn develops use cases, which ultimately translate into real users. Whether it’s mobile, desktop, cloud services, or blockchain, developers are the path to relevance.

Therefore, I was curious about how many developers there are in the Solana ecosystem. However, it’s important to note that much of the Solana ecosystem was initially hit hard by the collapse of FTX.

In his 2022 article, Packy sarcastically mentioned that SBF was one of the people who made Solana an interesting ecosystem. When FTX collapsed, the ecosystem lost one of its biggest supporters. New tokens are no longer listed, venture capitalists are no longer investing, and development talent may have flocked to other places to find resources.

According to recent Solana data, there have been approximately 3,000 developers developing on Solana over the past year. This number takes into account developers who contribute to public repositories and does not include people developing in private repositories on GitHub. Given the recent surge in SOL prices, more developers may turn to the ecosystem. As users flock to Solana (due to price increases), this number may increase significantly.

If we compare this number with Electric Capital's developer report, which states that there are more than 19,000 developers in the blockchain ecosystem in October 2023, then developers on Solana account for about 15% of the entire ecosystem.

Compared with the traditional Web2 ecosystem, Solana provides developers with lower costs and faster transactions, providing users with a better experience. As the consumer onboarding tool kit around Solana develops, more and more developers will build on it.

In order to build a sustainable ecosystem, it is crucial to benefit developers. Solana provides resources for developers who are serious about building on it through foundations, community hackathons, and platforms like Superteam Earn. The team raised nearly $600 million from the ecosystem's hackathons. Additionally, by targeting Airdrops for developers, Solana has unleashed a new wave of talent who can build without the pressure of raising capital.

In 2022, Bonk allocated 5% of its Airdrops to developers. Another 20% went to existing NFT projects within the ecosystem, and 10% went to artists and collectors. That 35% is worth $450 million today. Developers who held onto this token likely realized about $500,000 in gains on Bonk’s December surge, the equivalent of a pre-seed round.

The recent shift in sentiment toward Solana can be quantified by the sales of the Saga Phone. Despite being named the “worst phone of 2023,” users who bought the phone found it paid for itself as the price of Bonk rose. Owners of the phone were eligible for Bonk’s Airdrop, turning the phone into a free crypto-native phone. Since the phone was limited in quantity, similar to Bored Ape NFTs or other collectibles, traders began to realize the arbitrage opportunities and value of future Airdrops, so they rushed to buy the phone. Demand peaked, with unopened Saga phones selling for over $5,000 on Solana.

This situation demonstrates a change in sentiment around the Solana ecosystem, with Bonk being an example of a meme asset, and similar variants such as WIF. However, relying solely on meme assets may not help the ecosystem grow. In fact, consumer demand for using products on Solana, such as earning points and potential airdrops, is the main factor changing sentiment. Two recent examples are Pyth and Jito.

Pyth Network provides one-sided oracle services and increases Solana liquidity by airdropping tokens to users. Jito airdrops a portion of the supply to users who stake SOL in Jito's validator client and use LST for DeFi activities. These airdrop activities are more beneficial to small users, bringing them substantial value gains.

Interestingly, Jito's airdrop scheme adopts a tiered model, that is, from the first tier to the tenth tier, the number of JTOs received for each point gradually decreases, showing a decreasing trend. This means that the lower the level of users, the higher the value of the points they receive.

Jupiter is a DEX on Solana that has disclosed its Airdrop plan before Jito. Although people were aware that Jito would launch a token, the scale of the Airdrop was underestimated, which may be the reason why the Airdrop was not heavily utilized.

Now everyone is focused on Solana, and everyone is trying to participate in the next JTO Airdrop. Some projects such as Tensor, Kamino, Marginfi, Zeta, Meteora, Parcl, etc. have announced their points plans and converted these points into their respective tokens. Some people think that these points plans are not a good idea, but there are also objections that they can serve as loyalty points and a more transparent way to distribute tokens, and can unlock behaviors that increase the value of the product.

For example, Marginfi allocates one point per day to staking users, but four points per day to borrowing users. This system makes sense because the protocol needs borrowers. Still, it’s becoming very challenging to detect Sybil activity now, but projects like Marginfi and Zeta have a way to detect it, for example, if a wallet matches a wash transaction pattern on Zeta, its score will be set to zero.

These examples have attracted a large number of users to join the ecosystem. In our opinion, ecosystem building consists of two forces that balance each other. On the one hand, you need to be able to build culture and passion, and meme assets, points, and Airdrops solve this problem. On the other hand, you need to design great products to attract people’s curiosity and keep users. Therefore, although various aspects of Solana can be further explored, it is more important to focus on the products that developers have built over the past year.

Steve Ballmer once said, “The key to .net’s success is developers, developers, developers.” This is the only meaningful metric when building a new ecosystem. A strong network of developers builds applications, which in turn develops use cases, which ultimately translate into real users. Whether it’s mobile, desktop, cloud services, or blockchain, developers are the path to relevance.

Therefore, I was curious about how many developers there are in the Solana ecosystem. However, it’s important to note that much of the Solana ecosystem was initially hit hard by the collapse of FTX.

In his 2022 article, Packy sarcastically mentioned that SBF was one of the people who made Solana an interesting ecosystem. When FTX collapsed, the ecosystem lost one of its biggest supporters. New tokens are no longer listed, venture capitalists are no longer investing, and development talent may have flocked to other places to find resources.

According to recent Solana data, there have been approximately 3,000 developers developing on Solana over the past year. This number takes into account developers who contribute to public repositories and does not include people developing in private repositories on GitHub. Given the recent surge in SOL prices, more developers may turn to the ecosystem. As users flock to Solana (due to price increases), this number may increase significantly.

If we compare this number with Electric Capital's developer report, which states that there are more than 19,000 developers in the blockchain ecosystem in October 2023, then developers on Solana account for about 15% of the entire ecosystem.

Compared with the traditional Web2 ecosystem, Solana provides developers with lower costs and faster transactions, providing users with a better experience. As the consumer onboarding tool kit around Solana develops, more and more developers will build on it.

In order to build a sustainable ecosystem, it is crucial to benefit developers. Solana provides resources for developers who are serious about building on it through foundations, community hackathons, and platforms like Superteam Earn. The team raised nearly $600 million from the ecosystem's hackathons. Additionally, by targeting Airdrops for developers, Solana has unleashed a new wave of talent who can build without the pressure of raising capital.

In 2022, Bonk allocated 5% of its Airdrops to developers. Another 20% went to existing NFT projects within the ecosystem, and 10% went to artists and collectors. That 35% is worth $450 million today. Developers who held onto this token likely realized about $500,000 in gains on Bonk’s December surge, the equivalent of a pre-seed round.

The recent shift in sentiment toward Solana can be quantified by the sales of the Saga Phone. Despite being named the “worst phone of 2023,” users who bought the phone found it paid for itself as the price of Bonk rose. Owners of the phone were eligible for Bonk’s Airdrop, turning the phone into a free crypto-native phone. Since the phone was limited in quantity, similar to Bored Ape NFTs or other collectibles, traders began to realize the arbitrage opportunities and value of future Airdrops, so they rushed to buy the phone. Demand peaked, with unopened Saga phones selling for over $5,000 on Solana.

This situation demonstrates a change in sentiment around the Solana ecosystem, with Bonk being an example of a meme asset, and similar variants such as WIF. However, relying solely on meme assets may not help the ecosystem grow. In fact, consumer demand for using products on Solana, such as earning points and potential airdrops, is the main factor changing sentiment. Two recent examples are Pyth and Jito.

Pyth Network provides one-sided oracle services and increases Solana liquidity by airdropping tokens to users. Jito airdrops a portion of the supply to users who stake SOL in Jito's validator client and use LST for DeFi activities. These airdrop activities are more beneficial to small users, bringing them substantial value gains.

Interestingly, Jito's airdrop scheme adopts a tiered model, that is, from the first tier to the tenth tier, the number of JTOs received for each point gradually decreases, showing a decreasing trend. This means that the lower the level of users, the higher the value of the points they receive.

Jupiter is a DEX on Solana that has disclosed its Airdrop plan before Jito. Although people were aware that Jito would launch a token, the scale of the Airdrop was underestimated, which may be the reason why the Airdrop was not heavily utilized.

Now everyone is focused on Solana, and everyone is trying to participate in the next JTO Airdrop. Some projects such as Tensor, Kamino, Marginfi, Zeta, Meteora, Parcl, etc. have announced their points plans and converted these points into their respective tokens. Some people think that these points plans are not a good idea, but there are also objections that they can serve as loyalty points and a more transparent way to distribute tokens, and can unlock behaviors that increase the value of the product.

For example, Marginfi allocates one point per day to staking users, but four points per day to borrowing users. This system makes sense because the protocol needs borrowers. Still, it’s becoming very challenging to detect Sybil activity now, but projects like Marginfi and Zeta have a way to detect it, for example, if a wallet matches a wash transaction pattern on Zeta, its score will be set to zero.

These examples have attracted a large number of users to join the ecosystem. In our opinion, ecosystem building consists of two forces that balance each other. On the one hand, you need to be able to build culture and passion, and meme assets, points, and Airdrops solve this problem. On the other hand, you need to design great products to attract people’s curiosity and keep users. Therefore, although various aspects of Solana can be further explored, it is more important to focus on the products that developers have built over the past year.