# @LorenzoARK: Monthly developer count in crypto fell, AI makes it irrelevant

Source: https://x.com/LorenzoARK/status/2038687817404997785
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/LorenzoARK-Monthly-developer-count-in-crypto-fell-AI-makes-it-irrelevant?index=0x69d48894abfccf0ae23279d7ce4c3fbc40d2074eb79353f3b2616881a1a5d32e940e0282
Submitted by rvolz.eth on 2026-04-07 UTC, 4 upvotes, 2 comments

## Summary

Lorenzo argues that monthly developer count in crypto, a metric he says the industry has long relied on, is becoming irrelevant as AI makes code generation essentially free. He notes that the monthly developer count has just fallen to levels not seen since 2017. Historically, developer count and activity served as a rough proxy for human capital and mindshare in an L1 or L2 ecosystem because writing code was expensive. With AI, one developer can produce what previously took several, so a lower count may reflect fewer developers producing better products rather than a weaker ecosystem. He asks what Electric Capital and Avichal think of the view.

## Article

New monthly developer count in crypto just fell to levels not seen since 2017.

One of the metrics we have always preached in crypto and I think is going to be completely irrelevant very quickly is the developers activity or count.

Back in the day this was really important to understand an L1/L2 health.

Historically, developer count and activity mattered because writing code was expensive. If a chain had a lot of real developers shipping wallets, protocols, tooling, SDKs, infra, and apps, that usually meant there was genuine mindshare, and experimentation. It was an imperfect metric, but it was still a decent proxy for how much human capital was committed to the ecosystem.

First, code generation is essentially free. One developer can now produce the output that previously required several people. So a lower developer count may not mean a weaker ecosystem at all. You could have fewer developers producing better products.

So with AI, developer activity becomes less useful as a health metric because it stops being a scarce input. When something becomes cheap and abundant, it usually loses value as a signal.

Crypto is open source. We don’t need millions of developers all rewriting the same thing to build new products. Smart contracts were always meant to be capital- and human-efficient.

Curious what the folks at @electriccapital @avichal think

## Comments

**tim**: Isn‘t this just cope? 

**rvolz.eth**: He just didn't want to say out loud that the really "human-efficient" smart contracts will probably be built by machines. Proven with Lean 4 or similar.