2020 was an interesting year for the blockchain and crypto space. With bulls taking charge of the markets and Bitcoin breaching all time highs, the investors and ‘hodlers’ saw a good time. But how did the blockchain protocols do in terms of development? What were the key trends in core development and developer contribution over the past year? Will they continue this year as well? To answer these questions, Outlier Ventures performed an in-depth technical analysis of the codebase of top projects in the blockchain and crypto landscape, released in our Blockchain Development Trends 2021 report.

Ethereum is still the most actively developed blockchain protocol, followed by Cardano and Bitcoin.

Multi-chain protocols including Polkadot, Cosmos and Avalanche are seeing a consistent rise in core development.

The most actively developed DeFi projects were Maker, Gnosis and Synthetix, with Aave and Bancor showing the most growth.

SushiSwap, Yearn Finance, and Curve Finance all launched in 2020, quickly grew toward and beyond the development activity and size of most other DeFi protocols.

Mudit Marda, Technology Analyst, and Aron van Ammers, CTO and Founding Partner, discuss insights from the report and the state of open source development in Blockchain and DeFi with three top projects from the space:

Blockchain and DeFi Development Trends 2021