The annual Dappros developer-stats update, in the series we’ve been running since 2018. Earlier instalments: the original 2018 study, the 2023 update, and our 2024 mid-year check-in. This 2025 update covers year-over-year trends across the major ecosystems and the new hybrid role we flagged in 2024.
The headline picture
2025 was the year the blockchain developer population grew through quiet adoption rather than hype. The total headcount is higher than at the end of 2024, but the growth came predominantly from two sources: AI engineers crossing over into agent + wallet work, and traditional enterprise developers shipping into regulated verticals (healthcare, finance, insurance) where blockchain primitives are starting to be specified rather than experimented with.
Where the growth landed
- Ethereum + EVM L2s. Still the largest single bucket. The Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism developer pools all expanded, with mainnet itself remaining the anchor for high-value workloads.
- Solana. Continued strong year-over-year growth, especially in consumer apps, DePIN, and the agent + payments overlap.
- Cosmos and appchains. Steady — the sovereignty-conscious bucket continues to attract teams that want their own L1 with custom validator sets.
- Bitcoin L2s and ordinals. Stable growth from a smaller base; meaningful momentum but not a top-line shift.
The hybrid AI-and-blockchain role is now real
The role we flagged as emerging in our 2024 update is now a real, hireable, recognisable archetype in 2025: developers who build AI agents that own wallets, sign on-chain actions, and operate against decentralized identity primitives. Job titles vary (“AI engineer”, “agent developer”, “Web3 + AI engineer”) but the skill mix is consistent: LLM tooling fluency on one side, EVM mechanics and key management on the other.
This is now the single fastest-growing sub-category in everything we observe. We expect it to be 30–50% of net new “blockchain developer” hiring in 2026.
Geography
The geographic distribution is broadly stable from 2024: US, India, China, the UK, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and Romania remain the largest absolute pools. Per capita leaders are Singapore, the UAE, and Switzerland. Notably, hiring activity in the UAE has accelerated through 2025 on the back of regulatory clarity and capital concentration; expect that line to keep moving.
What’s softer
- NFT-specific roles (“NFT engineer”, “marketplace developer”) have continued to compress as the 2021–2022 cohort moved on or pivoted into broader Web3 roles.
- Pure DeFi protocol engineering has consolidated into a smaller number of established teams; the new-grad pipeline into it is thinner than it was in 2022.
- “Blockchain consultancy” headcount in tier-1 firms is mostly flat — the work has moved into product teams.
What to watch for 2026
- Agent + wallet + identity skill stacking becoming a named track in technical recruiting.
- Healthcare and insurance verticals overtaking finance as the largest source of “we need someone who can do Web3” demand outside crypto-native firms.
- The MCP and AI-agent-infrastructure tooling stabilising into something that looks more like a normal SDK ecosystem.
- The next round of compensation data showing the hybrid role commanding a premium over both pure-blockchain and pure-AI roles.
We’ll continue this series annually. The full 2026 update will arrive on the same Q4 cadence.
Related from Ethora: Ethora — the chat and AI agent SDK built on years of Dappros R&D in this space.