The Leading Position of the US in Web3 Was Taken Away by Russia and India

Written by C, Fiona

Last updated: 2022-05-12

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The leading position of the United States in Web3 development was taken away by Russia and India.

According to electric capital, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm, the overall market share of Web3 developers in the United States is declining. From the 2021 developer report of electric capital, the absolute number of Web3 developers in the United States has increased by 200% since 2017, while in the same period, this figure has increased by 300% in the rest of the world.

Using open source data, analysts estimate that as of December 2021, there were nearly 18500 Web3 developers, up 75% from about 10500 in January of that year. Since the report comes entirely from open resources, it acknowledges that it may have underestimated the total number.

Reporting method

The report uses two methods to infer the location of developers, namely, the code submission timestamp during U.S. working hours (defined as 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time), and social materials associated with developer materials on platforms such as GitHub.

The historical share chart of codes submitted during working hours in the United States shows that the share of the United States decreased from 65% in 2012 to 55% of YTD in 2022. As a reference, the report points out that among mature open source projects using the same time zone method, the historical market share of the United States remained relatively stable over the same period.

Limitations of the method

However, the report also acknowledges that this approach is likely to include more U.S. developers because time zones overlap with Canada and Latin America. In addition, many Web3 engineers in the United States also work outside standard working hours.

For cross checking, analysts looked at the developers’ social profiles and found that their self-reported locations coincided with the time of code submission in those locations.
Among developers reporting locations, the proportion of developers in the United States decreased from 47% in 2015 to 39% in 2017 and 29% in 2021.

Conclusion

In India and Russia, the number of Web3 developers in the reporting sites increased the most, rising to 5.3% and 4.3% of the market share, respectively. Although the United States has lost nearly 20% of its market share since 2015, “others”, that is, the collective of developers who ignore reporting their country of origin, rose to 17.5%.

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