Santiment ranks top crypto projects by 30-day development activity

Blockchain analytics firm Santiment has released its latest ranking of crypto projects by development activity over the past 30 days. The top ten are MetaMask, Eigen Cloud, Dash, Dfinity, Uniswap, Polkadot, Kusama, OriginTrail, XRP, and Hedera.

Santiment’s development activity metric tracks meaningful contributions to GitHub repositories. GitHub is the platform where most open-source software teams store, review, and update their code.

MetaMask, the widely used self-custody wallet, appears first on this month’s list. It is followed by Eigen Cloud, the cloud infrastructure arm of EigenLayer.

Dash is a veteran payments-focused coin, while Dfinity is the organization behind the Internet Computer. Uniswap brings decentralized finance to the list. Polkadot and its experimental sibling Kusama represent the multichain camp. OriginTrail, XRP, and Hedera round out the group, leaning toward data integrity, cross-border payments, and enterprise use cases.

Polkadot’s showing is the least surprising entry. The network has more than 700 public repositories on GitHub, a sign of how broad its development footprint is. Polkadot and Kusama have ranked near the top of Santiment’s development charts for several years. Kusama functions as Polkadot’s canary network, a live testing ground where new features get tried before reaching the main chain.

Eigen Cloud is the newer face in the rankings. Its parent, EigenLayer, raised $100 million in a Series B round in February 2024 and launched its mainnet in April 2024. The team also laid out plans for an aggressive development push after launch.

Uniswap’s team has been working on Uniswap v4. The upgrade is designed to let developers attach customizable extensions to smart contracts.

Hedera has been expanding its enterprise relationships through the Hedera Grant Program. The program aims to grow its developer ecosystem and has backing from major corporate names including Google and IBM.

Background: why development activity gets watched

Santiment has published development activity rankings for years. High development activity has historically been associated with later price appreciation. It is not a reliable short-term trading signal, however.

The metric also has blind spots. Projects that keep significant work in private repositories may look quieter than they really are. Conversely, a busy GitHub does not guarantee the work is valuable, as plenty of activity can go into maintenance rather than new features.

What this means for investors and builders

For investors, the ranking works best as a filter rather than a buy list. It highlights which teams are actively investing engineering hours in their products right now.

Investors who use the data well tend to track it across multiple periods. A project that keeps showing up month after month tells a more convincing story than one that spikes once and disappears.

Development activity should sit alongside other measures such as user growth, fees, and on-chain usage.