Top 10 DeFi Projects Ranked by Development Activity

TL;DR

• Notable DeFi projects in the rankings are Synthetix, Uniswap, and Osmosis.
• The approach to assessing development activity centers on highlighting key programming events across various blockchains, while also considering community size and additional factors.

The Same Leaders

Crypto analytics firm Santiment recently reported on the leading 10 Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects based on monthly development engagement.

Synthetix Network, with an index score of 266.57, takes the lead. The price of the native token SNX has increased by roughly 5% over the last 30 days, currently trading around $1.40 (according to CoinGecko). However, it remains below the yearly peak of $5.10 achieved in March and the all-time high exceeding $27 from February 2021.

dydx (DYDX) ranks second with an index score of 170.93. In contrast to SNX, the price of this asset has fallen sharply over the past month, dropping nearly 15% and falling below $1. Interestingly, SNX and DYDX also topped the previous research.

Lido DAO Token (LDO) and Injective (INJ) have moved up and now occupy the third and fourth spots, respectively. Osmosis (OSMO) has slipped slightly and rounds out the top five.

Other DeFi projects further down the list include Uniswap (UNI), FOX Token (FOX), Centrifuge (CFG), Maker (MKR), and Origin DeFi Governance (OGV). 

The Research’s Methodology

According to the Santiment team, the Ecosystem Dev Activity Dashboard shows the number of software development events produced on various blockchains and their related dApps.

“These events are meticulously filtered and predefined to reflect genuine programming advancement, ensuring that no low-value actions are considered. This process allows any crypto enthusiast to easily identify the most active crypto ecosystems available,” the research group clarified.

Furthermore, the team emphasized that understanding the size of the community behind each project is crucial to assessing how many members are developers and active contributors.

“This can be evaluated by examining their activity on GitHub. The greater the development activity a project exhibits, the higher the likelihood that their product will expand and gain adoption among users,” the statement adds.

Lastly, Santiment noted a crucial distinction between development activity and GitHub activity. The former includes only select types of events (excluding commits, forks, comments, task management events, etc.). Conversely, GitHub activity encompasses various factors beyond commits.

“One significant difference between Dev Activity and GitHub Activity is that Dev Activity enables fairer comparisons between different organizations. This is attributed to the fact that some events filtered out from Dev Activity are associated with Issues and Issue Comments,” the team concluded.