Despite weak market sentiment and price pressure across many tokens, development activity in the cryptocurrency sector has increased over the past month, according to the latest data from Santiment. The analytics firm's rankings track meaningful GitHub code contributions, highlighting where builders are concentrating their efforts and signaling long-term conviction beneath short-term market volatility.
MetaMask's mUSD initiative recorded the highest overall development activity, significantly outpacing other projects. The wallet provider has sharply increased contributions as it pushes to make self-custody more accessible, focusing on prediction market features and expanded social login options aimed at onboarding mainstream users.
Infrastructure and interoperability-focused projects dominate the upper ranks. Hedera continued its climb as development intensified around enterprise-grade scaling and the Hiero initiative, which is moving Hedera's core codebase into a fully open-source structure under the Linux Foundation. Chainlink maintained strong activity as it evolves beyond oracles into a broader interoperability layer, with ongoing work tied to live bank settlements and real-time equities data streams.
Several layer-1 networks remain consistent developer magnets. Internet Computer (ICP) has ranked near the top for nine consecutive months, with current efforts centered on its Mission 70 tokenomics reset designed to significantly lower inflation by the end of 2026. Cardano (ADA) also moved higher as it enters its Voltaire governance phase, with development focused on decentralized treasury management and further optimization of its Hydra scaling solution. Meanwhile, Aptos (APT) continues to push performance improvements through upgrades to its Move programming language and expanding enterprise partnerships.
Scaling and DeFi-oriented projects remain highly active. Starknet is concentrating development on a roughly fourfold throughput increase and the expansion of its BTCFi ecosystem. Within the Sui ecosystem, both DeepBook and Sui posted rising activity, with DeepBook rolling out margin trading and gasless transactions, and Sui's core development targeting sub-400 millisecond transaction speeds.
Historically, periods of strong builder activity during quieter market phases have often preceded renewed adoption, making these trends closely watched by long-term investors and ecosystem participants.
