Sharplink CEO: One Million Ethereum Developers – Who Can Compete?

Original Author: Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom

Compiled by: Qin Xiaofeng, Odaily Planet Daily (@QinXiaofeng 888 )

Editor's Note: On June 15, ETH staged a strong rebound, surging over 10% in a single day, reversing its recent weakness. Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom published a long post on X titled "Milestone: Ethereum Developer Count Surpasses One Million."

He argues that Ethereum's core advantage is not speed, but its ability to aggregate the largest and deepest talent pool in the space. Its true moat lies in the long-term ecosystem built through composability, standard-setting, and credible neutrality. These builders are now focused on cutting-edge issues like scalability and quantum resistance, continuously cementing Ethereum's position as the default operating system for the financial internet. (Recommended reading: "Sharplink CEO: Selling ETH Now Is Like Selling Amazon During the Dot-Com Bubble")

Below is the original text by Joseph Chalom, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily. Enjoy~

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I just returned from Asia, where I met with Ethereum developers and ecosystem leaders. Special mentions to Nonce Classic, Four Pillars, and DSRV in Seoul, our friends at SNZ, and the recently launched Ethereum Community Hub in Hong Kong—Asia's first permanent physical Ethereum community space, supported by the Ethereum Foundation.

What struck me most was not just the enthusiasm, but the rigor and ambition of the local builders. The quality of projects, the experimental spirit, and the long-term thinking emerging from the global Ethereum ecosystem are truly impressive and inspiring.

These vibrant individuals give a face to a significant number: According to Electric Capital, Ethereum's lifetime developer count has surpassed one million—specifically 1,012,824 unique contributors. No other ecosystem in the crypto space comes close.

A Milestone Worth Pausing For

One million is a round number, and round numbers are often hollow, but not this time. It represents the largest pool of technical talent ever assembled around an open, permissionless blockchain network—and crucially, this talent pool is still deepening and expanding.

Of this million, approximately 232,000 developers remained active over the past twelve months.

Why Ethereum: The Truly Critical Question

For years, crypto discussions have revolved around speed, fees, and throughput. Every new chain claims to be "faster than Ethereum." But the most important question in crypto was never "Which chain is fastest?" but rather:

"Where will the best builders choose to build for the long term?"

On this front, Ethereum remains unique. Its advantage is not just technical; it is institutional, cultural, economic, and combinatorial—a decade-long accumulation of developers, infrastructure, standards, tools, liquidity, research, applications, and social collaboration that no other ecosystem can replicate.

Ethereum has become the default operating system for programmable finance and internet-native capital formation.

What Are This Million Building, and Why Does It Deepen the Moat?

Why this million developers matters critically is what they are working on right now. Today's focus is on the industry's most difficult and high-stakes issues: core protocol scalability, privacy, quantum resistance, and the agentic systems that will run on top.

Glamsterdam — Protecting Core Values in Innovation. The planned Glamsterdam upgrade in 2026 demonstrates how Ethereum advances while safeguarding its core values. Key changes include enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) enabling parallel execution and higher throughput, and a potentially higher gas limit—all significantly increasing Layer 1 capacity. Scaling for future demand while ensuring credible neutrality, security, and fair MEV distribution—this is the moat in action.

Synchronous Composability — Making Multiple Rollups Feel Like One Chain. Composability has always been Ethereum's superpower; the next leap is extending it across Layer 2s. Native Rollups and "Based Rollups," combined with synchronous composability, are the answer. A contract on one Rollup can directly call a contract on the mainnet or another Rollup within the same atomic transaction—no bridges, no waiting. Linea, the Ethereum Economic Zone, Gnosis, Zisk, and teams collaborating with the Ethereum Foundation are combining this design with real-time proofs. The result: dozens of Rollups start working like a single chain, not isolated networks. This is a direct response to critics' fragmentation concerns.

Quantum Resistance — Ethereum's Most Significant Leading Edge. No major ecosystem is better prepared for the post-quantum era than Ethereum. The "Lean Ethereum" roadmap, the Ethereum Foundation's post-quantum security dedicated team formed in early 2026, the pq.ethereum.org information hub, and over a dozen client teams running post-quantum interoperability devnets weekly—all constitute a coordinated open-source migration plan targeting around 2029. When quantum risk becomes a reality, institutions managing trillions in assets will care about one thing: which chain was ready first and most comprehensively.

The Moat Beyond Developers: Composability, Standards, and Trust

This developer advantage is self-reinforcing, stemming from how Ethereum is built. Its deepest network effect is not liquidity but the depth of composability: applications interact like interoperable financial LEGO bricks—lending, stablecoins, exchanges, wallets, tokenized assets, oracles, Layer 2 Rollups—all interacting through shared standards, meaning developers never have to start from scratch. The EVM is crypto's application layer; Solidity skills are transferable across Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, zkSync, Scroll, Linea, and hundreds of other networks.

Learning the Ethereum tech stack maximizes optionality, fueling a flywheel: more developers, more tools, more liquidity, more institutions, which in turn attract more developers to build composable protocols and assets. Liquidity begets liquidity. Composability begets composability.

Furthermore, Ethereum dominates where value truly concentrates, not just where the noise is loudest:

Three forces further entrench this leading advantage:

• Credible neutrality — Secured by over 900,000 validators (compared to ~800 for Solana), this decentralization and platform neutrality are highly valued by large institutions.
• Modularity — Rollups like Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism don't fragment Ethereum; they expand it into an increasingly interconnected modular internet economy, while inheriting mainnet security.
• Culture — Ethereum disproportionately attracts the top researchers, cryptographers, and EIP standard authors who set the direction for the entire industry. This last advantage is also the hardest to fork.

There Is Only One Ethereum

Generating on-chain activity is one thing. Being the long-term coordination layer for internet-native finance—the layer trusted by the world's largest financial institutions—is another. Ethereum dominates the mindshare of large asset owners, who prioritize trust, security, and liquidity above all. I experienced this firsthand during my tenure at BlackRock.

In technology markets, ecosystems consolidate over time around standards, liquidity, and developer mindshare. This is Ethereum's moat.

After speaking with these developers, builders, and ecosystem leaders in Seoul and Hong Kong, I am more confident than ever in Ethereum's competitive advantage. I met the talent building the next generation of financial infrastructure—the future founders of our industry and the architects of agentic finance. These are the individuals and teams who will change the world.

Ethereum's future is happening right now.