The Top Layer 2 Networks by Development Activity in April

While the crypto market witnessed significant bloodshed in April, layer-2 networks recorded substantial developer activity, signaling a strong belief in these projects despite the latest slumps in the value of their native tokens.

A tweet by crypto data analytics platform Santiment revealed that the top ten layer-2 networks were selected by counting each project’s non-redundant GitHub activity and averaging their daily activity over the past 30 days.

According to Santiment, analysts obtained the projects’ GitHub activities from their repositories through a back-tested process to ensure that only the teams’ efforts to improve and innovate were included. A project’s GitHub activity can be used to determine whether the team is actively working on the protocol. High developer activity could also reduce the probability that a project is an exit scam.

Through Santiment’s methodology, analysts discovered that Ethereum-based scaling protocol Optimism emerged as the top network with the highest developer activity of 541.33 commits, 146% more than the next project. Conversely, its native token, OP, plunged more than 17% in the last 30 days.

Following Optimism is the permissionless decentralized zero knowledge-rollup network Starknet, which recorded a developer activity of 220.23. Despite Starknet’s high activity, its native token, STRK, lost roughly 36% of its value in April.

Arbitrum came third with a developer activity of 110.77, while its native asset, ARB, fell 32% within the same period. Next is the modular scaling protocol Cartesi, Immutable X, and Skale Network, which came fourth, fifth, and sixth, with developer activities of 56.97, 49.07, and 28.07, respectively. Their native assets also witnessed notable declines, running into double digits.

The last four projects on the list are Bitcoin layer-2 sidechain MintLayer, and Ethereum-based networks Polygon, MetisDAO, and Mantle, with developer activities of 23.53, 20.43, 7.87, and 5.33. Like other projects, their native tokens also recorded substantial losses in April.