State of the
Cardano Developer Ecosystem
An annual survey to equip the technical community with better insights for more meaningful actions.
2025 Survey
2025 Survey
More than 100 developers responded to the fourth edition of the survey, covering a wide range of topics, from functional programming experience to satisfaction with Cardano tooling, services, and documentation.
The survey gives insights into Cardano’s evolving technical landscape and helps to identify important trends across the community. This allows anyone building tools or applications on Cardano to make more informed decisions.
Both the report and the code for rendering it are open source, so anyone can explore the results, filter them by different parameters, and reach their own conclusions. A dedicated GitHub discussion board enables ongoing collaboration and feedback.
Key 2024 Takeaways
Key 2024 Takeaways
196
developers responded to the 2024 edition of survey, with over half reporting more than seven years of experience. The increase in newcomers highlights rising accessibility and continued growth in the Cardano ecosystem.
Functional alignment
Most respondents identified having experience with functional programming, reinforcing Cardano’s foundation in rigorous, correctness-focused design. Aiken’s rapid adoption reflects the community’s shift toward modern, purpose-built smart contract tools.
Evolving tooling
Aiken remained the leading choice for smart contract development, while Mesh, Lucid Evolution, Mithril, and Dolos showed expanding adoption. These trends illustrate a rapidly maturing and diversified tooling landscape.
Documentation gap
Documentation remains the ecosystem’s primary challenge. Many developers pointed to relying on Discord or source code for answers, underscoring the need for clearer, more complete, and easily discoverable resources.
Methodology
Methodology
- The survey has about 30 questions each year and combines a small number of open questions with a majority of single and multiple choice questions.
- It aims to ask comprehensive questions while remaining straightforward and easy for respondents to complete in about 10 to 15 minutes.
- It covers both demographic and technical topics so as to simultaneously assess the composition of the ecosystem and the relevance of the insights.
- After about two weeks, the Foundation’s team compiles and interprets the results, with the subsequent public report published on GitHub.