Back in late 2024, I shared a post visualizing Bitcoin Core contributors.
Fast forward to today. With an LLM sidekick by my side, I thought: Why not go deeper?
After weeks of back-and-forth validation and pipeline building, I'm excited to share:
Orange Dev Tracker (dashboard) – a comprehensive dashboard decoding Bitcoin's development DNA.
Here's what you'll discover:
The Contributor Universe: Every contributor, meticulously deduplicated, to the extent possible*. See their contributions broken down by type (consensus, test, etc.) and impact.
Functional DNA: The codebase dissected into 11 categories (Consensus, Wallet, P2P, etc.). Watch which parts of the fortress are expanding and which are being reinforced.
The Global Heartbeat: A 15-year heatmap revealing Bitcoin's evolution from US-centric development to a truly global, 24/7 operation.
The Professional Era: Track the seismic shift from volunteer hobbyists to sponsored developers. See how organizations like Chaincode, Spiral, and Brink are shaping Bitcoin's future.
The 1% Rule: Visual proof that less than 12 people drive 65% of critical changes. Meet the guardians of the protocol.
Recruitment Velocity:
- How many new contributors join each year
- Retention curves showing who sticks around
- Churn vs. net growth patterns
Global Distribution: Showing contributors from every corner of the world. We are getting new contributors from Asia and Africa?
Love your feedback!
- What metrics or views are missing?
- Do you disagree with any categorizations? Or see errors.
- How can we make this more insightful
Check it out and let me know what you think:
Orange Dev Tracker (dashboard) (lands directly on the dashboard)
(Scrollytelling courtesy of Gemini Pro – why not if I can get it with almost no effort?) (full story)
Some images so you feel it's worth checking it out:
Nice work, thanks!
I must admit, I find this chart a bit concerning.
Thanks for jumping in. Curious to know what do you see in the chart.
Also,
1: You’ve been in the trenches, so love to get your thoughts on: what numbers or views would actually help you day-to-day?
2: Any buckets or labels feel off? Happy to re-cut the data so it maps to how contributors really think about the code
If this turns out useful, will love to make it some sort of engineering analytics or developer health dashboard.
It's all awesome.
If you're thinking about what's next, I'd love a text description, a single sentence or a few lines, describing the trend shown in a graph/chart or what the distribution suggests.
You do this sparingly already, and it's super helpful, so if it were in more places I think it'd go a long way.
Yes, for sure, that's the right way to do it. I'll add them in the next iteration