Important points
- Chainlink is leading developer activity in the Solana ecosystem and has shown strong fundamentals despite recent price declines.
- Pyth, Swarms, Helium, Meteora, and Orca maintain solid commitments with a strong focus on derivatives and diversification even in a bear market.
- Chainlink leads with an activity score of 342, followed by Solana (126), Drift Protocol (19), JITO (15), Swarms (13), Pyth Network (13), Helium (12), Meteora (10), and Orca (9).
- Chainlink and other Solana-based projects demonstrate strong developer activity that counters short-term bear market sentiment and points to sustained growth over the long term.
- Builder momentum for Solana-based projects will prioritize user growth and value over temporary price drops, ensuring DeFi/gaming dominance by 2026.
The top developer activity in the Solana ecosystem is Chainlink, followed by Solana and Wormhole. Data shared by Santiment. Below the list were other Solana-based projects such as Drift Protocol, JITO, Swarms, Pyth Network, Helium, Meteora, and Orca. Sentiment evaluated its GitHub-based development process to reach this conclusion. All selected projects had activities focused on derivatives, decentralization and liquidity.
Chainlink secured the top spot by a wide margin. Chainlink topped the list with an activity score of 342, significantly outperforming its peers. This was followed by Solana (126), Drift Protocol (19), JITO (15), Swarms (13), Pyth Network (13), Helium (12), Meteora (10), and Orca (9). This proves that Chainlink is deeply integrated into the Solana ecosystem.
Market sentiment for Chainlink etc.
Despite being the most active developer in the Solana ecosystem, market sentiment towards Chainlink and others was poor. Many of these projects have had double-digit losses in the past 30 days. The prospects of these projects have taken a big hit due to increased selling pressure on these tokens.
Despite strong developer activity in the Solana ecosystem from mid-November to mid-December, weak price performance led to an overall bearish market sentiment towards these projects. According to the Fear & Greed Index, Chainlink is showing extreme fear, with an index of 16, Green Day at only 47%, and volatility at 4.75%, predicting short-term price declines. Despite the increase in trading volume, the monthly decline rate is over 12-19%.
The long-term impact of developer fitness despite poor market sentiment
Despite the bearish outlook in the short term, Chainlink and other Solana-based projects such as Solana, Drift Protocol, JITO, Swarms, Pyth Network, Helium, Meteora, and Orca have shown strong development activity that counters short-term bearish market sentiment and indicates sustained long-term growth.
Solana’s developer community has grown 83% compared to last year, adding over 11,500 new builders who are actively coding in projects like Pyth, JITO, Drift, and more. These developers make many code changes (high “commits”) that keep the network strong and reliable even when cryptocurrency prices fall. Upgrades like Firedancer increase transaction speeds to 65,000 per second, making Solana faster and cheaper for real-world applications such as: Asset Tokenization (RWA).
The strength of developers of Solana-based projects ignores short-term market ups and downs, and Solana will become the leader in the field of high-speed DeFi apps (lending, trading) and gaming by 2026. The stronger your developer base, the more users and value you will gain over time. This means that Chainlink and other Solana-based projects will have positive long-term performance despite the current temporary downside.
