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.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it seems to show the commit count trending down since May 2025. It makes me think that the drama and general increase in harassment of Core contributors has been at least distracting Bitcoin Core contributors if not outright making them reconsider their career choices.
I'll take this 'concern' as worth exploring.
methodology: compare pre/post commit activity (count and consistency) to see if there's any correlation with the drama. I'll use May 2025 as one cutoff date to start, and we can repeat this for other key moments or drill down into specific developers/maintainers
I was surprised how you identify me, and the labels of my contributions are confusing:
E.g., I opened the following PR in 2024 and it got merged in 2025, but neither of those two bars lists any Tests.
I’m also not sure how you compiled that list of Maintainers. Some of the dates seem incorrect to me (e.g. Pieter stepped back in 2022), Luke and Cory never were Bitcoin Core maintainers, and some other people are missing. Perhaps check out this: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/176/5406
Issue: 2024 Tests Not Showing
Root cause: My categorisation logic had a priority flaw. I defined:
Wallet category rule: src/wallet/
Tests/QA category rule: src/test/, test/, or src/bench/
Conflict: Files in src/wallet/test/ matched both patterns. The wallet rule took precedence, so test files were incorrectly categorized as wallet code rather than tests/QA.
Fix: Adjusting logic to catch component-level test directories (e.g., src/[component]/test/) before falling back to component categorisation.
On Maintainer Tracking
Fixed the 'relay race' chart using:
Static file source: Your Stack Exchange maintainer list
Merge commits to identify maintainer activity
Verification: Cross-checking against the trusted-keys file to confirm maintainer identities
Thanks for pointing out the discrepancy. I'd appreciate it if you could flag any other data points that don't look right and need fixing
You’re welcome. I’ll let you know if I notice anything else.
this part is fixed.
I'll refine the impact profile to make it more explanatory, in case it's confusing
Sweet thanks. I hadn’t looked at the Impact Profile yet, so have no comment on that yet.
Still surprised that it lists me as AlSzacrel.
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