Inflated developer counts from (1) forks of non-crypto upstreams and (2) contribute-to-earn programs
Hi — we've been leaning on Open Dev Data heavily (snapshot 20260715T125411) and
hit two systematic sources of inflated per-ecosystem developer counts. Both
reproduce from the public parquet files. Filing together since they surfaced from
the same analysis; happy to split.
1. Forks of large non-crypto upstreams import their contributor graph
When a project forks a big non-crypto repo (e.g. to submit a PR upstream), the
fork carries the upstream's entire contributor history, which then counts toward
the ecosystem.
Concrete example: stellar/winget-pkgs (a fork of microsoft/winget-pkgs) is
the single largest repo by recent active devs mapped to Stellar — ~1,440 devs, 2
stars, ~27% of Stellar's recent active developers, and 1,440 of 1,444 appear in
no other Stellar repo. (PR to remove this specific repo submitted separately;
you already did the same for NethermindEth/winget-pkgs in
migrations/2025-05-01T112748_mutations.)
The general question: would it be feasible to systematically exclude
forks-of-external-upstreams from ecosystem mappings, or flag repos whose
contributor set is dominated by the fork parent? The class extends beyond winget
(e.g. homebrew-core forks, etc.).
2. Contribute-to-earn / bounty programs inflate MAD
A large share of some ecosystems' recent activity comes from organized
contribute-to-earn programs (OnlyDust-style) rather than independent teams. In
the current snapshot, Stellar shows a distinctive signature across ~150+ repos:
- forks far exceeding stars (often 40–70×)
- the same ~1,300 developers cycling across many repos (2.5× cross-repo overlap
in the top 20)
- uniform ~5 commits per developer
- new, near-zero-star repos each showing 130–230 "developers"
(e.g. QuickLendX/quicklendx-protocol, StellarLend/stellarlend-contracts,
EarnQuestOne/stellar_Earn)
These are real commits, so it isn't a taxonomy bug — but it materially changes
how per-chain MAD reads. Screening it out drops Stellar's 6-month single-chain
developer growth from ~+2,170 to between +666 and +1,350 depending on filter
aggressiveness (i.e. not a stable organic signal).
Do you already distinguish incentivized vs organic contribution, or dedupe forked
template repos? A flag for incentive-program-associated activity would be very
valuable to downstream users trying to read genuine adoption.
Glad to share our exact queries (built on developer_activities.parquet,
ecosystems_repos_recursive.parquet, repos.parquet). Thanks for the dataset.
Inflated developer counts from (1) forks of non-crypto upstreams and (2) contribute-to-earn programs
Hi — we've been leaning on Open Dev Data heavily (snapshot
20260715T125411) andhit two systematic sources of inflated per-ecosystem developer counts. Both
reproduce from the public parquet files. Filing together since they surfaced from
the same analysis; happy to split.
1. Forks of large non-crypto upstreams import their contributor graph
When a project forks a big non-crypto repo (e.g. to submit a PR upstream), the
fork carries the upstream's entire contributor history, which then counts toward
the ecosystem.
Concrete example:
stellar/winget-pkgs(a fork ofmicrosoft/winget-pkgs) isthe single largest repo by recent active devs mapped to Stellar — ~1,440 devs, 2
stars, ~27% of Stellar's recent active developers, and 1,440 of 1,444 appear in
no other Stellar repo. (PR to remove this specific repo submitted separately;
you already did the same for
NethermindEth/winget-pkgsinmigrations/2025-05-01T112748_mutations.)The general question: would it be feasible to systematically exclude
forks-of-external-upstreams from ecosystem mappings, or flag repos whose
contributor set is dominated by the fork parent? The class extends beyond winget
(e.g. homebrew-core forks, etc.).
2. Contribute-to-earn / bounty programs inflate MAD
A large share of some ecosystems' recent activity comes from organized
contribute-to-earn programs (OnlyDust-style) rather than independent teams. In
the current snapshot, Stellar shows a distinctive signature across ~150+ repos:
in the top 20)
(e.g.
QuickLendX/quicklendx-protocol,StellarLend/stellarlend-contracts,EarnQuestOne/stellar_Earn)These are real commits, so it isn't a taxonomy bug — but it materially changes
how per-chain MAD reads. Screening it out drops Stellar's 6-month single-chain
developer growth from ~+2,170 to between +666 and +1,350 depending on filter
aggressiveness (i.e. not a stable organic signal).
Do you already distinguish incentivized vs organic contribution, or dedupe forked
template repos? A flag for incentive-program-associated activity would be very
valuable to downstream users trying to read genuine adoption.
Glad to share our exact queries (built on
developer_activities.parquet,ecosystems_repos_recursive.parquet,repos.parquet). Thanks for the dataset.