Filecoin, Chainlink, and ICP Lead AI-Focused Blockchain Development Activity
Fresh data from Santiment points to a tight race in AI and big data infrastructure, with developer activity concentrated in a small set of networks. The rankings are based on filtered GitHub activity and show where engineers are actively shipping.
Headline: Filecoin holds a strong lead, followed by Chainlink and Internet Computer (ICP). Despite the gap at the top, the trio shows consistently high output.
The scoreboard
- Filecoin (FIL) - Dev score: 348.03. Price ~$1.50 (+3.44% daily). Market cap ~$1.1B. Focus: decentralized storage and data availability.
- Chainlink (LINK) - Dev score: 211.03. Price ~$13.12 (+1.45%). Market cap ~$9.28B. Focus: data delivery, oracle infrastructure.
- Internet Computer (ICP) - Dev score: 200.03. Price ~$3.00 (+3.39%). Market cap ~$1.7B. Focus: on-chain services and compute.
- NEAR Protocol (NEAR) - Dev score: 70.23. Price ~$1.63 (+3.11%). Market cap ~$2.17B.
- Oasis Network (ROSE) - Dev score: 34.93. Focus: privacy-first data workflows.
- Livepeer (LPT) - Dev score: 32.5. Price ~$3.02 (+15.7%). Focus: decentralized video processing.
- Bittensor (TAO) - Included in top 10; AI model network.
- The Graph (GRT) - Included in top 10; indexing and query layer.
- Injective (INJ) - Included in top 10; performance-focused chain.
- Recall - Included in top 10; emerging data infra.
Source: Santiment dev activity snapshot (Jan 2, 2026). See more from Santiment.
Why this matters for engineers
Developer activity is a practical signal. It shows active maintenance, issue throughput, and a pipeline of improvements that reduce integration risk.
It's not a quality guarantee, but it does suggest where tooling, docs, and ecosystem attention are trending. For teams building AI data flows, these signals help you choose safer primitives.
Practical takeaways
- Data storage and availability: If you're shipping data-heavy AI pipelines, Filecoin + IPFS patterns are worth a look for archival datasets, model snapshots, and provenance logs.
- Oracles and off-chain I/O: Chainlink's momentum supports feeds for model inputs, verification hooks, and cross-chain messaging. Useful for agent-style apps that need trusted data.
- On-chain services: ICP's activity suggests a maturing surface for running services closer to the protocol. Consider it for latency-sensitive coordination layers.
- Privacy and segmentation: Oasis can help with confidential compute for sensitive features, especially where user data or model outputs require guardrails.
- Media-heavy workloads: Livepeer remains relevant for video transcoding and streaming pipelines tied to AI detection, enrichment, or summarization tasks.
- Indexing and queries: The Graph is still the go-to for structured access to on-chain data used in analytics and model features.
How to verify activity yourself
- Check org-level repos for commit cadence, release notes, and PR/issue velocity.
- Scan for protocol RFCs, improvement proposals, and roadmap follow-through.
- Track independent signals like Santiment's dev activity metric and cross-reference with actual releases.
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Data notes and disclaimer
Metrics reflect filtered GitHub activity at the time of recording. Prices and market caps were captured alongside the dataset and are subject to change.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
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