The latest snapshot of builder activity in the AI-focused corner of the crypto market shows a clear trend: teams are still shipping code at a rapid pace despite price turbulence.
Santiment, which tracks open-source contributions across major blockchain repositories, published a new 30-day leaderboard highlighting which artificial intelligence and data-centric networks have been the most active behind the scenes.
Rather than focusing on market cap or hype cycles, Santiment’s model looks directly at Github repositories — measuring updates, code pushes, and ongoing engineering work. The result is a ranking that often reveals a very different picture of which ecosystems are actually pushing innovation forward.
A New Order Emerges Among AI-Driven Networks
At the top of Santiment’s latest list sits Internet Computer (ICP), which has quietly posted the strongest surge in engineering output this month. Close behind is Chainlink (LINK), continuing to expand the data infrastructure that underpins a growing number of enterprise integrations. Rounding out the top three is NEAR Protocol (NEAR), a network positioning itself as a foundation for AI-native decentralized apps.
🧑💻 Here are crypto’s top 10 AI & Big Data projects by development. Directional indicators represent each project’s ranking positioning since last update:
➡️ 1) @dfinity $ICP 🥇
📈 2) @chainlink $LINK 🥈
➡️ 3) @nearprotocol $NEAR 🥉
📈 4) @oasisprotocol $ROSE
📈 5) @filecoin $FIL… pic.twitter.com/mTVqYe3ueE— Santiment (@santimentfeed) December 4, 2025
Further down the ranking are projects focused on storage, privacy, compute, and indexing — all areas becoming increasingly important as AI workloads expand across Web3.
Santiment’s tracked scores for the past month are as follows:
- ICP — 296.97
- LINK — 292.5
- NEAR — 114.47
- ROSE — 61.03
- FIL — 38.23
- LPT — 33.5
- RECALL — 30.63
- GRT — 29.77
- RLC — 27.27
- INJ — 25.97
Why These Development Trends Matter
Santiment notes that projects with consistently high engineering output tend to stay aligned with their long-term roadmaps, regardless of market volatility. Unlike social sentiment or temporary investor buzz, development cycles offer a more grounded indicator of whether teams are delivering on stated goals.
AI-linked tokens have seen intense speculation this year, but the underlying builder activity suggests that many teams are still focused on functionality — not just narratives.
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