With an estimated 87 billion US dollars in Web3 and blockchain market growth by 2030, the world economy is on track to be heavily impacted by decentralized technologies.
But, perhaps more importantly, businesses and brands will face a lack of resources, particularly a skilled workforce that could keep pace with the technological development and create enough Web3 products to satisfy market demand.
If only there was a better and faster way for developers to upgrade their skillset to Web3 and deliver new applications to end users in days or weeks instead of months …
Fast expansion with even greater room for growth
In just a few years since the inception of decentralized tech, the Web3 building crowd has grown fast, but many have still yet to dive in. Among the 27 million web developers that hit the keyboard around the globe, only 23,000 are actively building Web3 solutions on a monthly basis.
Some research on Web3 development landscape, such as the awesomely detailed Developer Report by Electric Capital or surveys by Stack Overflow, has shown great strides forward in 2022, despite crypto winter.
Here are some key takes on the Web3 development evolution and current state.
Web3 dev space growing exponentially
Monthly active developers grew +5% year-over-year, despite a 70%+ decline in [token] prices. - Developer Report
From the day the genesis block of Bitcoin was released in 2009, it took several years for the ecosystem to gain real traction among the developer community.
The launch of Ethereum helped drive the first real development boost with its smart contract architecture in 2015. And a few years later, in 2021, nearly two-thirds of developers were eager to dive into the Web3 code.
And their interest didn't just end there. They actively entered the space and turned the trend curve sharply up.
Today, the Web3 and crypto ecosystem accounts for about 23,000 monthly active developers. In 2022, the space even saw an all-time high of over 61,000 first-time Web3 coders.
Code commits are increasing, too
Crypto network value is back to January 2018 levels, but monthly active developers have increased by +297% since 2018. - Developer Report
Yes, the past year was a nightmare for crypto bag holders. But quite a thriving one for GitHub repositories. In 2022, over 62,000 new developers entered the Web3 space, a nearly 26% increase from the year before when the crypto market sentiment was way more rosy.
And they were not just peeking in and testing the waters. Most have been pulled right in, and took on Web3 as their full-time job.
With 15 monthly commits on GitHub on average per full-time developer, the Web3 space has recently amassed 356,000 commits a month. The all-time high developer activity was recorded around mid-2022 but then saw a decline at the turn of the year, which appears to be a recurring trend. Still, the YoY full-time developer count is up 8%, a relevant sign of growth since they contribute 76% of code commits.
In the open-source crypto arena, the developers' commitment was even greater - by late 2022, they had pushed over 471,000 monthly open-source Web3 commits on GitHub.
Polkadot developer community grew the fastest
72% of monthly active devs work outside the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems. - Developer Report
Following Ethereum, the Web3 industry veteran, Polkadot and its dev community count are on a sharp increase. The number of full-time developers in Polkadot grew from 694 to 764 in a year, despite the bear market.
And it did so in a record-breaking style. In all of Web3 development history, Polkadot took the fastest path to more than 500+ full-time developers, just 3.6 years, nearly a year faster than Ethereum …
… and just 3 years to reach 1,000 total developers, compared to 4 years that it took Ethereum to gather the same keyboard-hitting crowd.
Legacy languages will remain relevant
Peer help and guidance are essential for developers to build better products and resolve bugs faster.
The number of blockchain-related tags on Stack Overflow keeps growing steadily, primarily due to developers learning about Solidity, blockchain in general, and smart contracts.
But, Web3 topics (and products) are not an isolated development territory. Builders still frequently resort to the languages they are familiar with most, primarily JavaScript and Python, to enter the Web3 space.
According to Stack Overflow, Python often appears in user questions about crypto APIs and trading crypto, whereas JavaScript is typically linked to the context of building decentralized apps.
Upgrading to Web3 level should be easier
The growth trend of the Web3 dev space is indeed optimistic but doesn't seem to be fast enough to respond to market demands.
The highly disproportionate ratio of Web3 to Web2 developers could be leveled out faster if only the path to developing Web3 products was simpler.
The thing is, developers building in Web3 have so much to dive into and master. There are various distributed ledger technologies, networks, and parachains with unique specifics, requirements, languages, protocols, and frameworks. Builders need to filter through dozens of tools, wallets, and Web3 on-ramps, and think about app's interoperability and functionalities in different scenarios. Then, there's fee charging and payment, hosting, storage, and other means of sustaining an app. They need to understand and adopt unique payment systems, native tokens of chosen networks, and take into account their volatility, attainability and exchangeability for end-users. The list could go on…
It could take months just to establish a solid starting point, let alone create a functional and tested Web3 product.
Web3 development for everyone
If Web3 space wants to attract more creative power, it must shed the unnecessary friction and make the process much more developer-friendly.
It should find a sweet spot between providing developers with the newest tech opportunities and speaking the language everyone understands.
By adapting the process to the coding environment most builders are familiar with, the Apillon platform abstracts Web3 development into just a few steps:
- Account log-in
- Project creation
- Web3 service choice
- API calls
- Coding and customization
- Launch
In just hours or days, developers from all walks of code could launch a working Web3 app harnessing the best of Polkadot-powered Web3 services.
Take a sneak peek into the Apillon platform. 👇
Apillon Platform Sneak Peek #3 - Create Project, Attach Web3 Services
With Apillon, developers gain a functional toolset to create Web3 products, upgrade their skillset and boost competitiveness in an increasingly demanding market.
Apillon Closed Beta will launch soon. Make sure you get there first, try and test what it has to offer, and let us know how it could serve you better.
Of course, there's still so much to explore, develop, and deliver. But with every feature, we're expanding the Web3 space, one developer at a time. Join in and upgrade to Web3 with Apillon.
This post was originally posted on the Apillon Medium blog.
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