“Web3” may be one of the biggest buzzwords of 2022, but the idea of creating an entirely decentralized platform to host decentralized applications has
“Web3” may be one of the biggest buzzwords of 2022, but the idea of creating an entirely decentralized platform to host decentralized applications has long been a vision of the crypto community. While it’s notable that some blockchain companies began building out Web3 applications four or five years ago, the Web3 space has only started gaining traction recently.
The recent growth of Web3 was highlighted in a new report from Electric Capital, a venture capital firm that has been investing in Web3 companies since 2018. The “Electric Capital 2021 Developer Report” analyzed data from nearly 500,000 code repositories and 160 million code commits across Web3, finding that over 34,000 new developers committed code to Web3 projects in 2021 — the highest number of developers in history according to the document.
Moreover, the report pointed out that 65% of active developers and 45% of full-time developers started working on Web3 last year. The document also found that over 18,000 monthly active developers commit code to open-source crypto and Web3 projects today, primarily building on the Ethereum network.
Web2 developers flood the Web3 space
Maria Shen, a partner at Electric Capital, told Cointelegraph that 2021 was a year of historic growth for Web3 development, as it brought in the highest number of monthly active developers the crypto space has ever seen. She elaborated that this number refers only to open-source developers:
“While there are a large number of closed-source developers working in crypto, Web3 is highly open-source. This is the main difference between how companies function in Web3 from Web2. In Web2, everyone is developing privately before the final product is shipped. In Web3, developers are shipping and building in the open.”
Even with these differences, Shen remarked that an increasingly high number of Web2 developers have been migrating into the Web3 space recently. She believes this is the case partly because Web3 allows for a more flexible point of entry.
For instance, Shen explained that part-time developers can easily come in and build out Web3 projects. “In Web2, you either work for Google, or you don’t. There really isn’t an option in-between. But Web3 allows for hobbyists to join,” she said. And due to its open nature, Shen explained, the Web3 space contains more of a variety for developers, letting individuals work either full-time, part-time or even on occasion. She said:
“Full-time developers may commit 10 or more days a month to a project, while a part-time developer may only work nights and weekends. We are seeing Web2 developers come in because Web3 uniquely allows this to happen.”
Another reason Web2 developers have taken a recent interest in Web3 is mainstream adoption. For instance, Shen remarked that the rise of nonfungible tokens (NFT) has helped usher in a new group of developers who are focused on art, design and supporting creators. Echoing this sentiment, Tegan Kline, co-founder of Edge and Node — the development team behind open-source indexing protocol The Graph — told Cointelegraph that developers everywhere are dipping their toes into Web3 due to the rise of decentralized finance and NFTs. “NFTs have made it easy for traditional companies to enter Web3,” she said.
Kline added that The Graph has seen a 300% year-over-year developer growth, noting that Edge and Node has recently hired engineers from Google, Amazon Web Services and Airbnb, along with individuals from traditional financial organizations. “The mass exodus into Web3 is here, and I think we will continue to see more tech companies move into the space,” said Kline.
Solutions are maturing to help Web3 developers build
In addition to a more flexible point of entry and mainstream adoption, it’s important to point out that solutions are maturing, making it much easier for developers to build products for decentralized, Web3 ecosystems.
For example, taking centralized points of data and incorporating that within decentralized protocols is an important feature of Web3.
Heikki Vänttinen, co-founder of blockchain oracle API3, told Cointelegraph that API3 aims to bring off-chain data sources — such as real-world weather data — to blockchain networks at scale. “We bring the API economy to the blockchain to enable decentralized applications and smart contracts to do things based on real-world data and events,” he said. Vänttinen explained that the oracle’s “Beacon” features are continuously updated data feeds, each powered by a single first-party oracle, which makes it easier for Web3 projects to build on API3’s technology.
Vänttinen further mentioned that Beacons eliminate the need for third-party oracles, like Chainlink for instance. “Instead of having a third-party entity that exists between a smart contract on-chain, Beacons enable APIs to be directly connected to a smart contract instead of having a middleman oraclize the data source off-chain.” In turn,…
cointelegraph.com