For Web3 developers, crypto winter seems to be no reason to slow down and look for other opportunities in the market. Web3 developers are building faster than ever despite market headwinds, according to the Web3 Developer Report (Q3 2022) from Alchemy. In fact, the report mentions that 2022 has been the most successful year yet for Web3 developers.
For perspective, Web 3.0 is the third version of the internet built on blockchain technology, which is set to reinvent cyberspace. The Alchemy report analyzed data from Etherscan, DappRadar, Github, NPM, and CoinMarketCap to check the developer activity around Web3 development.
The download count for Ether.js and Web3.js, the two important Web3 libraries for developers, has skyrocketed by 10X in recent times. To recap, the weekly download count was 146,000 in 2018, which has skyrocketed by 10X to over 1.5 million downloads per week. Compared to Q3 2021, the number of downloads has increased by 3x this quarter.
On a year-on-year basis, developers submitted more than 17,376 smart contracts in September to popular block explorer Etherscan, a rise of 160%, showcasing increased interest in decentralized protocols. The increase in smart contract deployment indicates healthy developer activity and growth.
Another metric to gauge the ecosystem’s health is the number of dApps or end-user applications on different smart contract platforms. 12,495 dApps exist across all blockchains, up from 1,000 in 2018, according to DappRadar estimates. And, 2,500 dApps have at least one user in the last 24 hours in recent times.
Other notable observations
- 36% of smart contracts ever deployed and verified happened in 2022
- Two weeks following The Merge, developers’ activity on the Ethereum blockchain/ smart contracts deployments increased by 14%
- Despite the huge drop in the price of Ethereum, smart contract deployments have surged by 40% to all-time high levels
However, as Web3 developer activity is witnessing a sustained increase across all blockchains, there is a huge scarcity of Web3 developers that might impact the growth of the ecosystem.
