“Web3” may be one of the most buzzwords of 2022, but the idea of creating a fully decentralized platform to host decentralized applications has long been a dream of the crypto community. While it is worth noting that some blockchain companies started building Web3 applications four or five years ago, the Web3 site has been gaining more and more popularity lately.
Web3’s recent growth is highlighted in a new report from Electric Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested in Web3 companies since 2018. The developer report “Electric Capital 2021″ analyzed data from almost 500,000 code repositories and 160 million codes via Web3. Over 34,000 new developers have taken on the code for Web3 projects in 2021, the largest number of developers in history, according to the document.
In addition, the report indicates that 65% of active developers and 45% of full-time developers started working with Web3 in the past year. The document also revealed that today, more than 18,000 active developers per month are coding for open source crypto projects and Web3, mostly based on the Ethereum network.
Web2 developers flood the Web3 site
Maria Shen, a partner at Electric Capital, told Cointelegraph that 2021 has been a historic growth year for Web3 development, providing the largest monthly active developer pool ever in the crypto space. She clarified that this number only applies to open source software developers:
“While there are a large number of closed software developers working on coding, Web3 is very open source. This is the main difference between how companies operate in Web3 and Web2. In Web2, everyone is developed privately before the final product is shipped. Web3 developers ship and build in the open.”
Despite these differences, Shen notes that more Web2 developers are moving to a Web3 site lately. She believes this is partly because Web3 provides a more flexible entry point.
For example, Shen explained that part-time developers can easily come in and create Web3 projects. “With Web2, you either work for Google or you don’t. In fact, there is no choice in the middle. But Web3 allows amateurs to join. Due to its open nature, a Web3 site offers a much more diverse choice for developers, so it can be a full-time or full-time job,” Shane explained. Partially or even sometimes. She said:
“Full-time developers may work on a project 10 days or more per month, while a part-time developer may only work nights and weekends. We see Web2 developers coming in because Web3 allows it.”
Another reason Web2 developers have been showing interest in Web3 lately is mass adoption. For example, Shen points out that the advent of NFTs has helped us create a new group of developers dedicated to art, design, and creative support. In an echo of that sentiment, Tejan Klein, co-founder of Edge and Node — the development team behind the open source indexing protocol The Graph — told Cointelegraph that developers are dipping into Web3 everywhere due to the rise of decentralized finance and NFTs. . “NFT technologies have made it easier for traditional companies to get to Web3,” she said.
Klein added that The Graph saw a 300 percent increase in developers compared to last year, noting that Edge and Node have recently hired engineers from Google, Amazon Web Services and Airbnb, as well as specialists from traditional financial institutions. “There has been a massive migration to Web3, and I think we will continue to see more technology companies going into space,” Klein said.
Solutions are being improved to help Web3 developers create
In addition to a more flexible entry point and wider use, it is important to note that solutions are evolving, making it much easier for developers to create products for the Web3 decentralized ecosystem.
For example, capturing key data points and integrating them into decentralized protocols is an important feature of Web3.
Heikki Venttinen, co-founder of the API3 blockchain oracle, told Cointelegraph that the goal of API3 is to bring data sources off-chain, such as real weather data, to the blockchain network on a large scale. “We are moving the API economy to the blockchain to allow decentralized applications and smart contracts to do things based on real data and events,” he said. Venttinen explained that oracle “Beacon” functions are constantly updated data streams, each supported by a single first party oracle, making it easy to build Web3 projects based on API3 technology.
