Over Here!
“Over Here!” – a cartoon that illustrates how blockchain ecosystems make it harder to attract new developers.
The most popular code language for developers is Java Script with 13.8M worldwide programmers, while according to Electric Capital, the total active monthly developer community in blockchain is 21K (or 0.15% of just the Java Script community).
To grow into the promise of decentralized technology, the industry needs to attract new developers and convince them to build applications on blockchain protocols (e.g. Ethereum).
Therefore, it would be normal to assume the blockchain industry would be knocking down doors, walls, windows or whatever else it could find to make it easy for developers of Java Script, Python, C++ and other software languages to build on their blockchain protocol of choice.
However, the primary preoccupation of the industry is solving internal issues around the scalability trilemma, making mining more environmentally friendly or facilitating cross-chain support.
While all these are very worthy (and necessary), there is less of an urgency about bringing in new developers – for example, where was this access challenge addressed in Ethereum 2.0? Instead, we are seeing sporadic efforts by individual protocols creating bridging solutions (e.g. Chainlink), SDKs (e.g. NEAR) or Java-script native smart contracts (e.g. Agoric).
The question is whether these individual efforts will get noticed when the next developer has a choice to build his/her decentralized tech application on AWS or one of the blockchain protocols.
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