Most developers believe blockchain technology is a game changer
Hello and welcome to Stack Overflow’s first Pulse survey. As we explained in the launch post for this year’s developer survey, we’re expanding beyond our annual magnum opus and checking in with our community more frequently. We’ll still be posting results from our Dev Survey each year, but we’ll also be hosting a number of smaller, more focused surveys asking developer questions on one specific topic.
Given the recent IPO of Coinbase and the enormous amount of activity occurring around cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and DeFi, we decided to center our first pulse survey around blockchain technologies. The data below is based on responses from 693 software developers to a survey conducted from May 5th to May 17th of 2021.
The first thing we wanted to know was how they felt about the explosion of interest in this area.
We presented respondents with a fairly binary choice here: game changer, all hype, or never heard of it. We’ll try to learn from that, and going forward will look to present a more neutral option as well.
Interestingly, while the majority believe in this technology, less than a quarter had actually worked with it yet.
When we modify that question to ask who is excited to try working with this technology, we see a response that mirrors those who believe in its potential.
Getting hands on experience working with this technology didn’t prove to be a turn off. Those who had built with it tended to be more optimistic on its potential.
It’s clear that, among the developers we surveyed, this technology is still more common outside of work than it is on the job. Students and hobbyists outnumbered those who used blockchain at work by a nearly 2-1 margin.
Ethereum is far and away the most popular technology among respondents who have worked with blockchains.
We can see this trend mirrored in data we collected around tags and questions. While Bitcoin arrived first, Ethereum related questions have become more prevalent since 2016.
When we look at tag data, we see the more expansive “blockchain” tag slightly ahead of ethereum, which holds the second place spot, ahead of hyperledger-fabric and bitcoin.
Top Blockchain related tags on Stackoverflow.com
| Blockchain Tag | Questions Asked |
| blockchain | 2,190 |
| ethereum | 1,892 |
| hyperledger-fabric | 1,536 |
| bitcoin | 1,287 |
| solidity | 1,062 |
| hyperledger | 1,047 |
| smartcontracts | 592 |
| hyperledger-composer | 447 |
| cryptocurrency | 439 |
| truffle | 415 |
So, what’s the takeaway from all this? There were three interesting observations made by my colleague David Gibson after reviewing the data.
- Those who have developed in blockchain are the most excited about it.
- The most popular languages are the foundations of blockchain. JS, Python, and Java are all old tech but are still the building blocks (see what i did there) for the technology of tomorrow.
- Blockchain questions peak around major Bitcoin price milestones. See chart below.
Have thoughts of your own on this topic? Feel free to weigh in (respectfully) in the comments, or shoot us ideas for blog posts and podcast episodes at pitches@stackoverflow.com, and make sure to review our pitch guide before hitting send.
Tags: #StackOverflowKnows, bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrency, developer survey
75 Comments
> We presented respondents with a fairly binary choice here: game changer, all hype, or never heard of it.
0.00% were “never heard of it” it seems?
> Interestingly, while the majority believe in this technology, less than a quarter had actually worked with it yet.
This second graphic is a duplicate of the first one.
Fixed
More to the point, how can three options be defined as a BINARY choice? AFAIK binary means TWO……
Hmm, there was always a 3rd state “unknown” or noise or unreliable or “no answer” it’s just that we idealize computer systems into being purely binary.
While I disapprove of cryptocurrency as it currently stands, blockchain technology is a separate entity. Apart from cryptocurrency, I mostly see blockchain technology as a novelty with potential if people are sufficiently innovative with it. Cryptocurrency, however, has already been a game changer for investing, but I don’t see it as the wave of the long-term future. I used to see it that way, but nope. If it succeeds, that means national currency is inflated and useless. That could lead to wars and who knows what. Cryptocurrency incentivizes energy waste and pollution. Unless it changes that, it’s on its way out, eventually, I think. Mining, however efficient, isn’t the wave of the future, I think. However, cryptocurrency currently has a lot of influence, which could shape a lot of things about the future.
A couple of years later… Turned out it was hype. Hardly any developers taking it seriously more.
Is it just my ancient eyesight failing, or are the first two pie-charts identical?
The question is a false dilemma. How can someone honestly answer the survey if his views aren’t so polarized? Perhaps a majority of developers feel that there is something to it, perhaps it has some importance, but is not a “game changes” and nor is it “all hype”.
I would have struggled to answer the question. I don’t think blockchain technology is a game changer. But I don’t think it’s all hype, either. I think it’s a technology which has real value for a small subset a problems – a MUCH smaller subset than the set of problems people are trying to apply it to. Certainly there’s a ridiculous quantity of hype around using “the blockchain” for situations where there’s no benefit to decentralization.
This really is the truth of the situation
Not only for Blockchain. But for all modern technologies like AI, IoT, Cloud, blah, blah.
Agreed! … And don’t get me started on the “5G will save the world” 🙂
To be fair, Cloud is pretty much a game-changer…when was the last time you actually set up a real server? It’s not like it’s free of hype of course, but it does underpin pretty much everything these days.
The question is loaded anyway. It’s not blockchain that’s a potential gamechanger but decentralised, socially-owned, public, distributed ledgers. Blockchain is just one way of achieving it. For example, IOTA is listed there but it is not a blockchain.
It’s unfortunate really, as the survey probably started with some good intentions, but was executed poorly.
Blockchain, as you understand, has become a stand-in for all kinds of new tech belief systems. It old and crappy tech but supposed political objectives and money combine to create the space.
There’s no such thing as decentralization. At best it’s a misguided aspiration, at worst it’s delusion. Having once been a believer who co-designed and created such a platform only to discover that the Chinese government could easily shut it down and prevent access to it if it were moved elsewhere. And never mind the fact that out developers were distributed and, worst of all, human, even with multi-step secure commit protocols.
Whenever I ask someone to describe for me decentralization I get PBFT, anti-Sybil, consensus algo (PoR, PoS, POW, etc or whatever combo). I always point out 2 things: who provides the infrastructure and what do you do to secure your developers. There’s more, but you can check me out on Medium.
Very interesting idea & post. Thanks for sharing!
It’s just a massive, distributed, slow database. So what?
Imo, it is both
You forgot the most important feature of almost every implementation. Obscene levels of resource consumption due to rewarding people for validating the data via of proof of pollution methodologies.
That’s just not true at all. You are talking about Proof of Work.
Isn’t that why proof of stake is becoming more and more preferred among new projects?
Please don’t think every blockchain relies on energy consumption for mining / minting.
If Bitcoin were so valuable, what reason we cannot duplicate the identical bitcoin system? It could be copied easily and numerous identical bitcoin system could be setup.
Maybe I’m missing what you’re saying, but there are already hundreds (if not thousands) of other cryptocurrencies, many of which using the same technologies as Bitcoin.
“So what?” he says. So what: it means a total transformation in the way society is constructed. How about that? No need for middle man. No need for banks. No need for escrow. Etc.
Slow? Not necessarily. FLOW, Solana and IOTA are all very fast. Cardano perhaps too. They are young, will replace Ethereum and Bitcoin, and will replace Visa and Swift.
“Transformation of society”
Obtained first use case with SilkRoad.com
Continues to expand it domination of illicit activity as the secure means to do business.
Has had several large exchange flameouts.
Is becoming a somewhat mainstream asset for volatility trading…
Lots of people are “winning” and lots of people are losing: you know, like Vegas.
No substantive use for actual transacting, since you can’t reprice any normal commodity or need on a minute by minute basis.
You could never borrow in it or use it for credit since an interest rate could never be set. See previous remark.
Does it have the prospect of undermining legitimate and responsible liberal democracies and (as it already does) enable autocrats and elites in poor countries to enlarge their power and wealth through resource exploitation and sales?
Yes to all. Not sure that’s a positive transformation unless you have a handy example.
Now you are being logical and using real-world events and evidence. That does not count when idealists are discussing the lofty principles propelling them to distrust the monoliths they perceive — as if government & banks are all one thing and the source of all problems. As well, we have this sexy new term for something that is just a linked-list of hashes.
The rich brats like Theil & Musk & Gates & Buffet all hate government & taxes because those things can cut into their power. Governments, at least in theory, treat people equally and give everyone a voice. That wouldn’t do for the corporate board crowd. But the broke-ass losers who follow this logic are dupes at best and simply tools of the rich. If they took just a moment to use this wonderful tool called the Internet they would uncover the roots of modern “Libertarianism” as the co-option of leftist thought by the super wealthy like BF Goodrich.
Poor dumb stupid slobs with nothing to inspire them but the pseudo-lofty fantasies that they could ever be a part of that club. News flash: you can’t, you won’t and you couldn’t. And your support for their Ponzi machine — something that has huge costs and NO RETURN, that uses power like it’s free, pollutes the atmosphere like there is no tomorrow. Guess what? There won’t be. Wake the f*ck up!
Agreed, with a bit of hashing for good measure, whoopy do!
Almost every developer works with a block chain on a daily basis in the form of git.
Flat files, too. And?
I would not classify Git as a blockchain. Both use a series of objects (i.e. blocks or commits) which contain a pointer to its predecessor. However, this technology did already exist many decades before anyone was talking about blockchains. So, if you say that Git is a blockchain, you also degrade the blockchain to nothing but a new name for an ancient concept. Even signing such objects to make them verifiable was a known concept long before blockchain.
As far as I know, the only thing which was actually introduced by blockchains were the consensus protocols (e.g. proof of work). For this reason, I would not classify anything without such consensus protocol as a blockchain. Anyway, I still appreciate that blockchains have brought more attention to some nice concepts, but I don’t like that these concepts are just called blockchain, as if they haven’t existed long before that.
K
Blockchain is to linked lists (or graphs), as REST is to HTTP.
Carry on.
Thanks for this great post. By any chance do you have access to the data that explains the industries that are adopting this ? Like Entertainment, Banking & Finance , Healthcare etc., I am curious as to see how people view blockchain as a technology. Is it something viewed as cool and feel good (or) have enterprises took it seriously and started implementing projects with it ?
The answer to this question is: there is no significant successful use case.
(Of crypto is one, but a dubious one)
There has been vast amounts of money flood into projects by the hundreds if not thousands. The best you can say of any of the ones that are still operating is they are insignificant.
Blockchain is a huge waste of energy. Multiple computers aka miners are calculating the same random data to get a hash with the same end. The fastest wins and if you own the majority of the miners you can manipulate the whole system. In the end you could simple use a signed log as for the ssl certificates.
The most interesting question is however left open: How much of those who used it professionally think that this technology is a game changer?
If you don’t use it and have no idea about it you might think that is is a game changer for no good reason.
Absolutely incorrect. But I’d entertain your views. Do you mean to insinuate you’ve used it? Used it for what? Anyone who has actually used any defi services would understand the use cases
The large PoW miner in the world, China has started to worry about this. 66% of all block validations of BTC and ETH are done there.
Even before their recent public remarks, the CPC. allowed this paper to be published and distributed. Enjoy:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2273672-bitcoin-mining-emissions-in-china-will-hit-130-million-tonnes-by-2024/#ixzz6rxY1cFM4
We can clearly see from the replies that most people have 0 idea about blockchain technologies, mixed concepts and assumptions all over the place.
I just hope you’re not software engineers, otherwise NGMI, neither personally or professionally
proof of stake > proof of work
The “blockchain, not bitcoin” narrative was big in 2017 amongst venture capital, but has since died out. That is because there has not been even a single use case for blockchain outside of currency/store-of-value that has seen widespread adoption. Lots of experimentation but not a lot of success. Maybe with Ethereum 2.0 we’ll start to see something, but I doubt it.
The fact of the matter is that blockchains are slow and inefficient. They’re only really viable in systems where the upside you get from decentralization is so extreme that it outweighs the downsides of the technology. So far, we have discovered currency/store-of-value as one of those systems, and that’s about it. In every other system, a simple query to a central database is way better and worth any downsides there could be to centralization. Plus decentralization carries its own problems when applied outside of currency, like the oracle problem in smart contracts.
So blockchain is a game changer in that it enabled bitcoin, but outside of that it is not a very useful technology.
Actually modern transaction layers are not faster than the blockchain, that’s not correct. The blockchain is not a database, and it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to handle transactions and agreements, as simple as that.
I have to assume you have not worked in any high-frequency low-latency operation. You know equity exchanges Facebook, LinkedIn or even that slow poke SWIFT.
I can get a loan without KYC, without credit score, without a bank anywhere in the world in 10 seconds when I put ETH as collateral in a defi platform. How is that not a game changer?
I’m pretty sure most places in the world have a pawnshop.
Blockchain technology is ecologically irresponsible. Promoting it is contributing, however slightly, to global warming.
This is actually not true due to multiple reasons. First of all even PoW blockchains are far more environmental friendly than other transaction layers in comparison because they mostly use excess energy. Secondly there is not only PoW, but also PoS which does use a very tiny fraction of the energy of a PoW blockchain. And there is a reason most blockchains move to PoS.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2273672-bitcoin-mining-emissions-in-china-will-hit-130-million-tonnes-by-2024/#ixzz6rxY1cFM4
And this paper was published in the country that mines/ block
validates 66% of all PoW crypto.
Anything you would like to supply that would give some ground to your beliefs?
66% of all PoW crypto is mined in China.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2273672-bitcoin-mining-emissions-in-china-will-hit-130-million-tonnes-by-2024/#ixzz6rxY1cFM4
Lots more out there.
Dustin is right. This comment is just false.
Easily to see who has their bags in crypto and is worried to loose money
Given that the 2021 dev survey post said that these pulse surveys are meant to supplement smaller annual surveys going forward, I think pulse survey posts should definitely have the “developer survey” tag, and should probably also be in the “community” category with the annual survey.
Excellent idea. I’ve added the tag and category to the post.
Statements saying that Blockchain is ecologically irresponsible are non sense. As an engineer you should be more careful:
1. PoW blockchains consumes too much energy: Well, where is the problem is we use only renewable energy sources?
2. Proof of stake blockchains: PoS dont use Proof of work mechanics, so even a Raspberry could run a full Pos node.
So yeah, once you clarify the myths, blockchains are an impressive invention, and they are going to change the world at many levels.
“they are going to change the world at many levels.” how, please? People keep saying that, but all we’ve seen so far is wild speculation in cryptocurrencies which have yet to demonstrate any advantages except to the criminals.
+1
Proof of Stake is definitely the future in blockchain technologies.
cardano will be interesting as soon as they go live with their smart chain.
1. The problem is not everyone is going to do that.
There really is not any “Spare” or truly renewable energy at this point, in that most energy is still being produced from carbon sources, unsustainable nuclear energy, or hydro power (which is ecologcially damaging). As JHS has pointed out and is explained in the New Scientist article, this is a very ecologically expensive source of energy to do a pretty small number of financial transactions.
“Well, where is the problem is we use only renewable energy sources?”
That is not how energy economics works. Using more energy from a renewable source means there is less energy to use for other activities. That drives up the cost of energy and leads to more use of other energy sources. The environmental impact of energy usage cannot be handwaved away by saying “But I’m only using renewable sources!” If the energy market is, to pull a number out of the air, 50% coal plants, then even if you are exclusively receiving power from a solar farm it is *effectively* still as environmentally impactful as if you received half of your power from coal.
However, you are absolutely correct that there is a lot of confusion between “blockchain” and “bitcoin”. Proof of stake blockchains do not have the same energy usage incentives as proof of work, and there are also proof of work blockchain concepts where the work being done is something that’s inherently useful, like protein folding for medical research.
The point is not the Energy, the point is the hardware. You renew the hardware all year or all two years. You are loosing many resources.
Laughable!
Yes, and crap they make today is “potentially” recyclable.
Do you even have any grounding in argument or debate? Your black is white thesis has sensible people laughing you out of court.
Energy, of any kind, on Earth, is a finite resource. So-called renewable energy, while perhaps a bit less intrusive than “dirty” energy still has (hopefully lower) environmental cost. Using that precious resource to drive around in circles, multiple times, in competition with other circle drivers is always a waste, unless the resource is completely free, in which case it is no longer a resource just a free good.
And PoS has it’s own long list of issues, including security. But maybe you have heard of inequality. Rich people already control a large and growing portion of this planet, so let’s give people with a greater “stake” a greater say. Genius.
A distributed and decentralized ledger is a useful tool.
Blockchain is almost always equated with crypto-currency. And developers think of it that way. If we want to track the lifetime of a car or house, a single distributed ledger with that information is fine, and it doesn’t need to be part of some form of crypto currency.
Cryptocurrency, itself, is an interesting concept. It is proving to be too volatile and SLOW. Arguments about the environment are true too. Energy consumption in the current form is completely irresponsible. But, that said, I don’t see anyone putting their savings accounts into coins. You’ll go from poor to rich to broke at the emotional whims of the public.
Government currency can collapse at any time as well. Daily, though, it is stable because it is backed by the government itself.
But, back to the blockchain itself. As a ledger, it is a pain in the ass to run queries on. It can be a HUGE file if it contains many entries. You need enough nodes (which is why coins partly exist.- to convince people to put up farms and super-nodes to keep that ledger distributed). As a data-structure, it has limited use. Which is why the chart of people who have actually used the blockchain is so much lower than they want to.
Gonna just repeat what others have said.
Giving such a binary choice and then headlining the results as “Most developers” hyping blockchain is totally incorrect. “Most developers with a strong opinion” hype it, maybe. But do you honestly think “most developers” were willing to commit to one or the other extreme choices?
Think of blockchain as the new SSL.
When quantum hacking is comes out, blockchain will become the new encryption
In its little niche it is a useful solution. For the rest of us it can safely be ignored. The hype is hype. Hypers gotta hype.
Bitcoin and blockchain technology are two different things. The bitcoin is something for gamer, today you win tomorrow you loose. Many people I know bought bitcoin at the first big hype up to 19k. Then they lost all their money within a few month as the bitcoin goes down to 3k, they can not hold as they spend all money to bitcoin and they need money. Nobody like to buy at that time. If you like a high risk take your bitcoin, you can win, you can lose it depends on the time you sell.
Blockchain technology is a try to find a way for save and secure bank, money transfers and hold without having banknotes. Today you have many big transfers and the money is hold on numbers. Do you think you will have 400 Million USD in banknotes? Or a billion USD in banknotes? This numbers are not save or secure I guess a few coder at stackoverflow can get the money easyly by hacking. But I do not know who? Dont forget all this huge transfers have secure phone calls and one or two other handshakes or thresholds. Some big companies developing blockchain with a yearly some 10 billion revenue. Some people will say that bitcoin only are a few peanuts in this market and we know that a few highly recommended investors are inside bitcoin. My first bitcoin had a price of 0.1 US cent, I lost this bitcoin because the server was hacked and down and off in 2017. It is up to you which way you go, if you win or loose. Is the question a question or do you compare apples with peach?
bitcoin/blockchain is now twelve years old, and has not yet found any use case. It excels in:
1. speculative gambling on valuation, bitcoin as poker chip
2. enabling massive ransomware attacks on corporations and government.
Nothing else has emerged, in twelve years of hype.
Luckily China has recognized the parasitical waste of resources consumed by bitchainblock, and is shutting down the operations. So much for evading governments.
Janet Yellen criticized the cryptocurrencies during confirmation hearings and will be in a position to do something about it. I am hopeful.
You are absolutely correct. I write extensively on this on Medium.
The facts around China are very concerning, however, in spite of its recent concerns about PoW’s power waste:
1. It is illegal (fines, jail) to transact (buy/sell) crypto for all Chinese citizens
2. It is illegal to possess an account on any exchange which permits crypto transactions
3. It is oddly legal to possess crypto for those with crypto in their own wallets pre-Nov. 2019
4. It is legal for companies registered as China-headquartered in China to mine/block validate crypto
5. Chinese headquartered companies mine/block validate 66%+ PoW crypto
6. Chinese companies manufacture 90%+ of mining rigs and ASICS
7. China is very far along in its project to introduce a CBDC (central bank digital currency)
8. China’s concern about crypto carbon is coupled with an added push to dominate this space.
9. China’s belt-and-road loans denominated in RMB are offered as the first use-case for their RMB CBDC
All this is true, but I think it actually might have some value to support property title chains (as in real-estate property). Perhaps then we wouldn’t have to pay title insurance on real estate and pay for title searches on every transaction. It seems like a massive lift though to apply it to a real-world situation where zillions of records would have to get added to a blockchain (not to mention the highly dubious idea of ownership in the first place). So instead it gets used for green field bulls**t projects like speculative currencies and NFTs…the Beanie Babies of 2021.
Blockchain does not equal Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, even if those are the most popular applications for it.
> Those who have developed in blockchain are the most excited about it.
I want to mention that you might phrase it the other way around: “Those who are excited about blockchain have more often developed in it”. I think this way, the correlation is much more obvious.
Oh god. We are doomed.
Crypto Currency has no value add, except for hidden transactions. That helps criminals more than it helps the average person. Money is a value exchange mechanism. Crypto Currency is a valuation in “dollar” form and thus is not free from that mechanism. It’s also not free from legal recourse of recovery as the hackers recently discovered. What most people think of, when you say bitcoin or dogecoin or some other crypto currency name, is the gambling aspect of its valuation due to a presence in the stock exchange. This representation is then nothing more than a company valuation, not a “money” value.
Right now, there is nothing meaningful that is setting the value of a bitcoin. It’s just an imaginary gambling token…
Using it to do what? That’s the key question. What game is it changing?
What is game changing though? Perhaps game chanching in terms of making money but ACTUAL useful implementations? I’ve yet to see a blockchain solution that makes more sense that just using a traditional database. Transparency of transactions is nice but what value does that add to anyone? Keep a record of who ran SQL queries against you’ve got the same functionality. Identity management is something that’s already been solved and yet I see solutions acting as if blochain is the only way this can be done. Sure we’ll use it as a technology to track products and services but that’s just going to be something built into the background of apps and storefronts. Walmart or Toyota using blockchain has literally no relation to if you’ve invested in Dogecoin or whatever. It’s like getting hyped over CRUD because every bank uses it or something.
Blockchain tech & crypto projects these are not just “game changers.” The web3.0 and the future digital economy is based on this tech and its development and progress.
In general there are wide variety of projects in this space. However, some of these projects provide superfast (Solana for example = up to 100K transactions per second vs. 4k/5k TPS for Visa and MC) and secure transactions at the fraction of the cost that can rival established banks and financial institutions.
Why pay Visa/MC high fees when Solana, PolkaDot or Eth 2.0 could provide much faster and much cheaper processing power?