New data: Do developers think Web3 will build a better internet?
Accordinging to Forbes, the total crypto market cap exceeded $3 trillion in 2021. Crypto startups saw $30 billion in VC investments in 2021, 50 of which raised over $100 million, launching 40 into unicorn status. While there’s a lot of money being thrown at it, what does this actually mean for the future of tech? Are blockchain and Web3 the future or are they just a fad? We asked the developer community about Web3, blockchain, crypto, and whether they are all hype or truly the future of the internet.
Of the 595 developers surveyed, a sizable portion had no idea what we were talking about: 37% responded with “What’s Web3?” Of those in the know, 25% think Web3 is the future of the internet, 15% think it’s a bunch of hype, 14% think it’s important for crypto and related apps, and 9% think it’s all a scam. TL;DR: the split still stands. But before we throw up our arms, let’s dig in a bit more.
Blockchain experience is built outside of work
An overwhelming majority (85%) haven’t developed using blockchain, more or less even with our blockchain experience findings from 2021. Of those that have, we see that most of blockchain development is done as a side project or hobby.
The 31% who developed with blockchain at work most likely work for a software company (72%), and over half (55%) of those who developed with blockchain at work also did so as a side project or hobby. This extracurricular coding also appears to help as we saw 60% of blockchain apps developed at work go into production.
Blockchain novices are still believers
Experience or not, developers still think it could be a game changer. Among developers that know what Web3 is but without blockchain experience, 40% think Web3 could be the future, 25% think it’s all hype, 20% think it’s important for crypto, and 15% think it’s all a scam. Those with blockchain experience under their belts feel similarly—41% think it’s the future, 29% think it’s important for crypto, 19% think it’s all hype, and 10% think it’s a scam.
Not only are blockchain novices believers but we also see 20-30% of blockchain related questions being asked by new Stack Overflow users. These new users could be in the early stages of their coding journey thanks to an interest in blockchain. This is also supported by the majority of blockchain questions being associated with the two most common programming languages for beginners: JavaScript and Python.
Learning is skyrocketing
In our previous post on blockchain trends, we saw that questions peak around major Bitcoin price milestones ($19k and $60k). We experienced another period of massive growth since then, but not because Bitcoin hit another all time high; rather some people feared a Crypto Winter.
In an attempt to uncover what is fueling question growth, we expanded our blockchain topic cluster from last year and looked at the top tags. The spike in 2018 was largely fueled by hyperledger and its related tags. This year, developers may be losing interest in it as the question volume dipped despite Hyperledger being the most common dApp used by developers surveyed (29%).
When looking at the most recent “bull run” of questions asked, it is clear that Solidity, Ethereum, blockchain, Web3, and smart contracts are responsible. What are all these technologies and how are they related?
- Ethereum is a blockchain currency (like Bitcoin) with a public ledger.
- Solidity is a high-level language whose syntax is similar to that of JavaScript and is designed to compile code for the Ethereum Virtual Machine to create smart contracts.
- Web3 on Stack Overflow refers to a JavaScript framework for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain.
- Smart contracts are small programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met.
JavaScript and Python continue to dominate
JavaScript connects the top blockchain tags on Stack Overflow. We looked at what non-blockchain tags are most common among blockchain tags. On Stack Overflow, you can have up to five different tags. It is no surprise to see JavaScript and Python at the top of the list, as both have been among the most common programming languages for years now. JavaScript has been number one for nine years running and Python just took over third place in 2021.
“JavaScript is essential to Web3, but Web3 isn’t fundamental to the JavaScript ecosystem,” said Matt Kiernander, developer advocate at Stack Overflow. “Whether you believe in the staying power of blockchain and Web3 or not, it’s abundantly clear that JavaScript and Python are here for the long haul. Both have evolved over the course of Web2 and whether they continue to adapt to the needs of Web3 remains to be seen.”
These two languages are both important to blockchain but we see some subtle differences in the context of the questions they are tagged with. The python tag, for example, is more commonly used when asking questions about crypto APIs and trading crypto. On the other hand, javascript appears in more questions about building decentralized applications, hence the association with solidity, web3 and smartcontracts tags.
Conclusion
The jury is still out, so to speak, when it comes to the future of blockchain and Web3. Most are building experience with blockchain in their free time or haven’t touched it at all. And as developers are learning and building, they are turning to the languages they use most: JavaScript and Python. Regardless of hype cycles and trends, inexperienced blockchain developers still think Web3 is the future of the internet. The popularity of blockchain and Web3 is undeniable, and we’re seeing people learn and collaborate with blockchain at an astronomical rate. The question remains—will this all stand the test of time? We’re excited to find out.
Tags: #StackOverflowKnows, blockchain, community, insights, pulse-survey, survey, web3
24 Comments
All you need to know is that https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
Thanks for this article.
One comment though: Ethereum is not a Blockchain currency. Ethereum is a Blockchain (network). Ether is the native currency of this Blockchain, that allows its users to send transactions on it (and though execute smart contract).
This is just propaganda.
Extra no. Rachael is correcting a factual error in the material.
To me, Web3 is something undergoing something akin to a rite-of-passage / puberty phase. While the general population believes it’s silly and all about overpriced ape artwork and scammy tokens, the utility really is there to build a more secure and globalized ownership and distribution of data.
Will it “replace” the conventional patterns for handling data? Doubtful, at least for the next decade or two. However, will it slowly increase adoption and be here for the long term? I would be surprised if it doesn’t!
I can’t predict the future, but I don’t think it will ever replace centralised networks. There is a fundamental problem of space and time efficiency that distributed networks can never overcome. Even optimizations of blockchains introduce anonymous trusted third parties, so in a sense they are not completely deecentralised. However, it excels in producing digital gold, case in point, bitcoin and NFTs.
While the latest development of Web 3 and efforts to make use cases of the blockchain mainstream is a huge leap forward in our progress in making a better internate ,it’s simply one component and it should not neglect other complementary Initiatives.
I’ve talked to developers at NTT (you can choose not to believe me). Their expectation going forward for web3 is to have banks hold the responsibility for data handling because people trust them and always will, unlike everything else.
So no, globalization or freedom is not the point for web3. Their point is to add a new dimension to it, tying real assets and physical space to connectivity.
Is that 25.4% corrected for the Ponzi factor?
Enthusiasm for any blockchain technology seems
– proportional to how much the respondent has already invested in crypto and yet to lose
– inversely proportional to software development experience and/or investing experience
Absolutely this is a foundational technology that has a long way to go before it is shaken out, but as with all prior disruptive technology shifts that actually survived, the initial few years are a madly-off-in-all-directions gold rush.
Never underestimate the lure of naivety and name-making for any entrant who would rather invest in new-thing and be big fish in small pond for immediate gratification than catch up to and master established things.
That, and the new cottage industry of “subscribe to my channel to get the latest on the thing that came out last week, yo!”
Blockchain/Web3 solves a fairly small set of problems. It doesn’t solve the same problems that Web2 does. Will it build a better internet? No, it will build a different one.
New developers who think crypto is the future = 40.1%
New developers who think it’s all a scam OR think it’s a bunch of hype = 14.8% + 24.9% = 39.7%
So the people who feel negatively towards crypto are almost exactly equal to those who say it’s the future of the internet, <0.5 percentage points different
Concluding with "Regardless of hype cycles and trends, inexperienced blockchain developers still think Web3 is the future of the internet" is actively misleading – through the advanced statistics of *adding two numbers together*, it looks like regardless of hype cycles, inexperienced blockchain developers are divided down the middle on web3.
(I think not counting "important to blockchain" one way or the other is probably fair, since it's a fairly empty statement)
Yet you've managed to present this as overall positive sentiment towards web3. Blatantly misleading and shameful.
The term “Web 3” is a triumph of marketing, leaving the uneducated reader with the idea that this is a set of technologies to create a next-generation internet. “Web 3” is really a set of technologies that don’t tend to be very useful, generally solving problems in a much more roundabout and vastly less efficient way than “Web 2″technologies. Too many people are asking themselves “web3 is the next big thing! How do I use web3 technologies for something?!” rather than “how do I best solve this problem?”
It’s a lot of hype based off of confusion and fear of missing out, and right now it’s a scammer’s paradise. Many web3 projects don’t even attempt to hide that they’re pyramid schemes or ponzi schemes.
The Web3 is like I would try to convince the coding world, a linked list is the best storage class because it is all linked so objects could interact with each other.
Web3 is merely a possible solution and now they are finding problems for which the solution fits (or can make it fit). In the mean time, the most popular blockchains are still consuming vast amounts of energy and the large scale mining rigs also contribute to world-wide component shortages (e.g. for GPU cards).
With Web3 coming, HDD or SSD storage will probably become the next scarce thing. Can we first focus on solving those issues before proceeding in large / global scale applications
For me the most pertinent stat is the 37% of developers who don’t even know what web3 “is”. That’s a lot of developers not showing a lot of interest in a new generation of technology. 37% of people I would hope never to end up on my payroll. Developers should always be learning if only to enable well-informed decisions about what to use and when, and what not to.
I suspect if we draw comparisons from almost everything in history ever and always, evangelists and naysayers alike will be proven wrong and reality will fall comfortably in the middle ground, neither revolutionising every aspect of our lives, nor disappearing entirely, and being used in ways the creators didn’t foresee.
I’m not sure why we insist on posing such polarising questions as whether something is “the future” or “not the future”, or why “not the future” can only be broadly explained as “a scam” or “hype”.
Decentralisation is a different way of operating, collaborating and sharing information, which could deliver significant change within and between enterprises, and the way we interact online. Or it might not. Nobody knows yet but failing to explore it with imagination and common sense is like arguing we should have stayed with assembler or that email will never catch on because it’s vulnerable to phishing attacks.
We are developers. Let’s go and build some great things.
Amazing answer!
This was best ” arguing we should have stayed with assembler or that email will never catch on because it’s vulnerable to phishing attacks” Lol
I would have loved to see “What’s Web3?” included in the the pie charts contrasting developers with and without blockchain experience. More of the raw data released would have more than sufficed.
web3 is just crappy hype. the blockchain is a functioning tech that a lot companies already adopted and many more will – where it makes sense, but saying how this will usher new era of ”web3” internet is nonsense
“Web3” is a solution in search of a problem. It doesn’t fix any real problems and brings with it a massive load of new problems.
Bsides, this article is ridiculously biased
1) it assumes that web3 is viable/good and/or will definitely happen
2) it presents the findings in a biased way, just like “A” described above
3) it draws results from a biased survey. splitting the side you want to present negatively into 2 different answers to make support for it seem less popular than it really is is the oldest trick in the book
It’s bias on top of bias on top of bias.
Anybody interested in the best implementation of Web3 to date, check out https://skynetlabs.com/. It’s built on top of the Sia network (sia.tech) which uses the Sia blockchain to facilitate storage contracts between storage providers and storage renters.
The World Wide Web and the Internet are NOT the same thing.
I think that lots companies will use web3 and blockchain tech to solve their proplems.But to say ther are the feature ,I have no sense.
This article doesn’t explain what web3 actually is, what problems it solves, and which it doesn’t. Great work. Tells you everything you need to know about web3.
Web3 isn’t a real thing, but decentralization is.
Web 2.0 wasn’t a real thing, but AJAX was.
You can find good or bad things and call them a catch-all name to say that on the whole it’s a good/bad thing (and bring entirely unrelated topics such as GPU mining for web3, or CSS rounded corners for web 2.0, and make even worse conclusions!)
Decentralization and user-centric ownership is great. Marketing hype is just a load of monkey NFTs.
“At its core web3 is a vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public’s negative associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption of legacy tech company hegemony. It is a distraction in the pursuit of selling more coins and continuing the gravy train of evading securities regulation.” – https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/web3-bullshit.html