Developers remain resilient through tough crypto winters, the report says
Data from Web3 developer backend company Alchemy shows that despite the latest chapter of the crypto winter that has unfolded in recent months, developers remain resilient in their efforts to deploy decentralized applications (dapps).
According to the firm’s Q1 2023 “Developer Report,” developers installed an average of 1.9 million Ethereum software development kits (SDKs) per week, a 47% year-over-year increase. Additionally, 788% more wallet SDKs were deployed since Q1 2022, an all-time high for wallet infrastructure installs.
Although non-fungible token (NFT) trading volume is down 82% year-over-year, it has increased by 126% since the last quarter of 2022. In the case of decentralized finance (DeFi), trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) is down 38% since Q1 2022, but it is on the rise in the new year, and has seen a 43% increase since December 2022.
It’s not just Ethereum where there were new highs in developer activity. Cross-sidechain Polygon and Layer 2 network developers Arbitrum and Optimism deployed 160% more smart contracts year-over-year, driven in part by a desire to build on the Ethereum scaling protocol zkSync 2.0, which was published in February, and Polygon’s zero -knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM), which was released to the public at the end of March.
Jason Shah, head of growth at Alchemy, told CoinDesk that while the crypto winter has been long and trying for many Web3 developers, there is still an incentive to stick around when the market finally returns to its previous levels.
“Surviving a crypto bear market is certainly not easy, and the longer it goes on, the more challenging it can be,” Shah said. “But what we’re noticing is that most of the builders that are in the space are here for the technology, and so many people are certainly looking forward to a return in more top-line metrics like pricing, and a lot of new projects launching and new funding coming into the room.”
Shah noted that while events have shaken public sentiment around the space, developers have been anything but “resilient” toward building blockchain-based products and services.
“It hasn’t been the most ‘gangbusters’ quarter ever in terms of crypto growth, but we see this strong resilience beneath the surface of the broader narrative,” Shah said. unbridled optimism,” Shah said.
