Web3 Development Picks Up Pace Despite Crypto Winter Freeze

Web3 developers are working harder than ever as “buidl season” continues amid a deepening bear market where crypto asset prices are concerned.

The thickening ice of the 2022 crypto winter has not deterred web3 developers, as new records have been set this year. According to the Alchemy Web3 Developer Report for the third quarter released on Oct. 13, activity and smart contract deployment have increased.

The development platform uses three primary ways to measure web3 developer activity: libraries, smart contracts, and dApps. The number of developers using its own platform has increased three times since the start of this year, but there is also a hive of activity throughout the ecosystem.

Heads down and keep on building

Bear markets are often used to focus on research, development, and product improvements when attention is diverted away from crypto asset prices.

This one has been no exception, with essential libraries and tools for development being downloaded at record levels. Ethers.js and Web3.js, two of the most critical libraries for blockchain development, have seen downloads increase 10 times this year to 1.5 million downloads per week combined.

“This metric alone points to a large and growing interest in building applications on Ethereum,” the report noted.

Smart contract deployment is another key indicator of web3 development activity. Developers submitted more than 17,376 smart contracts to Etherscan in September. This represents an increase of 160% year-on-year as decentralized protocol development surges.

Q3, 2022 saw 48,689 verified smart contracts published, which is a 143% increase compared to the same period in 2021. Around 36% of all smart contracts ever deployed and verified have been in 2022, and deployment increased by 14% in the fortnight that followed Ethereum’s Merge, it added.

Decentralized application growth is another indicator of a healthy development ecosystem, and there are now 12,500 dApps across all chains, according to DappRadar, a figure that is up from just 1,000 in 2018.

Web3 tools and education in demand

Alchemy reported that its suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) has seen a tenfold increase in demand since Q3 2021. Its Enhanced APIs provide tools for working with blockchain transfers, token metadata, token balances, transaction receipts, traces, and debugging.

The report also took a look at growth in active developer teams so far this year for the leading layer-2 and blockchain networks. Polygon’s increased by 335%, Arbitrum was up 516%, and Optimism and Solana saw more than a thousand percent increases for developer teams in 2022.

Last month, Coinbase launched a new web 3 development platform called Node to tap into the burgeoning developer ecosystem.