“We’re so early,” As the meme about crypto goes, it’s not always a positive thing to work as a Web3 Developer.
Sources tell Blockworks that blockchain teams are facing multiple challenges in attracting developer talent. The challenges range from finding funds in a macro-economic environment that is bearish to smart contract languages, infrastructure and workflows tools.
Forcing devs to deal with novel workflow issues is a problem with serious consequences — not merely a drain on productivity, but, with money on the line in decentralized finance, major financial losses result when security missteps occur. Ask cross-chain users.
Cubist is a San Diego-based company that announced its close today of a $7 million seed funding round. It focuses on tools needed by software engineers for the development of multi-chains and cross-chains.
Polychain Capital led the round, which included participation by venture capitalists and other investors, including Dao5, Amplify Partners Polygon and Axelar.
The company’s initial focus is on chains supporting the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), CEO and co-founder Riad Wahby told Blockworks, noting Ethereum has the most well established developer tooling, but only for the needs of individual developers, not larger more professional developer teams.
Some crypto enthusiasts use the fact that developers are unfamiliar with Solidity (Ethereum’s language for smart contracts). “as an excuse,” Wahby said.
“I think there is a slice of the developer ecosystem in Web2 that’s basically like Javascript or nothing…but I don’t think that’s actually the problem,” Added he, “I think the actual problem is, all the other tooling that goes along with developing serious applications in Web2 is just totally missing.”
Wahby cited continuous integration testing — automating the merging of code changes from multiple contributors into a single software project — as one example where Web3 falls short.
“That’s still nascent technology, whereas in Web2 that’s just table stakes,” He said.
Only a limited number of early adopters
Dean Tribble is the CEO of Agoric. The company facilitates DeFi Dapps built in JavaScript.
“It’s fine to get fanatics, but there are just a limited number of them, and the goal is to transition to where we get lots and lots of customers from this platform technology.”
There is certainly the programming language aspect, Tribble said, noting that the number of JavaScript developers in the world sits at 15 million and the language’s strengths in building frameworks of components — composable software from many different contributors.
“Being able to build on the shoulders of others is critical,” He said.
A more pressing problem is currently the general market decline. “People don’t communicate what’s the value [proposition] of it, for people solving their own problems…what’s the actual advantage here?”
Among the obstacles: New jargon, new patterns, the security hazards, the perceived fraudulent behavior — “scummy, scammy behavior,” As Tribble said.
“FTX’s same-old-same-old brokerage fraud of mixing customer funds with investment — the fraud part didn’t have anything to do with Web3, the technology stack and what opportunity is enabled, and yet from 10,000 feet it all looks like a mess,” He said.
Tribble anticipates applications which rely on the value of other chains, however, it acknowledges that application dependence, also known as counterparty risk, can have a negative impact.
Agoric’s stable token, IST, is one example. It can be made from Ethereum-based coins like DAI USDC USDT and USDT which are then transferred to Cosmos using bridges, such as Axelar Gravity.
“But if one of those bridges goes down, that impacts our business and reputation even though we do not have control over those bridges.”
That’s among the problems Wahby’s team at Cubist aims to tackle — to improve the ability for developers to safely build and deploy multichain.
“I love the hacker ethic — of course that’s part of the reason why we love to work in Web3 — but I also want somebody who’s going to give me a [Service Level Agreement],” Wahby said.
Axelar’s Galen Moore revealed to Blockworks that Cubist has been building tools specifically for interchain developers using Axelar Virtual Machines (AVM), which is a permissionless piece of infrastructure.
Axelar is on a mission to help developers build interchain-native apps. Sergey Gorbunov, co-founder of Axelar, said this at the Interop Summit, held recently in Denver. He described that 70-80% time was spent by developers dealing with software deployment minutiae in a multiple-chain stack rather than being free to concentrate on application logic.
“It’s possible to make Web3 easier — maybe even easier than traditional web development,” Moore,
Gorbunov predicts that Ethereum and Cosmos’ development will coalesce in the future.
“In some sense now the Cosmos stack I think is becoming more and more glued together with the EVM stack, and I think, as time goes by, these are going to be indistinguishable ecosystems, I believe,” Gorbunov stated.
First, we must solve the problem of money
It doesn’t matter how keen Web3 would-be developers are. The team has to have the funds to pay for them. Griffin Anderson, Phi Labs CEO, has seen foundations not honor their promises to provide grants and that projects funded through token issuance suffer from the current bear market in token price.
“There’s tons of demand to build apps and projects, but I would say the overwhelming 50 or 60 percent are depending on a financial grant in some capacity,” Anderson Blockworks.
“It’s not like they don’t know Web 2.0 engineers and don’t want to bring their friends into the space, it’s that they can’t pay their salaries, at the end of the day, in this environment,” He said.
Anderson, who is a key contributor to Archway’s Web3 technology, has been working to devise alternative incentive mechanisms that will encourage more Web3 developers to embrace the technology by using its strengths.
Archway’s basic concept, which also uses Cosmos, is that developers are rewarded programmatically based upon the value of their users.
Tribble said that it is important to find applications which excite the developers and make use of Web3’s strengths. The challenges of testing applications across machines or chains are unique.
“That’s rarely something engineers have experienced in non-crypto…[but] it is one that Web2 engineers actually find enticing — that’s interesting from an engineering point of view — it’s part of the attraction,” He said.
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