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Twice a year, Hiro surveys the Stacks developer community to learn about their experiences building on Stacks. We recently wrapped up our Q3 survey, the second this year. Learn more about the results of our Q1 survey here.
For our second survey of the year, we received over 260 responses. These responses captured perspectives from developers around the world and from different organizations within the Stacks ecosystem. Here are a few quick stats to get a sense of our developer community today:
- 31% of respondents are employed full-time, part time, or are self-employed in Web3
- NFTs and DAOs are still the most popular categories for builders
- The average time developers have been involved in the Stacks ecosystem is 16.6 months, and 57% of developers have been active in Stacks less than 1 year
- 85% of developer are men, and 75% are ages 25 - 44
- Developers from over 50 countries responded to the survey, with the largest concentrations from Asia-Pacific (34.5%) and North America (30.3%)
The Developer Experience on Stacks Is Improving
Hiro tools have helped make the developer experience better this year. Since our last survey, we have shipped improvements to Clarinet, the Stacks API, and more. In the past two surveys, we asked developers a range of questions about how hard they found different aspects of development and to grade their difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being very hard and 10 being very easy.
In our Q3 survey, Stacks developers reported they found every stage of the development process nearly 10% easier. The biggest gains developers noted was in the ease of deploying contracts to the network, which saw a 14% increase from Q1.
What Other Ecosystems Are Stacks Developers Involved In?
Most Web3 developers explore multiple different ecosystems, and Stacks is no different. In this year’s survey, we polled our community to find out what other ecosystems they’re involved with.
The biggest takeaways are clear:
- After Stacks itself, Ethereum remains the most popular blockchain with our developer community.
- Cosmos and Lightning have become more popular with Stacks developers in the past 6 months.
- Developer involvement with Polygon, Avalanche, Polkadot, and Binance Smart Chain have all decreased.
What Motivates Our Community?
We also polled Stacks developers to find out what drives and inspires them. Here are the results:
A few things stood out to us from this data:
- 55% of developers say the bear market has increased their desire to work in Web3.
- The desire to innovate on Bitcoin and the strength of the Stacks community were the clear top motivations for developing on Stacks.
- 60% of developers say that decentralization is the most important part of the blockchain trilemma (which says that blockchains can only have 2 of 3 traits: security, decentralization, and speed).
- The term “Bitcoin maximalism” is considered neutral by the majority (59%) of Stacks developers.
Conclusion
Overall, the results showcase the strength of the Stacks ecosystem and the growing momentum around developer tooling for the Stacks ecosystem. Hiro’s purpose is to empower developers to create a better digital future with best-in-class tools and services. We’ve made strides on that work, but it’s not yet done. We have some exciting updates coming in Q4, like preparing for the upcoming Stacks 2.1 changes and adding new Bitcoin support to our tools.
Want to join Stacks developers and innovate in Web3? Kickstart your development journey with our free guide to developing smart contracts.
