Web3 Development Report

Web3 Development Report

Alchemy

Web3 Development Report

The Big Picture
Prices down, devs up.
Despite Ethereum decreasing 70%
in price, developer activity increased
by over 40%.

*As measured by verified smart contract deployments

Web3 Development Report

Q3’22 was the biggest for devs, ever
1.5m

17,375

12,495

Ethereum SDK
installs/week

Smart

contracts (verified)

/month

dapps

+178% Y/Y

+160% Y/Y

(12x since 2018)

Web3 Development Report

This is despite

the bear market

DEFI

-69%
Total value

locked Y/Y

NFTS

-88%
Trading volume
USD Y/Y

Prices

-56%
Ethereum price
USD Y/Y

Web3 Development Report

Approach

Web3 Development Report

3 ways to measure developer activity

Libraries
Developer tools to easily
read/write to the blockchain

Smart contracts
Computer programs stored
on a blockchain

dapps
End-user ready applications
with decentralized backends

These 3 indicators show us if devs are building, deploying, and growing

Web3 Development Report

Ethereum Libraries
Libraries are up and to the right

Web3 Development Report

1.5m/weekly

Ethereum SDK installs
Ethereum SDKs include Ethers.js and Web3.js,

which developers need to build on the Ethereum blockchain

+24%
145,799
2018

+80%

+178%
+70%

1,536,548

552,272

325,056

180,231
2019
2019

2020
2020

2021
2021

2022

Web3 Development Report

Weekly downloads

Ethers.js, Web3.js, and Combined

948,981 (+212%)

304,273 (+86%)
163,799 (+145%)
53,863
91,936

66,959 (+24%)
113,272 (+23%)

247,999 (+54%)
161,257 (+42%)

587,567 (+137%)

Web3 Development Report

Smart Contracts
Smart contracts are up and to the right

Web3 Development Report

Verified smart contract deployments

are up more than 50% in 2022
117,922
+50%

78,806
+63%

44,023

48,471

+366%

+100%

24,281
808

9,438

-45%

1068%

∞

Verified smart contracts were used for measurement of production applications.

2019

The number of total contracts deployed is more than 10X larger.

2021

Web3 Development Report

117,922
smart contracts were

deployed in 2022

205,827
smart contracts deployed

from 2015 to 2021

36%

of all verified smart contracts were deployed

just this year, making 2022 the biggest year ever

Web3 Development Report

Monthly verified smart contracts up 2.6x Y/Y
New monthly all time highs (ATHs) consistently set

Verified smart contract deployment

17,736
16,698
14,615

Web3 Development Report

Verified smart contract deployment

Smart contracts

not tied to prices
17,736

12,337

11,824

$3,450

$1,323
$1,035

Web3 Development Report

dapps
dapps are up and to the right

Web3 Development Report

More than 12,000 dapps and growing

0x, Aave, Apex, Audius, Balancer, Coherent, CollabLand, Compound, Context, Curve, Dark Forest, Decentral Games,
DeveloperDAO, dydx, Farcaster, Fractal, Gitcoin, Gods Unchained, Goldfinch, Helius, Hop, Hyperspace, Illuvium,
JonesDAO, Lens, Magic Eden, Metamask, Mirror, OpenSea, Pancake Swap, Phantom, Royal, Quickswap, Quix, Safe,
Showtime, Slingshot Finance, Snapshot, Solanart, Stargate Finance, Sudoswap, Sweat, Synapse, Syndicate,
Synthetix, Tally, Uniswap, x2y2, Zapper, Zerion

Web3 Development Report

Beyond
Ethereum
Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Solana

Web3 Development Report

Polygon

335%

growth in active
developer teams YTD

804%

growth in active
developer teams Y/Y

153%

growth in API
consumption YTD

Web3 Development Report

Arbitrum

516%

growth in active
developer teams YTD

795%

growth in active
developer teams Y/Y

121%

growth in API
consumption YTD

Web3 Development Report

Optimism

>1000% >1000% >460%
growth in active
developer teams YTD

growth in active
developer teams Y/Y

growth in API
consumption YTD

Web3 Development Report

Solana

>1000% >1000% >500%
growth in active
developer teams YTD

growth in active
developer teams Y/Y

growth in API
consumption YTD

Web3 Development Report

Additional Alchemy data
2x Archive
requests YTD

suggesting more
developers are leveraging
historical chain data

10x Enhanced API 10x NFT API
requests YTD
requests YTD
confirming expansions from
core node APIs to more
advanced infrastructure
across DeFi, DAOs, and
gaming

suggesting more use of
NFTs in user-facing
products and analytics

+16k signups in

<1 week
for Alchemy University,
the new platform for
learning how to build in
web3

Web3 Development Report

Data infrastructure is growing

Chainlink

The Graph

Alchemy

500+ projects

500+ subgraphs

Billions of data

4.2B on-chain data points

560B queries

requests YTD
suggesting developers are actively building
dapps with diverse use cases

Web3 Development Report

Social infrastructure is growing

ENS

Lens Protocol

Farcaster

545,948+ owners

86,500+ owners

164,000 casts by 3,405
all-time casters

Web3 Development Report

Wallet and DeFi infrastructure is growing

WalletConnect

RainbowKit

Uniswap v3 SDK

46,250 weekly installs

26,359 weekly installs

27,841 weekly installs

+13% Y/Y

launched 2022

+280% Y/Y

Web3 Development Report

Methodology

Web3 Development Report

Methodology
This report strives to provide an accurate and useful representation of web3 development.
The following sources were used for data collection purposes: Etherscan (verified smart
contracts), DappRadar (dapp count), Github and NPM JS (SDK installations and metadata),
CoinMarketCap (token prices), and the Internet Archive (fetching historical versions of
aforementioned pages to provide timestamped data sources). web3 Javascript library
weekly downloads were used as a proxy for developer activity here. This metric is helpful
but imperfect due to the ability for the library to be downloaded multiple times by the same
user intentionally or unintentionally. However, it provides one signal for directional
guidance. Additionally, the growth of various blockchains on Alchemy is purely relative;
certain chains are significantly larger as measured by active teams and daily requests.

Web3 Development Report

Thank you to the report’s sources

Developer Activity: Alchemy

Smart Contracts and Programs: Etherscan and Solscan

Market and Prices: DappRadar, Defi Pulse, CoinMarketCap, Dune

SDKs: Github and NPM

Historical Web Pages: Internet Archive