Image Credit: KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty

Crypto winters truly are for building. That’s according to a survey of crypto developers conducted by Hiro, a Web3 developer toolkit.

The H2 2022 Developer Survey confirms that when speculative activity around crypto cools off, it’s time to get to work. More than half of respondents (55%) said that the bear market has increased their desire to work in Web3, with most focused on NFTs and DAOs.

Many developers want to see innovation thrive on Bitcoin, with 38% of respondents citing it as their primary motivation to develop on Stacks, a programmable layer on top of Bitcoin.

What’s the most important feature of a blockchain? According to 60% of the respondents, decentralization is the key feature of the blockchain trilemma of security, decentralization and scalability. Another interesting finding from the survey is that 59% of Stacks developers consider the term “Bitcoin maximalism” a neutral one.

Image source: Hiro

The going gets easier for crypto developers

Stacks developers also reported in the Q3 2022 survey that every stage of development has gotten easier since Q1, especially deploying contracts to the network, integrating contracts into applications, and maintaining and monitoring apps and contracts.

While Hiro’s developer community is focused on Stacks, they’re also involved with other blockchain ecosystems. Ethereum, which recently switched to proof-of-stake after the Merge, remains a clear favorite. Cosmos and Lightning saw the most growth among the Stacks developer community, with 85% and 64% increases in activity respectively. Other chains have lost ground among the respondents, with Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche and Polkadot seeing drops in popularity.

Methodology

Developers from more than 50 countries responded to the survey, with the largest concentrations from Asia-Pacific (34.5%) and North America (30.3%). The survey respondents were mostly (85%) men. Three-quarters were age 25 to 44. A third are employed full-time, part-time or are self-employed in Web3.

Read the full report from Hiro.