From: thepipeline_xyz
Developer relations, often led by individuals like Kevin G at Monad Labs [00:00:16], involves significant effort and resources to support developer adoption [00:06:40]. Monad, as a developer platform, prioritizes going “where the developers are” and addressing their pressing issues [00:55:54].
Key Value Propositions for Builders
For builders considering a platform, several value propositions are critical:
- Enhanced Composability [00:09:20]: A key benefit is the ability to compose smart contracts “pretty much infinitely” [00:10:09]. Unlike Solana’s cross-program invocation (CPI) depth limit of three, the EVM generally does not have this hard limit, though practical gas limits can impose constraints [00:09:35]. This allows for complex applications like account abstraction without prohibitive costs [00:09:46].
- Flexibility and Innovation [00:10:36]: Being a Layer 1 (L1) blockchain provides the flexibility to experiment and introduce new features. This includes adding opcodes for functionalities like BLS pre-compiles, which can unlock privacy on the base layer, or new pre-compiles for ZK (zero-knowledge) proofs [00:10:40]. Such additions are designed not to break backwards compatibility, enabling new use cases [00:11:11].
- Unleashing Existing Potential: The original Ethereum vision allowed for building “anything,” creating an ecosystem of composable applications like ERC-20 tokens [00:11:36]. However, practical limitations like gas costs and limited block space restricted this composability [00:12:12]. Platforms like Monad aim to remove these limitations, allowing existing apps and libraries to scale to many more users and enable business models previously unfeasible [00:12:41].
- Leveraging the EVM Ecosystem: The EVM is a “Nexus of so much applied cryptography research, so much effort that’s going into building apps, so much effort that’s going into developing better security practices and automated fuzz testing and formal verification” [00:30:25]. Building within this standard ensures that new work is composable with existing efforts and benefits from a strong research community [00:31:11].
Challenges for Builders in the EVM Environment
Despite the advantages, builders face several significant Challenges and Strategies for Crypto Startups:
- Funding Acquisition: Attracting funding remains a challenge, particularly for international builders due to a U.S.-biased investor community [00:33:03].
- Security Concerns: Building decentralized applications is inherently more challenging from a security perspective [00:33:34]. The environment is adversarial, with black hat hackers constantly probing for vulnerabilities [00:33:40]. High gas costs currently force developers to make tradeoffs, sometimes opting for fewer defensive assertions to save on gas, which compromises security [00:34:03]. Reducing gas costs could enable more robust security practices [00:34:06].
- Outdated Perceptions of Blockchain Capabilities: Many Web2 developers still hold a 2017-2018 view of what is possible on a blockchain [00:35:50]. It’s crucial to present examples of real-world use cases with user experiences and interfaces similar to Web2 apps to change these perceptions [00:36:00].
- Retention in an Open Ecosystem: Given the ease of porting applications within the EVM ecosystem, keeping developers on a specific chain is a challenge [00:36:27]. The strategy is to enable unique experiences that are not possible elsewhere, perhaps due to gas costs or specific VM enhancements [00:36:40].
Strategies for Developer Engagement and Adoption
Effective developer relations involve several key strategies:
- Focus on Mass Adoption: The primary goal is to bring “new people into crypto” and encourage them to use decentralized applications [00:42:59]. Simply moving existing users from one platform to another won’t drive significant block space usage [00:43:09]. This means delivering compelling use cases and killer apps that motivate users to overcome onboarding hurdles like setting up wallets or moving funds [00:43:37].
- Improve User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI): Creating a UX/UI experience that puts blockchain development on the same level as Web2 development is vital [00:36:54]. The aim is for users not to even notice they are on a blockchain [00:37:19], attracting developers who primarily want to build functional applications [00:37:40].
- Foster a Strong Community: The crypto community is a huge advantage over traditional tech startups, with eager users willing to try out new products [00:35:17]. Leveraging this community is crucial for success [00:35:20].
- Continuous Innovation and Push Boundaries: While current advantages may lie in performance, the long-term differentiator will be a combination of community, killer apps, an evolving research community, and a commitment to pushing technological limits while maintaining decentralization [00:39:10]. This includes supporting new behaviors, pre-compiles, and opcodes [00:39:43].
- Collaboration Over Competition: Instead of viewing other platforms as competitors, the focus is on expanding the overall design space of what’s possible in crypto [00:45:52]. This collaborative approach, especially with the EVM as a standard, allows for shared advancements in cryptography, security, and application development [00:30:11].
- Realistic Performance Measurement: When discussing throughput, it’s important to use accurate metrics. “True TPS” should only count real transactions (smart contract interactions, transfers) and not include validator votes or count individual instructions as transactions, as some platforms do [00:48:21]. A more accurate measure for real-world activity might be raw bytes per second propagated through the system [00:52:36]. The ultimate solution involves reproducible benchmarks with open-source procedures to ensure transparency [00:50:49].