The Crypto DevRel Trap

"Developers are the starting point of adoption in crypto!"

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I confidently repeated this in almost every strategy meeting. With millions in our treasury, world-changing tech in our stack, and a stellar team, we were ready to change the world. 

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There was just one problem: we had no users. 

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Like many other projects in crypto, the leadership team agreed that "with more developers, adoption would follow”. I was hired a few months later.

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Five years into DevRel, I've reached a sobering realization: DevRels are holding crypto back from mainstream adoption. I, myself, have been part of the problem.

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The DevRel Trap Defined

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The DevRel Trap is a vicious cycle where blockchain projects prematurely hire Developer Relations teams to attract developers before validating their core use cases, operating under the flawed assumption that more developers automatically leads to more adoption.

Rather than improving user experience, more DevRels in fact fragment the market further.

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Especially when done well, the DevRel Trap creates an echo chamber of technical marketing that alienates mainstream users while depleting resources that could be better spent on proven growth strategies.

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In Web2, companies build what their users tell them to build. But in a speculation-driven industry like Web3, our obsession with technical growth stems from historical correlations that have created dangerous assumptions. 

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Not only do airdrop incentives and their hungry bot-farm-armies create “usage”, an active developer ecosystem legitimizes the “tool makes sense”. 

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Some examples of this are:

• The ICO boom of 2017 saw market caps soar to $800 billion when developers started creating ERC-20 tokens. 
• DeFi Summer witnessed TVL skyrocket from $1 billion to $13 billion in just months as developers explored yield farming. 
• Layer 2 solutions saw a staggering 14,000% TVL growth in 2021 as developers dove into ZK rollups. 

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These moments of speculation-driven growth have convinced us that developer activity always precedes user adoption. But correlation isn't causation.

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Looking at the Web2 giants reveals another story, where the time gap between consumer products to API launch in Web2 is ~3-5 years. 

• Airbnb: Consumer launch (2008) vs public API launch (2017) = 9 years
• PayPal: Consumer launch (1999) vs public API (2004) = 5 years
• Uber: Consumer launch (2010) vs public API (2014) = 4 years
• Facebook: Consumer launch (2004) vs public API (2007) = 3 years

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These companies understood a fundamental truth we've forgotten: you need users before you need developers. Without proven use cases for a large-enough market pool, developers are building products no one is interested in using. 

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Most often, DevRels are unaware of the underlying incentives they’re playing part of. In fact, we're doing what we were hired to do.

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How It Works

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The numbers tell a startling story.

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In a DevRel Telegram chat I'm part of, there are over 400 crypto DevRels serving a mere 25,000 active blockchain developers. 

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For context - that's roughly 1 DevRel for every 65 developers – a ratio that would be laughable in any other industry. To give you some perspective, there are 13.8 million JavaScript developers and 10.1 million Python developers globally. Crypto DevRels are fighting over crumbs while ignoring the feast.

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This hyperfocus on developer acquisition has led to an expensive arms race, where companies are paying exorbitant prices for Solidity wizards and the DevRels needed to attract them in the first place. Because our work as DevRels is ecosystem-focused, rather than industry-focused, our selfishness has meant a loss for all.

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We haven’t onboarded enough engineers into smart contract development to have so many ecosystems. Add the weekly news on crypto hacks - you realize engineers are scared of deploying their contracts to production and audits are increasingly expensive. 

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Additionally, projects routinely throw 5-6 figure sums at hackathons and developer grants, hoping to strike gold. Yet these investments rarely yield products with real market traction because engineers don’t necessarily have the skillsets to take a product to market. 

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We're essentially funding technical experiments without ensuring there's a market for the solutions. We set them up for failure by encouraging teams to build without understanding the path to user adoption ourselves. 

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What This Means

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The consequences of the DevRel Trap run deeper than wasted resources. The DevRel trap is quietly killing crypto's chance at mainstream adoption by fragmenting the ecosystem and its user experience. 

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We've created a technical echo chamber where marketing becomes increasingly complex and alienating to mainstream users. Our messaging focuses obsessively on the "how it works" rather than "why it matters." 

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Every dollar spent prematurely on developer relations is a dollar not spent on understanding and serving actual users. This disconnect isn't just about wasted resources – it's about missed opportunities to solve real problems for real people. 

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Blockchain technology solves previously-unsolvable problems like digital verifiability, secure and open transparency, and permissionless accountability. 

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It empowers corrupt governments to become less corrupt. It helps developing nations to leverage world-class currencies for day-to-day transactions. It enables digital objects with programmable behavior comparable to their real-life counterparts. 

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How To Fall Out Of The Trap

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The solution starts with a fundamental shift in thinking. We have to be intellectually honest and not sell smoke. 

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Most discipline leaders become advocates for their disciplines. A hammer sees everything as a nail. A lawyer sees everything as a risk. DevRels see everyone as a "builder". 

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Projects need to validate core use cases with real users before even considering a developer program. This often means prioritizing user-focused marketing and storytelling over technical documentation. 

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I still think projects should have an overview of how the technology works under the hood, especially at a high-level. However, well-written code, solid tests, a robust README, auto-generated reference docs, and NatSpec code comments should serve as strong-enough documentation until developers are flogging into the community. 

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A good way to think about it is by starting high level and low level simultaneously, with the objective of meeting in the middle once it’s complete.

• High level documentation = wtf is the thing?
• Low level = auto-generated reference docs

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Only when developers are knocking at your door asking for API access should you consider hiring a DevRel.

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Additionally, developer funding programs must consist of more than just hackathons and grants. Incubator-style programs that provide more holistic, comprehensive support, including go-to-market guidance are key to market success. 

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Focusing on bridging the gap with Web2 developers by offering familiar tools and languages rather than forcing everyone to learn Solidity from scratch is another great way to widen the engineering pie.

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The hiring sequence matters, too. Marketers should come before DevRels so that the user-focused narrative is well-defined before DevRels come in. Of course, every product is different, but investing in non-technical storytelling that explains why your protocol matters to everyday users first ensures we gather user interest before spending resources in growing developer ecosystems.

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Ultimately, marketers need to work more closely with product teams to create iterative feedback loops with end users to actually make products valuable and quickly invalidate bad ideas.

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Let natural user traction attract developer interest, rather than trying to manufacture it through technical marketing.

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What now?

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The crypto industry has been building developer highways to ghost towns. While we're busy creating elaborate technical documentation and throwing millions at hackathons, the average person still can't explain why they'd use a blockchain in their daily life.

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We've been so focused on attracting developers to build the next killer app that we forgot to create environments where those apps could actually succeed. 

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The path to mainstream crypto adoption doesn't start with developers – it starts with users. Only when we have thriving communities of users will we attract the right developers who can build what those communities actually need.

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For an industry built by engineers, our greatest challenge isn't technical – it's remembering that technology alone doesn't drive adoption. 

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The future of crypto depends not on how many developers we can attract, but on how effectively we can serve real users' needs. And as hard as that may be for me to admit, most of the time, real users aren’t best served by DevRels.

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– Disclaimer: My objective is not to shame the work of DevRels, I am one myself. Instead, it's an invitation towards an honest conversation about the state of crypto and how we work together towards mainstream adoption.

-- Image in thumbnail is from Starry LM Chabot

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