Addressing Web3 skepticism for DevRel

Cat: I'm Cat. I'm leading the developer relations department at Hype. I've been in blockchain for a while, since 2016, 2018, but I've kind of been in and out. I'm simultaneously a sceptic and also an enthusiast, which is why I wanted to talk about this today. Hype, if you haven't heard of us, we're an agency, so we do loads of different stuff like marketing design and also DevRel, but we solely work with Web3 clients. So today I just want to talk a little bit about what Web3 is, my own opinion of it, why I think you should know what it is, and also just some of the differences between Web two and Web3 DevRel and how I think it's really changing what DevRel looks like.

So I don't want to spend too much time talking about the iterations of the web because I'm sure all of you have heard this over and over again the past two years. But Web One was just when the web was first introduced. It is also called the Read Only Web nowadays. It's when a lot of people were consuming the internet, but only a few kind of people were creating websites and stuff, and it was generally just news sites. So these news companies or super nerdy developers would just use FTP and put stuff on the web, but there was no much contribution and everything that all changed with the introduction of Web two. So this is when the internet, all the data on the web was created by lots of people and consumed by lots of people. It was kind of like the introduction of social media changed this.

So a lot of people were actually creating blogs or creating posts or commenting and everything. And then the problem with this is that it was owned by a few people, and this is kind of the problem that Web3 aims to solve. So I'm sure you guys know fine. I don't think it's called fine anymore. This is Facebook, apple S, Amazon, Netflix, Google, but I think it's called Mama or something with Meta Alphabets, Microsoft, soft Apple and Amazon, because it makes no sense Netflix is in here. But yeah, so it's called Mama I, because Facebook and everybody changing their name, but flying is still what we refer to it as. So these guys kind of own all of the data that's on the web this, but it's kind of a problem. So the web two is built in a way that really incentivizes these companies to get as much data as they can.

They can do that because it's just like they own all this data already. So they're like, okay, well how can we utilise this data? Because that's like their whole business model. So whenever you don't own your data and centralise companies are owning it, instead they're going to use it against you and we've really seen this kind of happen. So they're collecting your data, they can alter it, they can censor it, they do do that. We see huge problems with censorship on social media. Whether or not you think it's a problem is your political persuasion, but we're starting to see these centralised companies have got huge say in what actually gets said on the internet. And because the internet is where we get all our, it's a problem. And the way that they use your data is that they kind of figure out, okay, well this person is engaging a lot with this kind of content.

We want to keep them on the platform, so we're going to keep showing them this kind of content, this information, and this is going to keep them on the platform so we can show them as many ads as possible. That's why they make money. So you're living in a completely separate world from your friend because of the stuff you see in the web is just a completely different world from other people because they use your data to be like, okay, well this is what they engage with. So I actually really like this tweet by this guy Eli Wax. He's got a data company on blockchain, but he talks about how Google has so much data that could be so freaking useful. Best predictor of Parkinson's is kind of a random one, but with recapture and typos and stuff, Google could tell you if there's something wrong with you, but we don't get that information that's all completely on them.

So we don't get to actually see that and what they're going to do. Instead with Cifo, it's like an algorithm that decides it. They're going to be like, okay, generally if someone slows down how they're typing, they're going to buy insurance ads, so let's just sell them load of expensive insurance ads and it's kind of a problem. So this is where Web3 comes in is to solve this problem. I think it's just an acceleration of the web. There's different terms and different definitions for it. So some people refer to it. It was originally called the Semantic Web, which is a lot of AI stuff. So open AI chatbot might be used by Google and everything. We'll see what goes with that. But what I want to talk to today is about decentralisation. So Web3, I see it as just the decentralised web. So it's created by many, consumed by many, just like the web is right now, but also owns by many. So you get to own your own information on different servers around the world. It's not blockchain.

I think blockchain has a part to play in this, and I'll talk about that a little bit, but I think when people are talking about Web3, especially in the past couple of years, we've come to this thing that is just like Web3 is crypto and it's all this hype and it's NFTs and tokens and just tokenizing the whole internet. And there was this tweet thread that went viral last year, I think by this Chris Dixon, he's a vc, and he was talking just all these words that made no sense to anyone who wasn't in crypto. And it's like, this is why crypto's ticking off. And the crypto bros were like, fuck yeah, I dunno if I can say that. And then everybody else was like, no, this makes no sense. He literally was saying that NFTs let you own a part of the internet, which is just, it's not true.

So I'm kind of sick of all the hype, and I just want to say Web3 is not blockchain, but blockchain can provide a layer on top of Web3 to help actually incentivize the use of it. So I think Web3 is decentralised web, it's kind of just peer to peer communication, but blockchain, whenever you put it on top of the tokenized things, it incentivizes a new way of making money. So it kind of removes the way to make money from centralised data storages. And there's this saying that's like Can't be evil is better than don't be evil, but taken from Google's OG slogan. But yeah, so I think the way I say it, it's super easy to make peer-to-peer storage, and I think a lot of the time when people are Web3 sceptics, they're like, well, you can just have peer-to-peer. Why do you need this expensive blockchain layer on top?

And you can have this in a lot of Web3 companies. The way they work is got this peer-to-peer thing on the base layer, and then they have blockchain kind of on top of it because blockchain helps create this ecosystem to make it all work together. We were kind of talking about ecosystems a bit with Karen, but yeah, so we have this self-sustaining model that means it all works together with blockchain. So this is where tokens come in. So this is Filecoin, this is how Filecoin kind of works together, and it means that you don't have to actually do anything to keep this going, and it gives incentive to everyone to join the community. So you have the people who are actually storing files, why would they use it if it was peer to peer stores? There's no reason for them to, but if you create this token, give it some sort of use case that they can use it for, and then they will want to actually keep storing data so they can get this token and it builds this whole ecosystem.

So that's kind of how it works. Tokens are used for so many different things, so it just depends on what the company wants to have it for. Bitcoin is a token, Ethereum is a token, but there's hundreds of other ones. Most of them are stupid. Four ifs are also tokens that the use case for that is just saying that you're crypto row, but there's creator economy stuff. And sometimes if you want to partner with other companies and stuff, it's like, well, you could use this token. This is how Sweat coin works. You walk and you get crypto. So they partner with all these different companies, so that means that your token can actually buy you discounts and stuff. So there's different use cases for it. These are some of the use cases that I kind of know of that I think are really cool. All of these actually exist right now, which is cool.

But yeah, the biggest one is probably just having stock in a company. There's no middleman to buy. You don't have to go through Robinhood who might then stop your GameStop shares from going through. So you can just buy and own the token, and that's giving you stock for the company. It gives you ownership as well. Something that I really like is because tokens are associated with you as an individual, not with the protocol, is that you get to bring it with you everywhere. It just makes things way easier. It's kind of like how we live our life regularly. If you buy clothes, it's your clothes. It's not like company's clothes and you can only wear it in the store. So something this's really cool for is international healthcare, international credit and stuff. And we are seeing a lot of companies try to build this. And also it's kind of related to cross scheme items.

So if you get an item in the scheme or in this place in the internet, you can use it somewhere else and it's kind of building in this place for you, which I guess is called the Metaverse. But yeah, there's these kind of interesting ones. I can talk to you about this after this and tell you some more specific things that's going on, but it's kind of cool stuff that's happening. Gm, so this is a super common thing that everyone's says in crypto. The joke is that it sounds for good morning, still early, but the reason, so the fact that we're early means it's changes deral quite a lot and it makes it a whole different thing. We got a bottle with this, so pretty much every month through some sort of new scandal in crypto where it's like, I mean recently FTX was completely demolished.

Turns out it was a scam the whole time. Who would've thought? But so we battle with this all the time and everyone's just like, oh, crypto is just a scam. And honestly, 90% of the stuff is scams. But because there's all this going on, there's a lot of people who are sceptical and you have really good reason to be. But even though that's happening, we're not seeing developers drop off. So this is a report by Electric Capital. If you haven't read it, highly recommend checking out the reports. They have them every year. It's like Web3 developer reports. So this is last year's be anyone soon. But yeah, so we can see developers are going, these are monthly active ones, which is pretty crazy. It's like almost 20 k and they never drop off whenever the market goes on, which is kind of fun. So we can see that Web3 is not going anywhere, and with more developers, we need more deral.

But because we are so early, we're still building this ecosystem. And it's a lot different from if you have an established product and you have users who just want to actually get started and use their products and integrate it, that's not what's happening. We have, I like to describe it as when the web was first starting, there was a computer and there was a news site on the computer and you're trying to convince users to buy this computer to get this news whenever they just get it every morning from their delivery guy. Anyway, it's like why would they do that? So if we had Devra back then, their job would be to get developers to make products for this computer to convince users to buy the computer, and then they will understand why this is so cool for them. Everything is kind of in one place, but we're the very, very start of this.

We have barely any products that people are actually using on Web3 right now except for Defi. That's the big one. There's a few other social media things and stuff in there. We're right at the start of this. So we've got to convince developers to come and develop on Web3 even though they're not going to have any users using their products Anyway, it's a pretty hard thing to do. But the reason I think scepticism exists and why I'm sceptic is because everyone talks about all these amazing use cases. You might've rolled your eyes earlier when I was talking about international healthcare and stuff because it seems like an ideal, but none of them exist. They're being built and maybe they're kind of out there, but no one's using them. So the job of DevRel is to facilitate them into actually existing, which is pretty big on our part, which is why it's so important in Web3.

But as this actually relates to DevRel, I kind of just want to talk about the differences. My colleague wrote an article about this on developer relations.com, so highly recommend checking it out. This is the condensed version. But so these are the four big things that we work on in Web3 DevRel that I think are quite different. The fundamentals are the same. There's still developers who you're talking to who want to be successful, but I think one of the big ones is motivation. So generally there's barely any information out there with Web3. Every docs, they all suck. They're nowhere near on par with traditional documentation. The content is barely there. There's so much beginner content out there, but not anything more than that. So for a developer to come in to Web3, they have to be some sort of way motivated. So generally Web3 organisations will try to build up a motivation for why they exist, create a product, and the founder's kind of like, yeah, I think this should exist.

And then they don't really know why. So rel, part of what we do is kind of define the motivation, and that takes talking to the community and developers who are using your protocol, what are you using it for, why are you here? And then establishing kind of a motivation and everything you build and all the partnerships you make are surrounding this motivation. So these are some examples of clients that we've worked with at hype. Not all of them are clients. This one over here, left one is Alga around. So they kind of realised that they were really sustainable the way that they work, and we're like, okay, we're going to commit to that. So everything they did do is all about being green sustainable, and it's not just about being a sustainable blockchain, they're also just really sustainable in general. So they're trying to target all these developers who care about the environment and want to be building things that are contributing to Better World.

This middle one is near, it's another blockchain. They're all about actually changing the tech world. What I was kind of mentioning at the start with trying to make it all decentralised and they just want to make it super simple for you to do that for users, it's really easy for developers, it's really easy. So that's their whole motivation and their goal, and they're targeting developers who care about that. This third one, this is Source. So they're kind of a decentralised GitHub and they're building repetition for your code. So they're all about trust and reputation and people who really care about being able to see where their code is coming from and trying to actually give people the right credit and stuff. And that's really easy to do in the blockchain. So that's their motivation. That's what they're going for. And the kind of developers they're attracting to be on their decentralised repos are the same.

Transparency is a big one as well. So we mentioned all of these scams that are everywhere and RUG pulls all over the place. If you don't, you're not open about what you're doing, then you're most likely a scam, which people still don't seem to understand. It's why FTX managed to lose so much money. But yeah, so it's a really big thing to have roadmaps and stuff. And a lot of the time these organisations will not have a roadmap for the next year. And it's kind up to DevRel to be like, okay, well what do you want coded on your platform in the next few months? Why do you exist? And we kind of help develop these roadmaps and then publish them and make them really clear and available for everyone because it just helps you be transparent. And if you mess up and you're not going this direction, you have to be open because everything is on the blockchain anyway.

This middle one, this is actually from Ether Scan, so if you don't know Ether Scan, it's like a place to just see everything is happening on the Ethereum blockchain, and you can get your source code for your contract verified, so you can put your code up there and then Ether Scan is like, yeah, this is the code. And that's another way, just being transparent. So something that we do a lot is trying to get being a lot open source and stuff. There's a big overlap between the open source community and blockchain community. And then this is another one. This is from that same project source, like the decentralised GitHub thing. And they have a call every day where they just talk to their community, let them ask a lot of questions. They're really open about the funding they have, which is mad. We don't see that really, and they're just open about what's going on and very, very transparent.

Sorry, I've got a bit of a cold community. I think obviously we all know the community is super important in DevRel as a whole anyway, but it's so big in crypto that I almost forget that not everyone has Discord. Every single blockchain protocol has got a Discord server with all these different channels for developers and investors and everything. And it's like now that I've been in crypto for so long, it's like, oh yeah, some people don't have a Discord. So yeah, everything happens. Everything happens in Discord. It's crazy. All of the announcements, talking to your developers, finding out what they need, people don't even have Stack Overflow really on Web3, and it's just all in your discord. It's crazy. And also just DAOs. So decentralised, autonomous organisations, not going to define them too much, but they're basically, you kind of have your protocol owned by everyone who is using their protocol, who has a token, and so they could vote on what happens next with your thing.

So community and making them aware of what's going on is super important success. So this is like, we actually have a panel about this in two hours, so I probably don't want to talk too much about this, but success is not just about making your developers successful using your protocol, it's about making them successful as a whole. Because getting started onto Web3, it's a pretty difficult process because you're not going to have many users. It's very difficult to actually be successful when you build a web for your application. So what we do a lot as DevRel, we need a lot of departments to help out with this. It's not just a DevRel thing, but we own this. So a lot of the time we will build front end. So many blockchain developers are called Block ends. So they're blockchain on backend and they hit front end development.

So we'll go in and we'll help them with their front end, so they don't have to do that. There's lots of long-term partnerships A lot of the time, like projects you're building on your protocol, you partner with them, you get to know them as a finder, you have a specific Discord channel just to speak to them. There's a lot of other things. So at Hype, we kind of help different projects, like what their marketing, we also help them find funding from different VCs and everything. So it's kind of a huge big thing for this. And it's something that I haven't seen really apart from in Web3, because you want your developer to be successful outside of just using your protocol, because if they're not, you're not going to find any more users anyway.

So the reason that I think this is super important to know is because Web three's not going anywhere, but even if it does, there's a lot of companies that are going onto Web 2.5, so we're kind of calling this in-between where we are now. Web3, they don't want to go the full way to blockchain, but they have kind of little bits of crypto here and there and tokens. Some examples here, these are all ridiculous. But yeah, so Starbucks has got this. I think you can get tokens. I have not signed up for this. You can get tokens or something instead of your loyalty programme, Elon Musk has signed an NFT. Somehow you can get my, and so we're saying just so many different projects, just experimenting with crypto, and even though all of these seem completely ridiculous, they are, I mean, I would not get in a wallet just so I can get a Starbucks loyalty card when I already have it on my phone anyway.

But I think the whole point is that whenever all these things are coming together, it makes a lot more sense. If I already have my Starbucks here and I have, I've been entering the Metaverse or playing some sort of game or something, just experimenting with it and I'm building up a repetition and my own kind of self on this Web3, then maybe it makes sense for me to get an NFT of a Tesla that signed by Elon Musk just to be like, Hey, yeah, I have a Tesla. So I mean, I think that the point of it is you're building an ecosystem and each individual thing seems ridiculous, but altogether it kind of makes sense. It's like that computer, back in the seventies, you had a computer just for news. It's like, well, that's ridiculous, but you got less other stuff. It makes sense. So it's not really going anywhere. And the more I think we're just going to see it shoot up, the more decent use cases we have, the more we're just going to have, because people are like, oh yeah, we have to get into Web3. Thanks for listening. Oh yeah, I think we have a couple of minutes for some questions if anyone, yeah, I think we need a mic.

Audience member 1:

So you mentioned that documentation, I think a quote sucks. I think I quote boring. Well, we all know it, but do you have any examples of documentation which doesn't suck, and which is not boring Web3 and how to make it unstuck or if it's, I

Cat: Dunno. So in Web3, I mean probably some of the best docs are like unis swapped, they have a widget that you can implement and some other things. But what was your other part of the question? How to make it not suck? So one of the big things is to go into a community and see what questions are asking all of the time. I mean, it's all in Discord. It's pretty easy to pick up just control F question mark. That's what I do. It's like, okay, what are people asking all the time? And then just put it into your docs, make some contents surrounding it. That is important. But I do also think people coming into Web3 especially who've already beaten Web3, kind of know that your docs might not be super grit. So they will go to your Discord anyway and be like, Hey, I'm trying to build this. What should I do here? And because there's a lot of good partnerships with all the projects here are building something decent, a lot of the time they just won't even go to your docs. They'll go to you as an individual, as a DevRel or the founder and try to ask those questions. So I do think we should be trying to make docs and content generally better, but because we are so small, those good conversations you're having with them and the one-on-one support is really important too.

Speaker 3: Yeah, go

Speaker 4: First. I was first, so I'm going to go first. Yeah, I have a simple one. Have you heard of collab land?

Cat: Yeah.

Speaker 4: So this thing that they do where they measure community engagement with NFTs? Well, I thought it was that, but it's not that. I think what they actually do is just gate discord communities, unless I'm wrong, they like gate, they give you a ticket in. Have you heard of someone who is instead using NFTs to anonymously measure activity in communities? I show up to an event today and I get an NFT and I come to another dev recon and Matthew never gets my name. I'm still anonymous to Matthew. He has no idea who I am, but he knows that I went to two. Have you heard of a company that does

Cat: That? I don't haven't heard of a project working on that. I have heard of it being a usable PS for it, but I don't think it's, I maybe it does exist.

Speaker 4: I've got a startup seeking investment.

Speaker 3: So one of the criticisms I've heard is that because the blockchain is broader, slow and to be able to have a good integration, you need to work with APIs. So now we have these centralised API providers that are basically doing what web two did, but now for the blockchain, but that's not what the question, my question is have you seen in doing DevRel four Web3, what is the proportion between straight blockchain integrations and API integrations? Do you see? Is it the API integrations that's kind of where the money is at or where things are happening or it's rather straight integrations that people are trying to teach people?

Cat: I think in the past couple of years, it's definitely been a lot more API and SDK focused rather than just strip blockchain connections. I think when people are building blockchain applications, they realise they're probably going to need to use an API. And you're right that a lot of them are built on decentralised servers, which I think is why web 2.5 is important. It's not about building decentralised web in total because that's going to mean that everyone has to own their own server. And it's kind of a ridiculous thing to get to, but it's about having as much data decentralised as possible. But yeah, so APIs, SE Ks definitely in the past couple of years have been the focus, I think blackchain development in de. So it's like open source.

Speaker 3: Sorry. So then I guess it's kind of like with the open source where you still have a central party that is providing it, but there's the possibility of taking stuff out that maybe forces them to behave as a good citizen. Is that the idea?

Cat: Yeah, I mean, just using an API doesn't mean that the storage is still decentralised. I think that's the big part. Using an API and having a centralised way to get to the storage is a thing that exists. Cool. I think it's 2.5.

Speaker 3: I learned something important.

Cat: Thanks. Yes. Oh no,

Speaker 4: I have a better one this time. I'll invest. Sorry, this is actually about the community there. The events, as you have experienced in the Web3 space are quite unique. I think I saw fire juggling one time, not

Cat: In New York.

Speaker 4: The question is more just do you see the communities continuing to grow apart from the developer communities that we're all more familiar with? Or you think that they're growing towards some central path that maybe someday will be less distinguishable?

Cat: I hope that we will get to a less distinguishable place, especially because of Web 2.5 and everything. And I do think with projects starting to get involved in crypto strife and everything are getting into cryptos or communities. You're using striper kind of also like developers, crypto developers in one. But I do think because Web3 is almost like a completely separate internet, it's a separate web, you need to have a wallet and everything set up to use it. It's not just the same place and it, it's a different way of developing it as well because it's not just building a backend and connecting to that. It's very much connecting to this base layer that other people are using. It's immutable and everything. So I do still think right now the community is very separate and probably will continue that way quite a bit. But there are obviously certain things that are connecting, like JavaScript is a super popular language both in Web3 and out of it.

And we're seeing some people kind of talk about different Web3 libraries and JavaScript communities and stuff. But there's still quite, I think Web3 developers are like, oh, you guys are stuck in the past, we're better than you. And they want to have their own community. And it helps as well to feel like you're working on building something new and you're in this niche community. And then a lot of web two folks hit the web, three people like, oh, you just, it's all hype. You're just going to fall apart anyway. So I think right now there are still very separate communities, but I do see, because we're heading towards this half decentralised world or this decentralised web, they're just going to become one anyway, because a lot of what is being worked on, we'll just include some blockchain stuff. Hope that answers your question. It does. Thank you. Cool. I think that's it then. Thanks guys.