Written by: Alex Liu, Foresight News

DX is very important

On October 22, Nader Dabit, the DevRel (Developer Relations Head) of EigenLayer, posted a tweet on X with screenshots of four different people complaining about the Solana developer experience, which sparked huge discussions in the community.

Mert, CEO of Helius and a major figure in the Solana ecosystem, stood up to refute two of those points but had to admit that 'writing smart contracts on Solana is not easy.'

This brings up a shortcoming currently existing in Solana—the developer experience (Developer Experience, or DX). Unlike User Experience (UX), users cannot directly perceive the DX of the underlying blockchain, but it is the core factor that made me choose to bet on the Move public chain, despite Solana's dominant ecological position in high-performance public chains. (The author is also optimistic about and holds SOL, SUI, APT.)

The logic is simple: in the long run, for general-purpose L1, DX is more important than UX.

Is DX important? DX affects developer onboarding, and developers are the moat of the EVM ecosystem.

According to developer report data, in terms of the number of monthly active developers, Ethereum still leads the blockchain as of July 1, with a total of 2,788 full-time developers, and the total number of developers exceeds 8,865. Since 2019, the number of Ethereum research teams has surged by 2,100%.

The top three blockchains in terms of full-time developers all come from the EVM ecosystem. This is closely related to the fact that the EVM smart contract development language Solidity is easy to learn (with syntax similar to the most commonly used programming language Javascript in web development), and that the development frameworks are mature (Hardhat, Foundry).

Does this have any impact? Users are completely unaware of the developer experience but can notice 'Solana's token price outperformed Ethereum significantly last year.'

The problem is: in reality, developers are the customers of general-purpose L1. Users need to use apps, not chains. Good DX can attract good developers, create good apps, and thus bring large-scale adoption. With the premise of high-performance public chains at the core, in a future where chain abstraction tracks develop vigorously, users' perception of differences between public chains will approach 0, focusing solely on the UX of apps.

Users may not have a need for blockchain but do have a need for apps. Polymarket's election prediction market brought a large number of new users to Polygon, and these users may not necessarily understand 'what is blockchain?', while Moonshot is another typical example—users pay with credit cards, and the on-chain behavior is layered in such a way that it has almost no presence.

Ethereum and EVM have the largest developer ecosystem and talent pool, holding the greatest mindshare in people's minds, making it still the largest market cap smart contract platform. The easy-to-use and friendly DX somewhat supports ETH's valuation.

DX Rankings

In terms of DX alone, the current ranking is approximately: Move public chain > EVM (Solidity) > Solana.

Here, DX refers not only to the experience but also to the difficulty of getting started. Solana's smart contracts primarily use Rust, which has a relatively complex syntax and is not specifically designed for blockchain, often resulting in the need to 'reinvent the wheel.' The Anchor framework launched by Backpack founder Armani greatly improves this situation, but it still cannot compare to the resources aggregated by Facebook, which spent huge amounts to create a Rust-based language specifically designed for blockchain, Move. (The viewpoint is summarized from the author's surveys of multiple Sui, EVM, and Solana developers.)

Future Prospects of Move

If DX is so good, why haven't any killer applications emerged on the Move public chain yet?

The author believes this is related to the industry's development stage. The current blockchain industry is still in the 'infrastructure' phase—paving the way for the upcoming large-scale adoption, with funding and attention not yet focused on the application layer. Solana's DX still needs improvement, but it has undoubtedly achieved success at present, as most users are indeed directly 'using the chain,' utilizing the blockchain's most primitive and core asset issuance function to speculate on memes, leaning more towards Crypto Native in-platform PvP, without users entering the market on a large scale due to a specific app. The author has a long-term positive outlook on Solana, believing its DX will improve in the future, but for now, it is not the best.

I believe 'for general-purpose L1, DX is more important than UX'; and an application-driven, value-led industry will come in the future. I bet on a better DX with the Move public chain.