State of the Cardano Developer Ecosystem: a Survey to Equip the Community
Appraising Cardano's developer ecosystem to identify key target-areas and prioritize open source efforts
Cardano has a long-standing vibrant community. Indeed, an active, diversified, and well-informed community participating on-chain leads to a stronger blockchain with higher levels of security and an added capacity to enact positive change in the systems where it operates. This is part of the reason why the Cardano Foundation continuously strengthens its commitment to empower the Cardano community, providing adequate support and furnishing it with all the tools it requires to fully flourish. We are therefore excited to announce the very first Annual State of the Cardano Developer Ecosystem survey.
The survey launches today and will run for two full weeks. An analysis of the results will follow, with a subsequent public report being published and made available for anyone interested in consulting it. Going forward, we expect to conduct annual surveys in order to correctly assess what has been achieved, which measures prompted advantageous results, what these were, and which areas still warrant attention.
Better Insights Lead to Meaningful Actions
The present survey has been constructed to help the Foundation reach a finer understanding of our developer ecosystem’s current state. In fact, by collecting the feedback directly from the community, we can better comprehend the builders’ needs and wants.
Gathering this information will likewise provide a more accurate perception of key target-areas for improvement. Furthermore, the results will be shared publicly so that actions can be taken not only by the Foundation itself, but by anyone willing to make open source contributions or otherwise aid the improvement of the ecosystem. As the guardian of the Cardano Core Technology Stack and with the Cardano blockchain always working towards minimal viable centralization, the Foundation hopes to supply all builders, individuals, businesses, and institutions with every necessary asset to enable advised decisions.
For the Cardano Foundation more specifically, the survey will help in determining which libraries and tools are critical to the Cardano ecosystem, while also allowing us to discern gaps in available tools or libraries. It will similarly aid in pinpointing possible deficiencies in existing solutions. Moreover, the survey’s findings will assist us in organizing, coordinating, and prioritizing more efficiently the open source effort amongst builders, so that we may work together towards an even stronger ecosystem.
Shining a Spotlight on Hidden Champions
Besides the appraisal of the developer ecosystem as it now stands, the survey will perhaps also function as a way to showcase several existing projects that may currently elude the attention of both builders and the community at large. This might prove a unique opportunity to give them a well-deserved spotlight and bring them to the attention of builders who would probably not see them otherwise.
Often those who have taken upon themselves to perform thorough analysis of existing code, who reverse engineered different components, or spent a substantial amount of time building and refining tools, do not see their efforts acknowledged or even noticed. Yet they perform utterly essential work. They are frequently the ones unrelentingly spending their time identifying issues, perfecting tools, creating manuals, or overall enriching the ecosystem with open source material for the use of others who will later leverage these benefits.
It actually takes a few of such outstandingly dedicated community members to not only boot but also maintain a developer ecosystem. We, at the Cardano Foundation, are acutely aware of this. Indeed, we firmly believe blockchain should be a decentralized, open source technology and it has always been our focus to ensure the Cardano blockchain is a truly open source project. We are cognisant of the advantages of formal structures as recognized by the open source community and have embarked on a conscious strategy to adopt them. This survey comes as a step in that direction.
The Cardano Foundation thus heartily encourages the entire Cardano and open source communities to take 10 to 15 minutes and answer the State of the Cardano Developer Ecosystem 2022 edition.