#343: Electric Capital's Global Crypto Developer Data and Alliance's Crypto Startup Trends Report

Alright, it’s Election Day in the US, so many of us are I am distracted. Despite that, I need to do my patriotic duty of posting according to my regular schedule in the face of the attention blackhole that is this election.

Because of this, I figured it would be a good opportunity to provide a roundup of a few topics I’ve found interesting.

Maria Shen of Electric Capital recently shared some new data about the crypto developer ecosystem. Electric Capital is known for its annual Developer Report and developer data dashboard, which are helpful indicators.

Some highlights:

• North America’s % share of developers has steadily dropped and currently sits at ~24% in 2024, speaking to the global appeal crypto has as well as the continued state of regulatory uncertainty in the US. Note that this metric is % of developers, not the number of developers.

• Meanwhile, Asia’s share has increased and now makes up 32% of crypto developers globally

• The top 3 geos for developers are US (18.8%), India (11.8%), and the UK (4.2%)

This is just an appetizer to the full Developer Report which will probably come out sometime in January next year. Until then, we wait.

Another great report recently released is from Alliance and their Crypto Startup Trends Report. Alliance receives 3,000+ applications from startups looking to join their accelerator, so they have a finger on the pulse of builders and what they’re doing.

Some takeaways:

• Ethereum is still the ecosystem of choice for startups, while Solana’s share is increasing

• In the Ethereum L2 ecosystem, Base’s share of startups has grown considerably since launching last year

• The areas of focus have diversified, with DeFi, Payments, and AI x Crypto increasing in popularity while NFTs and DAOs have decreased

• Geo diversity has increased with more applicants coming from Asia and North America decreasing, exhibiting a similar trend to what we see in the Developer Report

Keep building folks! 🫡

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Last week, Polymarket set up a X livestream with the live election odds between Trump and Harris. The livestream was fairly simple, a static background with odds and volume figures periodically changing.

At the time I took the screenshot, the livestream had 425k+ views and counting. Why is this interesting?

X has been aggressively expanding their content options over the past few years from audio Spaces, Articles, and now livestreams.

X shows this preference for video via the top ribbon on the mobile app, putting video livestreams ahead of audio Spaces. If there are multiple livestreams (or Spaces), they’re ordered by the number of total views/listeners.

So if thought of another way, a video livestream serves as a persistent banner ad and Polymarket was able to get ~half a million ‘free’ impressions with this approach, instead of relying on the algorithm. I’m curious to see if other projects and creators take note of this tactic to get in front of an audience. It’s a variation of SERP (search engine results page, not quite SEO) optimization that can be gamed in its current format.

Two projects once regarded as best-in-class in their respective spaces, and have been left for dead over the past year are showing signs of life again. For the record, I’m still a fan of both, but sometimes it’s just not meant to be, rooting for you guys though!

Yesterday, Opensea announced that a new version of the NFT trading platform will be coming in December. You can sign up for the waitlist here, doesn’t hurt!

Later in the day, it was revealed that the new version of Opensea would have a leaderboard and rewards. At this point, leaderboards and rewards are table stakes, so the big question is whether it will be enough to 1) bring NFT folks back to Opensea and 2) encourage them to stay on Opensea vs. other platforms that have been building as well, most notably Magic Eden.

Opensea is arguably still the most friendly NFT trading platform for the average person and IMO has the best UI. Now they’re coming out with a points system that is encouraging but almost a nothingburger at this point.

Despite that, it’s still a development worth following as more details emerge, and maybe worth a breakdown from yours truly if it’s interesting enough 😉

I’ve featured RTFKT in my pieces since the early days, as they’re a team that’s done interesting things in the sneaker world beyond the 23982987th collab, and have shown how blockchain can be applied to the sneaker industry. The unfortunate reality is things have slowed down since rumors of RTFKT’s shutdown were shared back in March this year along wth leadership changes at Nike.

Fortunately, last week RTFKT announced a Move to Earn campaign for Cryptokicks iRL owners. The top 50 participants will receive prizes including exclusive RTFKT sneakers and merch.

This competition is facilitated on the Cryptokicks iRL app, which has been out for over a year, which at that point already hinted at this being a possibility thanks to the Cryptokicks being ‘smart’ shoes and having sensors in them. And this isn’t entirely new for Nike either.

I dusted off my pair of Cryptokicks that I’ve worn a grand total of once since receiving them (I don’t think I’m an isolated case either) and started walking. I even ordered a desk treadmill to get some more steps in the hopes of being in the top 50 😂

Unfortunately, my steps don’t seem to be tracking well and I’m not sure why so I gave up (in addition to the fact that first place has 363k steps 6 days in, wtf). But for now, the desk treadmill stays since getting more steps in is a good thing, as long as I’m walking in comfier shoes.

Competition aside, what does this mean for RTFKT and Nike? It’s good to see that RTFKT woke up from its slumber with a new development. More notably, the M2E brings up themes I called out over 2 years ago around RTFKT as a valuable data play.

This is a theme I’ve been gathering from many other e-comm players. Web3 and NFTs provide a lot of benefits to brands, but it’s disproportionately valuable for physical brands because they’re able add another dimension to creating a personalized experience.

Specifically with the RTFKT Forging event, imagine all the things they can do:

• Understand holder behavior with the forging event

  • What holders mint what collections and pieces

  • If ETH liquidity is limited, what do they prioritize minting (aka what do they prefer to buy?)

• If holders attend IRL events, what RTFKT merch do they wear? (verified through scanning and geo-location data)

• If holder attend multiple IRL events, do they wear the same merch? Do they switch it up? Preferences are identified

  • You can even identify matching styles. Eg: Holder 2948 always wears the Devil Hoodie with the Devil Pants. Maybe they would buy multiple pairs of the Devil Pants in the future.

• You can compare and contrast geographical data. If Clone X Angel holders went to an event in Europe vs. USA, how does their merch pairing styles compare and contrast?

• Identify personas: Who actually wears their merch? Who puts their merch in a closet forever? RTFKT naturally understands the ‘rock one stock one’ mindset and this can be tracked because “each Clone holder can mint up to 2 of each item from DNA collections”

  • What if 2 of the same t-shirt tied to the same NFT were verified to be attending the same RTFKT event? That would mean those two attendees have a prior relationship.

Except at the time, I was focused on the NFC chips in the RTFKT merch, not the sneakers. M2E has been around for a while, with Sweatcoin, Stepn, and Receipts showing the various approaches to integrating the behavioral loop.

The differentiator with RTFKT’s M2E is that it focuses on the shoe itself as the primary source of data, not a phone or wearable. As a result, they can incentivize participants not only to be active but to be active with their products in a verified way. More layers can be added onto this like ‘take a picture 1x per day with you wearing your RTFKT sneakers outside!’

I hope RTFKT sticks around, but if not, this avenue for engagement deserves to be explored more.

See you Thursday!