How can Web2 developers better transition to Web3?

Author: lxcong, Chainbase Developer

Before entering Web3, I worked for over a decade at Tencent and Bilibili; the business lines I was responsible for were all developer-focused. In 2022, I officially transitioned to Web3, and today I want to share some experiences on how Web2 developers can better enter Web3 based on my own journey.

The content will revolve around the following three themes:

1. My path and thoughts on transitioning from a Web2 internet company to Web3;
2. What challenges Web3 developers may encounter;
3. How Chainbase helps developers better enter Web3;

From Web2 to Web3

From Observation, to Speculation, to Participation

Initially, I also came into contact with Web3 as a user, and like many others, I approached it with a speculative mindset, having made some profits and paid some tuition. Later, I gradually realized that in the crypto world, besides being an ordinary user, we could also engage from technical or business scenario perspectives and participate in the construction of Web3.

At the end of 2021, Tencent airdropped an NFT to every employee on its 23rd anniversary, and at that time, many employee groups discussing Web3 were very active. This indicated that there was already some Web3 atmosphere within Web2 internet companies, and the management had recognized this business direction. However, due to various subjective and objective reasons, Web2 internet companies remain very conservative towards Web3, making it difficult to truly implement it at the business level—this was one of the reasons that ultimately prompted me to leave Web2 internet companies.

When I had already decided to go all in on Web3, I returned to the role of a programmer to think about entry points:

• Some programmers choose to enter Web3 as scientists (similar to hackers but not necessarily traditional internet security technology), as scientists can directly use their skills to engage in arbitrage-related activities. However, I personally did not want to enter as a speculator, so I gave up!
• Since Web3 is a new generation of the internet based on blockchain technology, it also requires many technically savvy evangelists. However, narrative ability is not my strong suit, so this was not my best choice either. I gave up!
• Ultimately, I pragmatically chose to continue as a developer in Web3, leveraging my greatest strengths and advantages. Based on my past experience and tech stack, as well as my aversion to purely financial projects, I joined a highly promising Web3 infrastructure company, which is the story of my journey with Chainbase.

How to Fire the First Shot in Web3

First find your ecological niche, then supplement your tech stack.

When developers enter Web3, technical professional skills are not the biggest barrier. Many tech stacks are consistent or interconnected, and there are many Web3 developer communities for systematic learning. For many developers, the challenge lies in finding their ecological niche in Web3. For example, entering as a scientist or tech writer (Vitalik also entered this way initially), or directly joining a Web3 project, whether it is B2B or B2C.

Here, I personally recommend directly joining a Web3 team, as this allows for deeper participation. If you are starting your own venture or joining a startup, participating in a Web3 Hackathon with your product is a great way to achieve a cold start. It allows you to quickly validate your product and gain early users.

Once you have found your ecological niche in Web3, you will naturally know what technical professional knowledge is lacking, and targeted learning at that point will be very efficient.

Some Challenges Web3 Developers May Encounter

1. First, shift your mindset and embrace the new paradigm of Web3

The term "mindset" is quite abstract; my understanding is that "mindset" is a consensus on what should be done and what should not be done. The first challenge regarding mindset that Web2 developers may encounter when entering Web3 could be the trade-off between centralization and decentralization.

Almost all Web3 believers emphasize that decentralization is one of the cores of blockchain. However, for a Web3 product that carries user needs and experiences, is decentralization a necessary standard? I believe that in different scenarios, it should not be an absolute standard. For example, can a product that is absolutely decentralized meet industrial-grade application standards? I think it is very difficult at this stage, as industrial-grade applications require a clear commitment to efficiency and stability, which is hard to guarantee under a decentralized structure. Additionally, most applications still require off-chain data; even if using oracles and related technologies to solve the interaction between off-chain data and smart contracts, it is hard to say that this is a completely decentralized structure (oracles themselves have centralized shadows). Therefore, the decentralization of Web3 applications is more about grasping the degree based on specific scenarios.

There are many similar challenges regarding mindset, and I suggest that everyone pay more attention to the core and original intention of Web3 when making judgments and engage in independent thinking. When the mindset truly shifts, you have genuinely entered Web3.

2. Consider the developer costs brought by a multi-chain ecosystem

Web3 applications are primarily developed based on one or more public chains, and choosing a public chain requires the project team to have a relatively deep understanding of the characteristics and ecosystems of different public chains. Currently, the public chain ecosystem is flourishing, which undoubtedly increases the cost for developers to choose a public chain (and will also increase the development costs after selection).

Due to the impossibility of the blockchain trilemma (i.e., decentralization, security, and scalability cannot be satisfied simultaneously), different public chains generally choose two of the three points as their breakthrough direction, leading to different characteristics among public chains. Developers should consider whether the application scenario of their product matches the characteristics of the public chain when choosing one.

For example, Optimism (a layer 2 public chain) can support a high throughput. However, for security reasons, Optimism reserves a certain number of recent blocks, making them a challengeable state. This means that under certain conditions, transactions that have already been packaged can still be rolled back. Such characteristics may not be suitable for real-time payment application scenarios.

The multi-chain ecosystem will certainly exist in the long term, and the development history of many Web2 tech stacks can also confirm this. Therefore, understanding multi-chain characteristics and matching usage scenarios will be a long-term challenge for Web3 developers.

3. A single front-end cannot meet the development needs of Web3 applications

Looking solely at the technical implementation principles of Dapps, it seems that only a front-end is needed to drive smart contracts to execute corresponding logic and retrieve on-chain data back to the front-end. However, in actual development, many Web3 applications still integrate a server into their system architecture.

Although the existence of a server is criticized by many as being overly centralized (we just discussed the issue of absolute centralization), due to the high cost of on-chain state storage, limited throughput, and considerations for user experience (if every interaction requires waking up the wallet for signature, it significantly diminishes the user experience), adopting a partially centralized design remains the best choice for Web3 applications. This is similar to adding a layer of caching space between the blockchain and the front-end.

Due to the special nature of on-chain data structures (i.e., linked list structure), the readability of on-chain data is very poor. Many conventional operations in Web2, such as indexing, sorting, filtering, pagination, and searching of data, are very difficult to execute. Therefore, how to read on-chain data more conveniently is also a significant pain point that Web3 developers will encounter.

How Does Chainbase Address the Pain Points of Web3 Developers?

1. Excessive self-built infrastructure may lead to project failure

We believe that in the long term, more developers will enter Web3 to build various creative applications. Developers should not waste too many R&D resources on redundant self-built nodes, maintaining node clusters, decoding on-chain data, and other infrastructure aspects, as these self-built infrastructures do not contribute directly to the business itself.

Future users will not be categorized as Web2 users or Web3 users; they will not use a Web3 application simply because its self-built nodes are very stable. Users will only care about whether your application can meet their needs. Web3 project teams should focus their limited resources and energy on the business itself: for example, product functionality, user experience, economic models, community building, etc.

Certain infrastructures—such as building nodes—will still have many issues even if self-built. For example, long-term human resource costs, server consumption, operational capability challenges, insufficient stability, security issues, and various bugs that keep emerging. Unless one possesses strong resources and technical capabilities, it is difficult to solve these problems.

The cycles in the Web3 world are very short; users easily forget, and capital quickly loses patience—whether a project can succeed often only has a few months' time. In such a market environment, we can imagine that if a team allocates precious resources to building infrastructure, it will certainly reduce the probability of project success.

2. What services can Chainbase provide for Web3 developers?

Chainbase is positioned as a Web3 developer platform. We help developers quickly access the crypto network and easily build Web3 native applications by providing cloud-based API services.

Currently, we offer foundational infrastructure services including multi-chain nodes, data indexing, application monitoring, and debugging. Specifically, this includes:

• Chain API Service: This is a secure and stable multi-chain node JSONRPC cluster that allows developers to easily access multiple chain networks.
• Web3 API Service: This is an API matrix that supports various protocol indexing and quickly supports data queries for business application scenarios (such as Token, NFT, DeFi, Domain…).
• All-In-One Dashboard: Developers can complete the creation, debugging, monitoring, and operation of Web3 applications through a one-stop console.

3. What specific use cases does Chainbase's API service have?

First is the most basic Chain API, which is supported by our multi-chain node cluster. We know that becoming a node is the most fundamental step to interact with the chain; here we have built a very powerful and stable node cluster for developers, which supports multiple chains. (Currently supporting ETH, Polygon, and BSC, and gradually integrating more public chains). Developers do not need to build their own nodes and can directly use our API.

Using Chain API, developers can easily obtain basic on-chain data such as the current block height, current gas fees, and the balance of a specified address, and can also send new transactions to the blockchain network.

We also provide highly usable Web3 API, which is a set of APIs that support data indexing for various protocols and can quickly support data queries in most common business application scenarios.

For example, in the NFT business scenario, obtaining the list of NFTs owned by a specified account, the transaction records of a specified NFT, the floor price of a specified NFT series, and the historical owners of a specified NFT, etc. Similarly, we also provide various data indexing APIs for other common business scenarios such as Tokens and domains.

With the Dashboard we provide, Web3 developers can intuitively monitor and manage the operational status of their various data interfaces, making it very convenient.

4. Chainbase is preparing to launch the next generation of on-chain data indexing products

Chain API provides the most basic node services, and Web3 API provides point-to-point data indexing services in common business scenarios. However, we believe that this is not the best solution, especially for the increasingly emerging innovative applications.

An innovative application, due to its unique business characteristics, may have bizarre data indexing needs, and it is clear that existing APIs are hard to meet these needs. While point-to-point API services can gradually cover more mainstream business scenarios through added features, this lagging iteration behind market changes will never keep pace with the speed of application innovation.

Therefore, when designing the next generation of data indexing products, we abandoned point-to-point solutions and adopted a concept similar to Web2 data warehouses—a cloud warehouse for on-chain data that supports custom SQL statements! The on-chain data cloud warehouse decodes on-chain data through real-time computation; developers can freely index on-chain data using the most mainstream SQL statements based on their needs.

Even cooler is that we support developers to generate an API from their written SQL that continuously returns data, meaning that any innovative data indexing needs can be supported in real-time.

5. Envisioning the future, focusing on Web3 developer services

Chainbase firmly believes that Web3 is a new paradigm of the internet that can change the world. Technological innovation will greatly drive business development and even influence social change. In this wave, developers are at the center of the stage, sparking a tremendous storm of innovation.

Chainbase is positioned as a Web3 developer platform, and solving the "interaction with the chain" API service is our current product entry point. In the future, we will launch more products and services that lower development thresholds and improve development efficiency, focusing on the pain points of Web3 developers at different stages.

We hope to help more Web3 projects through various stages of development, testing, implementation, and growth. We believe that as long as we can help one project achieve success, Chainbase will have directly or indirectly changed the world!