Why do developers bet on the Move blockchain

Coin World News Report:
Core Logic: For general L1, DX is more important than UX.
Author: Alex Liu, Foresight News
DX is important
On October 22nd, Nader Dabit, the DevRel (Developer Relations Manager) of EigenLayer, posted a tweet on X, which contained screenshots of four different people complaining about the Solana developer experience, sparking a huge discussion in the community.


Helius CEO and Solana ecosystem influencer, Mert, came forward to refute two of the complaints, but also had to admit that “writing smart contracts on Solana is not easy.”


This highlights a shortcoming of Solana at present – the developer experience (DX). Unlike user experience (UX), users cannot directly perceive the underlying blockchain’s DX, but it is a core factor that led me to choose and bet on the Move blockchain, which has already occupied a dominant position in the high-performance public chain ecosystem of Solana. (The author is also optimistic about and holds SOL, SUI, and APT)
The logic is simple: in the long run, for general 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, Ethereum is still the leading blockchain in terms of monthly active developers. As of July 1st, there were a total of 2,788 full-time developers, with a total of over 8,865 developers.
Since 2019, the number of Ethereum research teams has increased by 2,100%.
The top three blockchains with full-time developers are all from the EVM ecosystem. This is related to the fact that the EVM smart contract programming language Solidity is easy to learn (similar to the most commonly used programming language in web development, JavaScript) and the development frameworks are mature (Hardhat, Foundry).
What impact does this have? Users are unaware of the developer experience but can see that “Solana’s token price significantly outperforms Ethereum” last year.
The problem is that developers are the customers of general L1. Users need apps, not chains.
Good DX can attract good devs (developers), create good apps, and in turn, bring about mass adoption. With all underlying high-performance public chains, in the future where the abstraction of chains is vigorously developed, the user’s perception of the differences between public chains will approach zero and only focus on the UX of apps.
Users do not have a need for using blockchains, but they have a need for using apps.
Polymarket’s prediction market for elections has brought a large number of new users to Polygon, and these users may not understand “what is blockchain?” Moonshot is another typical example – users use credit cards for payments, and their on-chain behavior is almost imperceptible after being wrapped in layers.
Ethereum and EVM have the largest developer ecosystem, the most talent reserves, and the largest mindshare in people’s minds, so it is still the largest smart contract platform by market value. Easy-to-use and user-friendly DX in a sense supports the valuation of ETH.
DX Rankings
Based solely on DX, the current rankings are approximately: Move blockchain > EVM (Solidity) > Solana.
Here, DX not only refers to the experience but also includes the difficulty of getting started. Solana’s smart contracts mainly use the Rust language, which is relatively complex in syntax. At the same time, because it is not specifically designed for blockchains, there are often situations where “reinventing the wheel” is necessary. The Anchor framework launched by Backpack founder Armani has greatly improved this situation, but it still cannot compare to Move, a language based on Rust, specially designed for blockchains, which was built by Facebook with extensive resources and huge investment. (This viewpoint is summarized from the author’s survey of multiple Sui, EVM, and Solana developers)


Future Outlook for Move
If the DX is so good, why hasn’t the Move blockchain produced a killer application yet?
The author believes this is related to the industry’s development process.
The current blockchain industry is still in the “infrastructure” stage, where the focus, funding, and attention are not yet concentrated on the application layer for large-scale adoption. Solana’s DX still needs improvement, but it has undoubtedly achieved success at present because most users are truly “using the chain” directly, utilizing the most basic and core asset issuance function of the blockchain to speculate on memes, leaning more towards Crypto Native’s on-chain PvP, and not entering on a large scale due to a specific app. The author has a long-term positive view on Solana and believes that its DX will improve in the future, but it is not the best right now.
Believe that “for general L1, DX is more important than UX”;
and the future will be driven by applications and values led by applications.
I bet on Move blockchain with better DX.