I agree in principle with what you’re saying. But smart contracts are not low-level primitives in the same way that cryptographic tools are. They are the building blocks of this Web 3.0 wave. Anyone who wants to build a decentralized app / protocol of any complexity, needs to write them.
The truth is that the experts in cryptocurrency have only a few years of added experience at this point. It is too early for a capable engineer who’s entering the field to stay on the sidelines, and not develop any smart contracts. As a saying I like goes: “the world is changing at such a rapid rate that it’s turning us all into amateurs”.
Moreover, the big technology movements of the past, like the computer or the internet, evolved because individuals took it to themselves to tinker and build. Crypto has that property now, and it’s not necessarily a good idea to advise against it.
It’s a tough situation to crack, because like you said, the monetary stakes are so high. Perhaps there need to be better educational resources. Perhaps over time smart-contract security primitives will be developed, which engineers will be able to build on-top of.
