2021 - A Year in Review for DEV Protocol

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Dev Protocol — Accelerating Web3 with Clubs

3 min readDec 24, 2021

While 2021 has been a tough year in many ways, we wanted to give a recap on why it has been a great year for DEV Protocol and the burgeoning creator economy. 2021 was big for community engagement, integral integrations, and evolution of the underlying protocol.

Continuous Integrations

Since DEV Protocol can be used as a kind of blockchain middleware, community integrations are of high importance to us. Starting off 2021, there was a focus on small integrations ranging from Yearn Finance to Stake DAO. New markets were released to allow creators using different mediums to start capitalizing on their work. Additionally, we won a grant from Unlock Protocol for our integration work. Plus, what we’ve all been waiting for, Layer 2 integration!

Token Burn

As major governance decisions are in the hands of the community, there was a large token burn in the Spring of 2021. The community voted to burn a total of 3.5 million DEV, greatly reducing the amount circulated, and adjusting the APY for creators.

DEV NULL Established

Frame 00 Inc, the Japanese company leading DEV Protocol development, established a new company called Dev Null in Switzerland’s Crypto Valley. It was established in order to accelerate the realization of DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

Community Partners Launched

Building out a flexible ecosystem requires us to build community knowledge of Web3 and OSS. To do this, Community Partners was launched to join with a range of entities to promote understanding of how Web3 can benefit creators in an array of different industries. Partners include “Microsoft for Startups” and “Code for Japan” as well as a handful of others.

You can read more about it in more detail and see our ongoing list of community partners.

Incubator Program + Community Builders

To further engage the community, DEV introduced an incubator program that rewards developers and teams integrating with the DEV Protocol. The Community Builders program is a way to further incentivize community members to collaborate with DEV. You can read more about the Community Builders program here.

Airdrop

To spread the DEV love and reward OSS contributions, DEV ran an airdrop campaign. Up to $2,100,000 to the most active GitHub users was up for grabs! You can see a list of the recipients at the link here.

sTokens

One of the biggest achievements of the year for DEV was the release of sTokens. The sToken is the first Proof of Continuous Patronage ever created, with a focus on composability. 2021 was a breakout year for the popularity of NFTs, which influenced our approach and direction of the protocol.

Ongoing Market Development

We wanted to broaden our focus from strictly developers to creators in general. In order to do this, creating different markets is key. DEV began with the GitHub market that uses KHAOS to authenticate repositories so users can receive ongoing funding for their OSS work. Building a YouTube market is helping to expand the creator economy beyond just coders.

Layer 2 Arbitrum Release

One of the biggest bottlenecks to onboard users it the high cost of gas on Ethereum. In 2021, we saw a handful of layer 2 solutions grow with measurable success. In order to reduce the cost of staking, the DEV Protocol was released on Arbitrum. Now users can support their favorite OSS projects on stake.social for a fraction of the cost.

2022 and Beyond

Despite another turbulent year of external events, the DEV team has remained optimistic and excited about rolling out additions, integrations, and improvements to help fund the creator economy. In the near future, you will see some new UI features that help streamline user engagement with the protocol. Feel free to reach out to us on Discord to tell us what you’d like to see built in 2022!

Dev Protocol is the core of the Decentralized Creator Economy that supports sustainable revenue opportunity and global expansion with web3 technology. Tokenize your project with ‘Proof of Ownership’ and start your own economy easily with a powerful blockchain solution designed to help grow your projects.