# Developer Joy: The Only Metric That Matters | Dappa Dan | ETHWarsaw [4]

- Channel: [ETH Warsaw](https://streameth.org/eth-warsaw)
- Date: 2025-11-09
- Duration: 28:42
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-zwNe3X8uZNQ
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwNe3X8uZNQ

## Description

Everyone’s chasing charts; TVL, wallet counts, contracts deployed, daily yaps. Dappa Dan from 
Developer DAO asks: What if the metrics are sending us the wrong way? 
This talk skips the dashboards and gets into something better: Developer Joy. 
What it is, why it matters, and how it actually drives adoption.

🎥 Recorded at ETHWarsaw 2025

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## Transcript

Thanks. Thanks everyone. Uh so this is my first time on stage at a crypto conference. So I brought this like emotional spirit uh support animal sponsored by BingX. They told me I had to do that for 25 likes. So I'll be posting that later on please. So they don't come get me. But I want to talk about a few things today. Uh one in the main topic is developer joy. And I've titled this called the only metric that matters. And I'll kind of explain why uh later on. But my name is Dapa Dan. And yes, you do need to say Dappa Dan. I only go by Dan unless we're friends. And since you're all here today, we're all friends. So, uh you can call me just Dan. But on the internet, Dappa Dan is uh my uh go-to as my uh well, you'll find me on socials. I say what I'm really focused on is being a developer and content creator. Someone called me a unicorn. I don't call myself that, but I really focus on kind of building things to get people excited about this technology and then also making content to do that as well. and I help other teams do the same thing. Um, this is not me in the photo, uh, as you can probably tell, but some people either a think, hey, wow, he got a really good job, uh, hair done in Turkey or something like that, and no, that's not the case. And also, some people, if they know that this is actually RuPaul, so uh, if you didn't know that was RuPaul and you thought RuPaul was going to be on the stage today, I'm sorry, it's just me. But there's three things we're going to do uh and focus on is first like why developer joy matters and I'm going to actually talk about this why it matters first then like what it actually is so that once you kind of get oh this is really important you'll actually get a more understanding of what developer joy is and kind of a term that I sort of made up uh but really kind of just focusing on what we're bringing developers in this uh you know industry and then lastly is how to measure it because I said okay this is a metric that only that matters And people love measuring things here in crypto even if the numbers are small or big or completely made up. So I'm going to show also uh how we will measure developer joy and what are the things I think is best to focus on. Couple things we're not going to do. Um I am a part of a cult called crypto Twitter. I'm not sure if anyone else is part of that cult but uh I'm sure some of you are. And we all the time I see a lot of presentations, they have like tons of like Twitter screenshots of like, "Oh, look what Vitalic said or look what the CEO said." I'm not going to do any of that. Uh I'm not going to give them that much credit. This is my presentation and my own thoughts. Uh so there won't be any uh you know, Twitter screenshots. I hope at least. I I didn't add any in there, but you never know. Things can happen and they could pop up from out of nowhere. Uh another thing I'm going to do is I will have my own opinions. Again, this is my presentation, but I'm not going to say, "Oh, this is a hot take." I know as an industry as well, we're very obsessed with that term, hot take. If you think the take is hot, that's a hot take. And if not, then, you know, that's what it is. But I won't give you any like warnings coming up. Um, so we'll first look at why this whole developer joy thing matters or, you know, just engaging developers uh with the types of material and content that I think is important. Uh, and a wise man once said, uh, very sweaty man said, "Developers, developers, developers, developers." Has anyone seen that video? Come on. I can't be the only one. Yeah. Yeah. He's kind of clapping. Yeah. So, yeah, he was Steve Balber, CEO of the Microsoft at that time, going absolutely crazy. Uh, you got to see it if you haven't. Um, but really the idea was like Microsoft had came to this realization uh that if they had good tooling for developers, uh, basically the rest would take care of itself, right? we need to like just focus on our libraries and tooling and they're going to build products on this platform and we don't need to do as much um kind of you know marketing and things like that. Like that's the core audience and that's it. And you know I'm not going to get that sweaty today hopefully. Uh so I'm not going to do all the clapping or anything like that but I do really uh share this sentiment especially when we're talking about uh the crypto industry as a whole. Um, and one of the things I want to kind of like put into story-wise, I guess, is this uh idea of system thinking. Has anyone read this book? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Few. Few. I have read I've tried to read this book like four times. And it's a really good book. And so, it's nothing against the book itself and maybe it's like my own reading patience or reading skills, but one of the things very early on in the book is like the third chapter, so this is like how far I've gotten in this book. uh is this concept of a bathtub and like the systems of a bathtub. Uh and you know if the goal of the bathtub if you will is to have water in that bathtub there's actually like two ways to manage the water right so first is like the faucet or like how you add water but then also there is the uh drainage right cuz water either can come in you're adding water or it can go out. So, in certain times you might want to just stop the drain and stop losing water because then you're still managing the water that's in it. And um you know, or you want to add more water and hey, you know, that's uh another way to manage or keep the water within this bathtub. And if you have like the drain on and the the faucet, yeah, you know, you have this like weird situation where water's coming out and in and you know, depending on the rate, uh you might have water, you might have no water at all. Why am I even talking about bathtubs today? Right. I don't know. Um I think it's because I think uh we have a bathtub problem in in crypto. Uh this is a electric capital developer report. It's a report that this I think they're like yeah Electric Capital like a VC uh firm uh they release every year but they also have this like live view now uh where you can kind of see developer activity in this industry and they have different metrics and there's tons of people out there as they do debating if this is a worthy metric to look at uh you know because it tracks a lot of GitHub repos and if their repo is not included in there they feel upset but I think it's like the one of the best things at least we have to understanding developer activity uh so I use it all the time just to understand what's going on. And you know, if you look at it, we have uh three different kind of categories uh for developers. One is like newcomers. That's anyone a developer that's been less than one year in crypto. The emerging which is like one to two years and then established which is uh anyone two plus years. So I'm not a data analyst by any means at all. So what I look at this maybe my analysis is like completely off but what I like to look at is like we have uh a good spike of like newcomers coming in right we had I don't know what happened you know 2023 and then we had like a really good day I don't know if this is like day but we had a really good day that day onboarding new developers in I don't know what happened maybe something really cool happened but uh and then you know the established developers naturally are also kind of having a good increase which is nice but then we have this like emerging uh developer that either you know people or a they're just going from emerging to established so they're just staying longer or b they stay for one year and they they kind of I don't know get bored or they're you know start leaving or maybe they don't have enough opportunities or understanding of the industry. So we have a lot of curious people and the newcomers obviously can be something that we increase. We have some people who are working and you know come to every crypto conference there is and do these talks and all of that and building something cool. But then I don't think this like middle is really growing as much as you would think it would as an healthy industry. So that's kind of why I'm looking at this concept of developer joy and bathtubs because it's the developers that are in the bathtub, right? This is the water that we need to maintain as a growing industry and and of people who are building useful things uh for consumers for other developers uh for industries enterprises it's it's this audience uh and developer joy when I look at it is all about maintaining that audience keeping the developers in the bathtub if you will that's enough about bathtubs but one of the things is that you know maybe you don't feel like uh you know some people when I come and say oh you developers are a prime audience. Oh, you know what? Developers getting too much attention, right? They get in, you know, hackathons, they get thousands of dollars uh for just coming on the weekend. They get fed uh you know, all this like special treatment. And obviously, everyone is not a developer. But what I'm, you know, if you're starting to realize out here, like everyone in this room, even if you don't consider yourself a developer, are at least have these skills or the techniques or tools out there to build something that could be really useful for a lot of people. Uh so it's the rise of this vibe coding right uh and you know if we look at the growth of amount of people who either a consider themselves developers or could be developers we also want then the growth of the developers in crypto to also grow in the same ways and you see this a lot in this world right I'm a YouTube addict so you won't get any you know Twitter screenshots but you're going to get some uh YouTube screenshots for sure it's like this giant excitement of I'm a vibe coder I can launch something in you know $1 million app which I don't even know if That means like you made $1 million. It costs $1 million. I don't know. But $1 million AI app. Uh, you know, $750 a day. I haven't done the math if that's like really an impressive thing. But, uh, and then like, you know, $10,000 app. And I'm not saying up here that like we need to have someone saying, "Oh, I made the, you know, $1 million crypto app so low." But what I think this is kind of indicating to the wider industry or the wider world is that people are building things that are useful. uh and they don't need to have a you know computer science degree or consider themselves to be developers you know five years ago as with the other day because of all the tools that are available out there. Uh and if that's true, we should then see a huge uptick for uh crypto as far as developers because if we are revolutionizing the world of finance like so we are we say we are certainly some people should be able to build other things that are quite useful and we really need to get them to be more inspired and that's really again another core of what developer joy is and you know oftent times I feel like we we come out uh to these sort of conferences uh and you know I've you know one of the things I've tried to be doing now is like onboarding newer people to this industry. Uh and you know the the haters have the same argument where it's you know crypto there's no real crypto apps out there. And of course you know we have conferences every week it seems like uh when we all talk amongst ourselves about what's available and what the amazing things we're building and the tools that are available. uh and then we kind of ignore that that argument and then we go back to uh you know the the panel session of this you know onboarding a billion users and we need to go back to I think the roots or the fundamentals of maybe these people are right maybe uh there are no real crypto apps and how do we then inspire people to build those or tell the stories of people who are building them in a way that they can kind of consume it uh if you think there are real crypto apps I'm just going to let that like be uh you know up to you to decide uh that if there are more people should be able to understand that are or that like if someone comes with this argument you should have like five different ways to you know defeat the argument if you will. Um, and I think one of the big problems that we have, and this is like um exposing my weird American bias here, but um there was this ad uh like I don't know in the '9s, and it was around uh you know, great it's like I don't know, it was like advertising something around uh like the lobbyists of uh you know dairy, the dairy lobby in the US. So they need to have commercials for this in the US. And it was a really interesting ad. They actually look you should look it up on YouTube. The cows are actually talking. So, that's a huge thing to go check out. The cows are actually talking about how they were in Wisconsin at one time and it was a terrible life cuz it was so cold. Uh, and then the mom cow basically is saying, well, you know, good thing we're in California now. And that whole ad is around that great cheese comes from uh happy cows and where do happy cows come from? Happy cows come from California. I don't know what you do with that information. I don't know if you move your cows, if you have cows to California or not. But the whole idea is right happy things if they're produc producing somewhere uh is a good thing and I feel in uh the world of crypto we need more happy devs. Um and I think that's kind of where one of the core focuses of developer joy is is how do we create that because happy devs actually create happy products or useful products. Uh so let's actually define what developer joy is now. So hopefully you you get a concept that some of this matters um because again that's kind of the the survival of this industry and building things that are useful and again it's not just a particular audience saying just developers but all developers and the abilities for developers to build things or kind of grow you know really expanding um and I have three E of developer joy uh first is education uh second is enablement and the third is entertainment uh what I've realized is like you know the state of being a developer and how you choose the tools that you build on is changing quite dramatically uh with the rise of very much uh you know AI coding assistance so cursor cloud code and github copilot as well as the million others that everyone says is no the new meta or the new best thing to build on because you before as a developer what we decide on is if like this tool was easy uh to to use or uh accessible to use but now I don't really care if it's easy to use as long because cloud understands how to use it. So that changes a lot of things in terms of uh how you actually develop and make content to attract developers to build on and again ultimately uh making more happier developers right uh and on the side of education I think it's not uh that we need to explain uh exactly how our protocol or our project works but really answer the question of why would I use this instead of the hundred other things to do uh 100 other things to actually use and again if I'm you looking at the world of AI coding assistance uh it's me basically making the decision of hey clard code use this or consume this documentation because I think it's going to lead to a better product or a better service that I'm making uh for my project rather than oh okay I need to understand I need to read your white paper or something like that to get an understanding of what's useful so everything that you do in terms of building on a project should be answering this question so your marketing should answer this question of uh you know if I need like how do you actually compare and what's important unique to your project your documentation rather than it just explaining again in diagrams and all of these things about what other things are uh how these things are working you should still be answering this question of how unique and why a developer would choose to use your tool uh over all the other things and I don't mean this in like a super competitive way where you need to like say oh we're better than three other things but there should be something really beneficial for your project uh and if there's not then you should probably wrap it up and you know go do something else to be honest um on an enabling side is you know show me how others are having to use it. So again, one of the big things uh when we're talking about AI and coding assistance is that okay, well, I have all of these abilities um to, you know, use this documentation, use these tools, but when I actually get down to it and start constructing an application, whether that's for an hackathon or for reality, I need some general inspiration about how this things works and how I would implement it to even guide the AI in a better way. And I if I I mean, you probably some of you are representing you know, projects here. If I go to your documentations now and I see if there's any coding samples or actually projects that have been using here and they're open source, I will probably get depressed because to be honest, I think we have a huge need uh for this type of thing. Whether that's even you know using things that are built at hackathons like we're having a hackathon this weekend and you know I know not to pick on you Gollum guys, right? Like go there's going to be some people building on Gallum. So why not just take those repos if you if you think they're useful, refine them if you think there needs to be some improvements and then post them about them and talk about them because then I now as a developer understands okay these are things and how it works and again I'm making the decision which I showed LA last time of yes this is something that I think might be useful and comparing to all the other things. So that was your free consulting column but this is an idea right? So you need to have an enablement and a story around that in terms of um you know showing actual real coding samples, real inspiration uh to get developers to actually start building on these things. And then on the entertainment side um so I don't know you know I've worked in this kind of world of developer relations uh about you know six years now and I've went from uh this concept of developer uh relations to uh developer experience which is really focusing around you know the documentation uh and what's the available tools that are on there. So the whole experience of that and then um I was like okay but I think there's got to be something more again if we're not you know focusing purely on just building great documentation which can be argued is almost not necessarily not useless but some of the skills and perspectives that we have are now outdated in the world of AI coding agents. So how do I how do you get developers to uh start building on the things that you want them to do? And I think, you know, it's crazy to say, but developers are people, too. And lots of people enjoy being entertained. Uh, so I really sort of embraced, okay, developer entertainment, like how do we make really good content or really engaging videos, uh, where, okay, this looks like someone's having fun or getting some sort of developer joy from it. Uh, then then I'll get inspired to start building on that. And I really think when we talk about entertainment just in a general sense, it is that, you know, what is your story? So what is your story as a project? and you know why should I be a character in it and what I mean by that is you know a lot of these projects they want to you know show support they build out grant programs they do hackathons and it's all about how to align the developer uh to you know the goals of your project and hopefully you know the the biggest thing is that we want this to have some sort of long-term engagement. Uh but you you know that's actually a huge sacrifice for a developer to take especially in an industry like this where there's high risk uh there's high scams there's high rugs right so you need to as a project understand and tell a better story of um that this is the thing that we want to build and it could be very compelling in terms of how we want to change the world but then why do I need to be a character in it what do I contribute to that goal is quite important to explain uh and you can do that through content you can do that through your co your founders coming up to these talks And we've obviously seen many examples where that's gone wrong. But you also see tons of builders who have dedicated their time, their talents and their treasures in terms of building an ecosphere. Uh and you need to continue to improve that story and refine it uh to keep them uh going on there. So the last thing I will kind of close it is how to measure it. Right? So we understand uh you know this sort of thing matters in terms of just getting some engagement around developers. Uh it's I think again crucial to the survival of our industry. The second is like uh you know what it actually is. So you know we want to have education, we want to have them enabled and we have them entertained. But that how do you then decide if you're doing a good job or not? And again I say that you know we love numbers here in crypto even again if they're made up if they're uh you know fluctuated things like that because I think you know we have as all humans do a desire to see some sort of progress as our industry right we're not uh you know just making you know making things to make things and you know we have things like TVL you know block size yaps and all these you know how many Twitter followers we have the deployed contracts and I've seen so many debates on uh on these these numbers right oh yeah this is made up or this is how you compare our numbers to theirs. And I really think when we want to measure things, it's not about just like there's nothing wrong about loving numbers, but it's also about, you know, picking the right numbers to measure. Uh, and when we talk about developer joy, you really can't game this in a way uh where, oh yeah, I have a lot of developer joy uh because of all of the, you know, deployed smart contracts on our uh chain or the all the active wallets in our chain. Like that's just not really the the name of the game or really authentic when we're talking about it. So I think again it's one of these things where we want to kind of take a shift from uh the you know basic metrics like community size which I've seen many different ways of how this is measured. Uh whether it's like your Discord users which is like I remember that back a few years ago and now it's like oh yeah they're all bots. Oh okay well the 10,000 110,000 and you know whatever Discord is like completely made up. And I think we should try to transition that to actually the number of true advocates that you have on your project. And what I mean by that is not like oh go run like an advocacy program or have some advocates like I think that's also a very much an exchange right I've been a part of advocate programs before uh where it's like yeah post some content every week and then we're going to send you a shirt it's going to be really cool and you can wear it around the conferences and you're like our advocate and that's nothing against those type of programs but what I mean by advocates is like what who would you call uh you know at 3:00 a.m. when you need to have like a testimony because you want to unlock some, you know, VC funding uh because you want to prove that you you've actually developed something that's useful for other developers or actually tools. And I I know I again I'm not going to like name specific people here uh of people who are true advocates for different projects out there who actually receive no compensation, but they actually get a lot of joy between using their project or building on their tool or whatever. uh and I know for a fact that these if these companies and these protocols are more aware of those people uh that this is actually a good measure of that and again going back to my life as like you work doing a lot of hackathons right like I dedicate lots of time to building on the hackathons you know I do get some compensation if I win a prize uh but I can probably less maybe two protocols that advocate reach out to me after the hackathon to do any type of partnership or collaboration uh which you know if you continue to do that your number of true advocates will actually grow and people will start to realize that. So instead of using large inflated numbers like community size uh really focus on how many advocates that you have uh within your your community that again will be able to provide a real statement of the value that you're bringing. The other one is number of active projects. Uh so this is another cool thing people like to show right we have like all of these like look at our ecosphere we have all these logos on our um website and they all look the same but hey it could be AI generated. I don't know like this is a huge thing um that again a lot of people use either uh show uh growth or you know receive some VC funding things like that I don't know what they're using it for but instead of having a number of active projects I think the diversity of projects and even the diversity of builders within your ecosphere uh ecosystem is probably even more important and actually shows true developer joy so what do I mean by that well the diversity of projects first and foremost is that hey um you know we're instead of just having, you know, we are the X of Y chain. Um, then you that's not really going to give you long-term type of growth, right? Because this is going to decide, uh, hey, uh, you know, when that that project goes to a new chain because they receive more funding, then you don't have any active actual projects. So, diversifying on the types of projects that you have in your uh, you know, ecosystem is far more important because you get that longevity on the ability to sort of survive within it. also in diversity of builders and I don't just mean like um you know on a personal level but like how many builders do you have on onboarding like I would love a project to say like we're like the number one chain or project uh for on for new developers like that's all we focus on is new developers um or you know yeah we're the number one chain for established developers because we have all these different tools like I think that's far more important than just the number of projects if it's especially if it's like the same you know four people building on that project but they're just moving it from chain to chain or you know from ecos ecosystem the ecosystem and lastly is this like u focus on timeline mind share and I think mind share is a really big thing uh it's really important right you got to have people talking about it um and you know again you want to be top of mind for developers uh and all you know community in terms of that and it's really rewarding you get that dopamine hit every time you make a you post and it goes like viral uh that's really great but I think in the terms of developers and developer joy like let's get up you know some GitHub heart share and heart share I know some like term like oh okay this is like he's just like making this up or something but uh you know instead of like you can actually see what developers are building it's like a site called github.com and you can do code searching just to see uh what tools and things like that people are using uh and if you're if you're all using your competitor you can actually see okay why was that why did that happen you know are they easier to use they have better documentation things like that and also you can also see when you when you know developers are using your tools And you know when especially when you're not you know the sponsor of a hackathon or not pay paying them directly that's a far better measurement of that you're actually bringing some joy to developers versus that we're just paying them to use the thing for that weekend and then leaving out. Um so really optimize for heart share than just you know this kind of timeline share where uh you're just having a moment uh and not actually getting any impact from developer side of things. Uh, so I think some of you might listen and say, "Oh, Dan, developer joy, that's not for me." You know, I'm not doing the developers like that's not that important. Uh, but I honestly think why I say that this is the metric that matters is like going back to the developers developers developers of Steve Balmer is that developer joy is not just for developers. It's marketing joy. If you have active developers making content that you don't even pay for, developers talking about your project and also deploying applications that are very interesting and get attention, that's marketing joy. Uh that's not even like within your budget. Uh you that's founder joy, right? So you don't need to have a founder come in and shake every everyone's hand at a you know a round table or do a thousand panels per conference just to get some uh insights of what developers are building. Instead you have a lot of developers already providing that feedback, providing that information. uh again saving a lot of time and a lot of stress and then you know the the classic one I have never done any raising in crypto uh but it's like oh but the the VCs they they they need these metrics they need these other types you know we need that's why we have a botted Twitter account and that's fine if you want to do all of that but even when we're talking about venture capitalists and their ultimate goals of longevity of building some sort of long-term uh plan and some sort of return on their investments if you have a lot of developer joy that is going to kind of contribute to all of these sort of metrics and all these other things that I think are not necessarily distractions but leave us in a world where we have less happy devs. That's the big thing. So, I'm going to close out. Um, this again, this is my first time on stage at a crypto conference. So, I don't think Maya Angelou is like uh number one quoted uh person for a crypto conference. uh most is vital in whatever he says in the white paper, but I think this is kind of sums up a lot of things around developer joy, which is um I learned that that people will forget what you said, right? People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how what you made them feel. So, if you're a project that has some sort of strategy or need uh for developers to use uh your tool, your project, whatever, it's all about how you make developers feel. And if you make them feel joyful, you will ultimately have a lot of success in this world. So that ends my talk. >> Thanks Dan. We have slot for one question. So let's pick a good one. Have a good one. >> Oh, rooting for one more advice here. Uh do you have some favorite uh web three or web two projects that are doing it right that are bringing that joy to developers in your opinion? Let's start with web free. >> Yeah, I do I get this question a lot and I I could have filled this whole slide with other samples but you know I don't get uh I I would say um what is behind this slide and what they're doing like you should be able to re reverse engineer and say this is going to be that. So, I want you to tell me which ones you feel are are most joyful versus like, ah, yeah, this, you know, big shout out to blah blah blah protocol. They're doing it the best, right? Go do what they do because you're only going to find out in your own way how to bring developer joy. So, let me know after this what you feel is uh going well. >> Yeah, Stripe doc. Yeah, everyone says that. Stripe docs. >> Yeah, there's there's never been another docs after that. It's just been stripe docs, you know. Perfect. Dan, thank you so much. Huge applause. [Applause]