Investors Stake $5.5 Million on Stackr to Onboard JavaScript Devs to Crypto

With new funding in hand, Stacker is looking to make building on the blockchain easier overall.

The latest $5.5 million round was led by Archetype, and was joined by Scalar Capital, Lemniscap and Spartan Group among others. The funding will be used to build the team, launch the first iteration of the product, and attract developers who want to jump into crypto.

Stacker's plan is simple: allow Web2 developers to build any crypto application they want without having to learn a new programming language.

This is thanks to Stacker's flexible software development kit (SDK), which starts with JavaScript first, but aims to add a host of other languages ​​like Python, Go and C.

“We want to provide a Web2 way to build Web3 applications and build a system that allows devs to use the Web2 tools they're used to building decentralized applications,” Hiten Patel, Stacker's business operations leader, told Decrypt. “Our SDK will support Web2 programming languages ​​such as JavaScript and TypeScript at launch, which is very convenient for most developers in the world today.”

And getting more developers to join the crypto industry is critical.

According to the Electric Capital Developer Report, there are approximately 19,279 crypto developers as of October 1, 2023. That figure includes full-time, part-time, and one-time developers — or those who have contributed code to GitHub once over a three-month rolling window.

Since October of last year, the number of crypto developers has decreased by about 30%. And without new builders, the industry's future looks bleak.

More developers, more modularity

In addition to injecting fresh blood into the coding ecosystem, Stacker offers users a more modular development experience.

This means they can pick and choose which part of their application they want to put on the blockchain, and unlike conventional crypto development, it runs in a single design space.

It's a growing debate in the crypto community, but members of the modular tribe say it will be the next big thing.

As monolithic blockchains Bitcoin And Ethereum It basically means that transaction performance, data availability and communication are all locked in one place. Modular blockchains are different, allowing users to mix and match those components.

“Going modular means you can choose which part of the stack you want to go with which vendor. It all depends on the type of security you want,” Stacker founder Kauthuk Kundan told Decrypt. If you want faster authentication, but with less ecosystem cost, you can go with a custom transmitter like Celestia or something like that.

And that means choosing which parts to decentralize, which stacker group bets on will be an interesting draw for Web2 companies looking to experiment with Web3 technology.

“If you're Shopify and want to decentralize the accounts, you can do it all on-chain,” Patel told Decrypt. “They're using our software development kit, and they don't need to change anything about the rest of their product, just that.”

Edited by Stephen Graves