John deVadoss, former CEO of Microsoft, talks about what he learned during his time at the tech giant. To grow this space, it’s clear to him that building should be easier for Web 3.0 developers.
John deVadoss spent nearly two decades at the top of Microsoft as CEO. From 1998 to 2016, John was instrumental in creating .NET, Microsoft Digital, Azure, and Visual Studio Tools, among others. Now, he is building for Web3 Developers.
He is currently Head of Development at Neo (NEO), an open-source Blockchain that was at one time widely known as the “Chinese Ethereum”. Founded as Antshares in 2014, it is believed to be the first public Blockchain in China, and the first chain to adopt a dual token model, as well as BFT-style consensus process.
In this regard, why did a former Microsoft CEO decide to pack up and go Web 3.0? For John, it was the slow realization that the current power-hungry model of the Internet was fatally flawed.
Another motivator was the recognition that decentralization had become a red herring and a buzzword with little connection to reality. In his mind, what really mattered was “self-sovereignty”.
“That’s really what led me to want to build in the Web 3.0 space,” he says. “And certainly to contribute my previous experiences, having worked on and built significant parts of what is called Web1 and unfortunately also called Web 2.0.”
Web 3.0 Developers First
For the past few years, Neo has focused on building an interoperable dApp ecosystem backed by a thriving global developer community. It boasts of being the most feature-rich platform for creating dApps. To get to that promised land, deVadoss insists that projects must put developers first.
deVadoss summarizes his learning at Microsoft by stating, “It’s critical that you have the humility to ship and then quickly iterate based on what your users and developers want. The customer is always right. In this case, for me, my clients are the developers.”
“These are not Your Father’s Requests”
Despite building tools and continually championing his new industry, deVadoss feels that he is still met with skepticism from the developer community about building in Web 3.0. Part of that skepticism stems from the different ways that Blockchains operate.
He explains how, for traditional developers, the notion of economic platforms that include cryptoeconomic protocols, incentives, and penalties in the underlying stack is still a very foreign concept. “It takes time to be able to understand and comprehend it, let alone be able to exploit it, use it to build and create value.”
John and Neo’s desire to focus on the developer experience seems well-founded. Despite the recent market downturn, there is more interest than ever in developing Web 3.0, according to a report by Alchemy. Judging by the downloads of two key Web 3.0 libraries, Ether.js and Web3.js, activity has tripled since the third quarter of last year and tenfold since 2018.
By Audy Castaneda
