Demand for blockchain skills increased by 552% in 2022. Here’s why

Blockchain, most commonly associated with cryptocurrencies, has long held potential as a global database of records for business applications and processes, and there is evidence that its use for these purposes is on the rise. Some have discounted the hype that surrounded blockchain a few years back, but many large companies have finally put it into production.

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Take, for example, its application to supply chains. Avery Dennison, an $8 billion multinational corporation, is using blockchain to provide a cloud service offering that provides supply chain services to some major consumer goods companies, as well as their customers. The benefit is not only the efficiency and security blockchain brings, but also its transparency across the board, according to Neil Hay, head of market development for Avery Dennison’s atma.io division, which provides SaaS-based supply chain services.

“I think we’re at the end of a paradigm shift where the pursuit of fast fashion and cheap clothing is pretty much over,” Hay explained to Blockchain Journal’s David Berlind in an interview at the recent World Economic Forum. “The need now is to have products that you trust, that you are proud to use, and that are going to last,” says Hay.

The benefit of blockchain is that it enables “traceability of supply chains, our understanding of what products, what’s made up of that product,” continues Hay. This includes quality of materials, origin of production and impact on the environment. “As the product moves through that supply chain, we give that immutability that trust to the consumer, and have that auditability, that traceability and that transparency that’s associated with a blockchain. We can have the confidence to say what we’ve said that what’s happening has really happened.”

That verifiability has been missing from the supply chains, he says. “We don’t have to look too hard to see examples of companies that believed that what was happening upstream in their supply chain was true, that the things that were reported they had full faith in. But the ability to have that auditable traceability part to convey that confidence to the customer you have it in one is what the interest in the blockchain is for us.”

Perhaps the industry will get the message that blockchain can open up key business processes in a network economy. A recently released tracking report even identifies blockchain as the fastest-growing in-demand IT skill over the past year, surpassing such typical staples as cybersecurity and Salesforce development skills in growth. Still, the most popular skill in sheer numbers overall is the perennial favorite, JavaScript.

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The analysis, published by DevSkiller, an IT skills assessment platform, shows that the demand for blockchain skills increased by 552% in 2022. “Interest in blockchain is likely to increase due to its improved security, greater transparency and instant traceability,” the report writes. authors maintain. The report’s findings are based on 209,249 coding tests sent through the DevSkiller platform to candidates from 54 countries.

The second fastest growing technology is Kotlin, with a 205% increase in demand. “Kotlin is likely to become more popular due to its multi-platform capabilities and the continued investment in mobile technology,” suggest the survey’s authors. Other fast-growing technology areas include cybersecurity (176%), Salesforce (128%) and Go (94%).

“We had more requests from new customers in the past year than ever before for blockchain and low-code and no-code technologies,” the authors of the research report add.

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Breaking down blockchain-related IT skills into smaller pieces, Solidity was the most tested skill with a 44% share in the number of skill assessments sent to candidates and employees. It beat out Hardhat (22%) and Smart Contracts (15%), which respectively rounded out the first three positions.

In terms of overall numbers, the most verified technical skill in 2022 was JavaScript, the DevSkiller report adds. With a 23% share in the number of skills assessments sent to candidates and employees, JavaScript overtook last year’s winner Java (19%) as well as SQL (16.60%), Python (8.50%) and PHP (5.70%).