9 Notable New Tools for Building in Web3

Looking for the latest dev tools that can make your work easier and faster? Here’s a list of rising tools for building in web3. There are many exhaustive lists of web3 tools out there–like this one–but in this article, we’ve selected some of the most interesting new web3 dev tools.

Web3 refers to the decentralized web using blockchain technology and peer-to-peer networks to allow highly available data sharing directly between participants and applications, without the need for middlemen.

Whether you’re new to building in web3 or an experienced developer looking to keep up with the newest dev tools, there’s something for you on our list. Here’s a look at the new web3 developer tools the Dragonscale team is checking out:

1. Ceramic: A decentralized content computation network for open-source information

Web3 solutions team 3Box Labs raised $30 million in venture capital in February 2022 to support the creation of Ceramic, their decentralized platform for blockchain applications data. Ceramic’s target audience is dapp developers who are still using web2 storage options such as Amazon Web Services.

Ceramic’s platform adds extra behaviors to static data files. These allow the files to be “composed” or organized into higher-order data structures that can then be readily distributed across a decentralized network.

“To date, blockchains have primarily been designed to keep track of state for financial applications predicated on scarcity, not data applications predicated on abundance,” said Kyle Samani, managing partner at funder Multicoin Capital, in the funding press release. “Ceramic purpose-built a decentralized data network from the ground up with the specific goal of making data composable in web3 applications.”

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, blockchains have already demonstrated this composability. Ceramic aims to bring the same functionality to all internet data, with use cases including portable self-sovereign identity services, interoperable application storage, and open web services without requiring new accounts or logins. Since its beta release in June 2022, Ceramic has been used by thousands of web3 developers and already has more than 400 app integrations.‍

2. Dock Certs: No-code, verifiable credentials

‍Dock battles the internet’s rising tide of false information, such as faked diplomas and professional qualifications. Many companies want to issue verified online credentials to their customers in a way that prevents imposters from faking them. Responding to this need, Dock released their fraud-proof digital credentials tool, Dock Certs, in February 2022.

In April, it added a bulk-issuance feature. Upload identifying data from a .csv or other data file, and presto–Dock Certs generates the verified credentials you need in three quick steps. Dock Certs aims to be your easy solution to issue, verify, and revoke credentials.

Personal information is susceptible to hacking when it’s captured by major corporations and stored in central repositories–think of the 50 million Facebook users whose personal information was stolen from the social media giant’s databases in 2018, for instance. Dock enables decentralized solutions in web3 that keep individuals in control of their personal data.

3. EthSlurp: Easily extracting Ethereum data into spreadsheets

‍When you’re working in the blockchain, at some point it might be useful to be able to export transaction data into a simple spreadsheet for sorting and review. If that blockchain is Ethereum, a great tool for it is EthSlurp. It allows you to “slurp” up all the transactions from any Ethereum address, including smart contracts, and dump them into Excel or similar spreadsheet formats, or just a .txt file.

The magic? EthSlurp’s formatting option lets you turn the machine-readable data of the blockchain into easily read spreadsheet fields. It’s customizable, so you can pick and choose the fields you want. With EthSlurp, you “drink the blockchain” and turn that firehose of information into useful data that’s easy to analyze, manipulate, and reorganize.

4. Fission: Enabling next-generation dapp publishing

‍Fission makes it easy for developers with front-end and design skills to create apps. The apps are based on the device of each user but can be easily accessed from anywhere, meaning you don’t have to figure out server space.

Fission Codes for smart contracts make it easy to set rules or create changes once, enabling inter-contract automation. Their team sums up Fission this way:

“FISSION helps developers understand and build interoperable smart contracts. It establishes a common vocabulary for smart contracts to interact with a rich set of messages to tag data and common situations. It has applications in state transfer, development tooling, instrumentation, and user messaging.”

Pair this functionality with Fission Translate, which converts machine code back into human-readable text, and you have powerful tools that should save you time in your web3 organization.

5. Fleek: Launching a decentralized web3 network

Fleek has been enabling websites and app development in web3 since 2019, offering easy-to-use hosting, storage, gateways, and domains on the distributed, peer-to-peer InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Their edge-computing network approach is fast. The team’s philosophy is that web3 services such as storage, hosting, and billing should be accessible to everyone.

Upcoming developments have 2023 looking like the year their technology really takes off. In December 2022, they landed $25 million in venture capital. The funds are earmarked for launching Fleek Network next year, which promises decentralized web3 technologies that aims to deliver web2-like performance. Their initial focus is the content delivery market, where they plan to compete with current web2 market leaders such as AWS and CloudFlare.

6. Foundry: Rust-based support for Ethereum dapp-building

‍Foundry isn’t a single tool, but a modular smart-contract development toolchain for Ethereum and Ethereum-based apps. The suite has three tools, all built in Rust.

Forge helps web3 users develop, test, and deploy smart contracts. With Forge, you’ve got everything you need: fuzz testing, fork testing, gas tracking, you name it. Foundry describes its Cast tool as a “Swiss Army Knife for interacting with EVM smart contracts, sending transactions, and getting chain data.” Finally, Anvil is Foundry’s local Ethereum node for contract testing.

Foundry has been on many "best of" tools lists for its flexibility and ease, and its ability to support developers on many different project types.

7. Metamorphic: Detecting smart contract alterations

‍Web3 users rely on smart contracts to be immutable once they’re deployed. In fact, they can be hacked. That’s where Metamorphic comes in: It allows you to easily discover whether changes have been inserted into Ethereum-based smart contracts. Just released in 2022, this tool looks like it’s quickly becoming a must-have for Ethereum users.

Just pop the contract’s address into Metamorphic’s handy form, and you’ll get back a report listing possible red flags. Metamorphic analyzes six different factors in the contract’s code, including whether known metamorphic code was used in deployment, whether the contract’s code can self-destruct, and whether the contract is calling code from elsewhere.

8. Sunscreen: Building advanced privacy technology

‍Sunscreen helps developers build privacy-preserving applications using fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE. Thus far, FHE has a reputation for being difficult to use. Sunscreen is out to change that with their FHE compiler.

“Our goal is to make it quite easy for any engineer to write an FHE program,” the team writes in Sunscreen’s documentation. Their Rust-based tool’s open-source API is still in development–their GitHub repo warns that the library is considered to be in an experimental stage.

But they did just raise $4.65 million in venture capital to help fund Sunscreen’s development, so that should give the effort a boost.

9. Web3-Onboard: Making it easy to access apps

‍Blocknative’s existing suite of tools help with mempool and transaction monitoring, and gas-fee estimating in Ethereum and Polygon. Their newest addition, Web3-Onboard, is an “open-source, framework-agnostic JavaScript library to onboard users to web3 apps.”

Web3-Onboard makes it easier for users to quickly connect multiple wallets and accounts via a single library, as well as enabling real-time transaction notifications. It’s themeable, so you can style it to match your brand.

This is definitely one to watch–Web3-Onboard has already racked up a handful of major clients such as Iron Bank, Zapper, and Compound. Blocknative raised $12 million in funding in mid-2021 to enable their tool-development projects, so they’ve got the juice to keep improving their offering.

Web3 dev tools just keep getting better

‍All the new tools coming online that make web3 tasks easier and faster help bring the decentralized web to a wider audience.

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