I'm not saying there aren't good new ideas in new alt-coins/etc. I'm just saying if we're making a big deal about the number of devs, the above is the main factor.
I think that most cryptocurrencies are intentional scams, and the vast majority of the remainder are bad ideas, but there are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies released each year at this point. Out of that cesspool, I'd expect to see maybe 1 or 2 successful ideas a year. Note I didn't say "good", I said "successful"--in general I think cryptocurrencies are bad for society, but lots of things that are bad for society are successful.
This past year, I think Avalanche Consensus and Near's Deep Sharding were pretty decent ideas. I don't know if they're good enough to translate into long-term success for either coin, but I suspect in the long run, deep sharding drawing inspiration from Near will end up in Ethereum.
An idea which has been hinted at, which I think would be an improvement, would be an ecosystem which isn't programmable, but pulls successful ideas from programmable ecosystems. A few L1 chains at this point have added integrated oracles, but I don't think that takes the idea far enough. A chain with integrated UniSwap, integrated Aave, etc., and no way to add your own coins without consensus from validators, would have no scams and be more performant, while keeping the value of those products in the coin itself. It would be harder to build hype for, because you can't have a gold rush of developers coming in to build the same old coins and investors to try to get in early, but in the long run it seems more sustainable.
I believe that's literally not true.
I think it's thousands.
I'll say it, though.
What do all these coins do that's special except attempt to make money for the relevant company? What problem does alt-coin #45321 solve?
- avoiding unnecessary complexity
- avoiding early miner advantage
- avoiding any financial rewards for its creators
- improving privacy and scalability