📣 AllianceDAO Founder Jacob Franek: To win back young developers, Ethereum needs fewer hackathons and more investments in accelerators!

If the Ethereum community wants to reverse the declining development momentum, it should shift focus from hackathons to truly supporting builders — AllianceDAO founder Jacob Franek outlined three key recommendations on X:

1️⃣ "Hackathons are not suitable for serious developers"
Franek directly states that Ethereum and the entire crypto industry rely too heavily on hackathons, but most projects end up dead in the water; a $5,000 prize cannot produce world-changing products. In contrast, top applications in AI have never come from hackathons.

2️⃣ Funds should be redirected to accelerators and ecosystem funds
Ethereum should stop only investing in basic research and instead channel resources into accelerators, incubation programs, ecosystem venture capital, and growth funds. Otherwise, it will continue to lose young talent and ultimately decline.

3️⃣ Improve UX: L1 scaling and L2 interoperability
Franek emphasizes that ten years of Web2 experience has proven: "users always choose the most user-friendly products." UI and onboarding must be extremely simple, especially for the younger generation whose attention span is constantly decreasing.

He finally warns: "Young developers are moving to AI and other chains. If Ethereum can't attract them, it will die — it's that simple."