Building apps on Ethereum sounds exciting, but every developer hits a wall eventually and needs help fixing broken code. I came across an interesting paper that looks at where Ethereum developers turn when they get stuck online. It turns out that getting helpful answers on Ethereum Stack Exchange has gotten a lot harder over the last decade.
Researchers analyzed all 54,637 questions posted on Ethereum Stack Exchange from January 2016 to December 2025 to see what developers ask about and whether they get answers. They categorized the posts into 22 topics using language models and manual checks. The study found that most developers ask about writing, deploying and debugging contracts, while toolchain questions are growing and security topics remain thin. Getting help has become tougher over time, as the share of questions drawing any answer fell by 9.5 to 18.6 percentage points. The drop is not caused by changing topics, but rather by who is asking. Newcomers with under 10 reputation see an acceptance rate of just 19.8% compared to 66.8% for users with 10k reputation or more.
Curious about the details? Look up What Ethereum Developers Ask For, and Whether They Get It: Ten Years of Ethereum Stack Exchange at arxiv.org/abs/2610.30829. The authors are Tamer Abdelaziz.
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