Developers don't get appreciated enough, but how can a developer know if they don't have anything for the community?  As a developer that has nowhere to connect with people, the only way is to express what you can offer to people in the community that need help; when you do much and people recognise you well enough, the community will come for you.

I'm not sure if you have been observant; if you visit any free crypto website, there are wallets on websites where you can make donations for developers with "buy me a coffee". They don't make it compulsory, but free donations go there, that's one way non-custodial developers get appreciated.

Some of them also get employed by some companies that want their services, they make money from their services and sometimes find time to support what they have built for the community for free.

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This is unrelated, but have you paid attention to some developers on this forum?  Not all are non-custodial wallet developers, but they have built some tools for this forum. They run ads on their websites; that's one way they make money.

- Trynaija, for example, help you track the forum activities with Telegram bot, but because it cost him to keep the server running, he runs ads for some companies here in the forum
- Talkimj provides free hosting of images for the forum users but gets donations from people on the forum to keep the hosting running, these are some of the ways developers get support from the community.