Most competitive riders use wax in some form. Often straight wax up front. You start with a base coat, then top coat for the temperature you are riding in. If you want a small very thin layer of a stickier formulation.
Sticky Icky, Punt, Dream Cream are the more popular types. There are pluses in grip, minuses in being able to move your foot an toes easily, and minuses in your hands, feet, socks, clothes will have that sticky feeling. Lots of household product will clean it up or you can use
wax remover.
Riders only using traction more often than not wax their traction. This makes it more grippy, but will deteriorate your traction in time.
Sticky waxes are not real popular in the surfing world, only a small segment uses them, as you can imagine paddling with it would suck. Like most thing, it is pretty divide with advocates and people truly against it.
Nick