Week1
===== DAY 1 =====
Alright let’s go, the first of 30 exciting days, I want to start things off by sharing something personal - my own reason for why I’m so excited about web3 development. A very common phrase that gets thrown around in crypto/web3 is “You’re still early”. But come on, are we really early? Have you stopped and wondered how many web3 developers are there actually out there?
Well, I have the answer for you - turns out we (aspiring web3 developers) are indeed still very early! Electric Capital (a crypto VC) generated a Developer Report for the year of 2021 and the insights are really interesting. I’ll leave you to look through and unpack the 130 page report by yourself. Don’t worry, its mostly graphs! The article below provides a good summary of the report as well.
Today’s discussion question: What in the developer report stood out the most to you? Why?
===== DAY 2 =====
Yesterday we talked about how early we are since there’s so few web3 developers in the world. My next thought was then “well, maybe there’s so few web3 developers because its a job that isn’t that lucrative, so not many people want to do it”. Turns out I was wrong!
Today’s content drop is web3.career’s Web3 Developer Salary report of August 2022, hot off the press 🔥. In it, they cover web3 salaries across programming languages, seniority and location, as well as a bunch of other things. Have a look through it! I promise it’s no where near as long as the developer report yesterday :kek:
I always believe that it’s important to have a tangible goal to work towards, so take a minute to look through the job descriptions of the web3 jobs available. Look out for common technologies/skills that are required for the jobs you’re interested in and prioritize studying those! Studying smart is key :bigbrain~1:
web.career is a pretty cool site that collates web3 developer career related content like salaries, job postings and even remote internship positions available! I encourage you to explore the different tabs if you have the time.
web3.career’s Web3 Developer Salary report of August 2022.
- Today’s discussion question: Which of the web3 job positions stood out the most to you and why?
===== DAY 3 =====
Hey all! Hopefully the discussion we had the past 2 days has gotten you fired up, because I sure am 🔥 What I want to share today is a video that provides a very clear roadmap for how to become a web3 developer. Remember, having passion and determination is important, but having a clear path to channel all that hustle is just as important! As the saying goes “You don’t know what you don’t know” - so today let’s find out what we don’t know. Or rather, what we don’t know yet, but will be learning in time to come!
I want to take this opportunity to introduce EatTheBlocks. EatTheBlocks is an excellent web3 dev education content producer on Youtube that I highly recommend subscribing to. If you’re just starting out learning web3 development (or learning anything for that matter), you should strive to have as much exposure as possible to the material! You’ll be surprised at how much you can pick up from watching a few videos here and there :StackUp:
I choose EatTheBlock’s roadmap specifically because I think he really distils very well the essentials of what you need to know to become a web3 developer. If you Google search “web3 developer roadmap”, you’ll get quite a few search results. But I find that many of those roadmaps contain a lot of additional stuff that might unnecessarily overwhelm new learners on their journey.
EatTheBlocks’ Full Roadmap to learn Blockchain development in 2021.
- Today’s discussion questions: Are there any parts of the roadmap that you did not expect would be included? Do you have any skills currently that fulfils a portion of the roadmap?
===== DAY 4 =====
Hey hey all! Time for our first build project: I want to start it off with a smart contract classic - an escrow contract. *8What’s an escrow you ask?** An escrow is a legal concept describing a financial agreement whereby an asset or money is held by a third party on behalf of two other parties that are in the process of completing a transaction.
So here’s how its going to work - I’ve prepared a boilerplate escrow Solidity smart contract that you can use to build your escrow contract on. If you haven’t learnt Solidity or need a refresher, you can visit StackUp’s Blockchain and Smart Contracts campaign! The campaign covers all the Solidity concepts required to build this escrow contract.
There are many possible solutions to achieve the same outcome, so experiment with the different ways in which you structure your data/code! If you prefer to structure your code in a way that’s different from what’s provided in the boilerplate smart contract, that’s fine too! 🔥
Go to the URL below, it’ll point you to the repository that contains the boilerplate code and more information regarding the build project. The estimated time required for this project is <1 hour. Don’t worry, the instructions in the README and the comments in the boilerplate code is very comprehensive and provides a lot of guidance :) If you need any help, feel free to ask your fellow mates here for tips.
- Once you have completed the project, you can take a screenshot of your code and slide into my DMs if you want to check if your code is correct.
===== DAY 5 =====
Hey! tgif!! And really good effort on yesterday’s build project, Today I want us to discuss about a popular blogpost regarding how web3 is not as decentralized as we think it is. The blogpost was written earlier this year (in the peak of the NFT mania) by a famous cryptographer and computer security researcher, Moxie Marlinspike. When this blogpost came out, it really made its rounds around the web3 community - even Vitalik made an epic Reddit post replying to him!
I believe that as a web3 developer, keeping in touch with what’s going about in the web3 scene is really important since it keeps you updated with the latest news and happenings. It’s important to be aware of these high level discussions regarding the web3 space so that you’re able understand and articulate both sides of the argument, giving you a nuanced view of the industry.
I HIGHLY encourage you to read the entire blogpost, its a very interesting read + it’s refreshing to see web3 from the perspective of someone from the outside looking in. However, if you’re in a rush for time, I’ve prepared a summary for you as well (but nothing beats reading the blogpost itself 🙂)
Today’s discussion questions: Which point in the article did you find most insightful? What’s your takeaway from the article?
===== DAY 6 =====
Hey! Yesterday’s content was a bit heavy in terms of the amount of brainjuice required to digest the content of the blogpost, so today let’s read something lighter! Today I want to share a Medium article that I really enjoyed - its a mental model on how blockchains are similar to cities.
When I first started out in web3, I was pretty confused as to whats the difference between all the different L1 blockchains. I mean if you look at it from a high-level view, they all kinda do the same stuff - most have their own native token, a language to write smart contracts in, dapps built on them etc. This article provides a neat analogy of popular blockchains to famous cities in the world, breaking down some of the high-level differences between the L1 blockchains. If anything, it’s useful to know this analogy so you can impress your boomer friends the next time they ask you about L1 chains.
Stretching the analogy - Cities have public goods e.g. security, basic infrastructure, healthcare etc. What are the blockchains’ equivalent of public goods?
Today’s discussion question: What do you think of the analogy of blockchains as cities? Is it accurate?
===== DAY 7 =====
Hello peeps! Today I want to share with y’all a great web3 dev resource consolidation site - useweb3.xyz! Personally, when I saw this site for the first time, I was so fascinated by the look and feel of it that I spent a good amount of time exploring the site. In this site, you can find links to all kinds of web3 dev resources - from tutorials, to templates, to challenges, and even web3 podcasts and movies!
Take a few minutes to explore the site. Similar to web3.career that I shared in Day 2, useweb3.xyz also has a career tab with frequently updated web3 jobs available. Open up some of the job titles that you find are interesting and look at their descriptions!
The message I want to drive across is this - there’s so many resources available out there, the onus is on you to take charge of your own learning. With sites like this serving everything to you on a silver platter, the only part that’s left is for you pick something and put in the hard work and hours 💪
- Today’s discussion question: Which tab did you find the most interesting/helpful and why?.