The pathway to becoming a Blockchain Developer in 2023

Where Blockchain Developers Are Most In Demand?

While most associate blockchain technology, especially DeFi, with the financial sector, its potential extends way beyond. From retail and logistics to leasing, the internet of things, real estate, and insurance – blockchain is ready to revolutionize them all! Even the public sector isn't left untouched. Take, for instance, the state of Utah, USA, which successfully implemented blockchain in organizing municipal elections. Yes, you heard it right! All these industries are eagerly looking for skillful developers who can not only code but also provide innovative solutions and take full responsibility for their work. 

Mastering Blockchain Programming – Where to Start?

• Guess what? Learning blockchain can be fun! The CryptoZombies game is a fantastic and interactive platform that lets you understand all the technicalities of blockchains while having a blast. Also, platforms like Udemy, Pluralsight, Coursera, and 101 Blockchains offer a plethora of resources to polish your skills.
  Hungry for more knowledge? Medium.com has a treasure trove of articles describing language, patterns, antipatterns, traps, and intelligent solutions to specific problems. And don't forget to review the "smart contracts" code available on GitHub – an incredibly useful guide teeming with best practices.

What Do You Need to Become a Blockchain Developer?

Are you passionate about becoming a blockchain developer? Here's what you will need on your exciting journey:

• Getting started with a crypto wallet: For example, MetaMask is a great option. Need a helping hand setting it up? You can find comprehensive guides available both here and here to get you started!
• Cultivating an analytical mindset: Predicting the impact of your work and solving intricate problems are key abilities in this field. You will need to hone these skills for your blockchain development adventure.
• Mastering at least one programming language: Familiarize yourself with Java, Python, JavaScript, C++, or C#, as knowledge in at least one of these languages is necessary.
• Choosing your preferred blockchain platform: Depending on the blockchain platform you're interested in, you may need to learn a new language. For instance, Ethereum primarily uses Solidity.
• Understanding smart contract platforms and their applications: You should be familiar with different types of smart contracts and their development. In our experience, it's a good idea to start with an Ethereum sidechain like Avalanche or Celo. Here, the transaction costs are minimal and Solidity is the language in use.
• Delving into cryptography: As you progress, an understanding of cryptography will become indispensable. This will enhance your comprehension of underlying processes, particularly how data structures and cryptographic functions like SHA256 and KECCAK256, used in blockchain, work. Without this knowledge, becoming a blockchain developer would be quite challenging.
• Exploring front-end and back-end development basics: These involve creating dynamic graphical user interfaces for Dapps, handling APIs and requests, and much more!

Embrace the Challenge, Savor the Rewards

• Gaining a thorough understanding of tokenomics: Understanding how the solution you build works, the problems it solves, and how it does so will be pivotal to your role as a developer.
• Anticipating the potential cost of mistakes and errors: Emphasize analytical thinking to minimize the risks and costs associated with exploitation mistakes.
• Embracing Test-Driven Development (TDD): This practice is your ally in creating efficient and error-free code.
• Grasping various token specifications and their use cases: Token specifications such as ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, etc., all have unique use cases. ERC-20 is a good starting point as it is the simplest.

Blockchain development is a rewarding and challenging field that will stretch your skills and grow your expertise. With these guidelines, you are well on your way to becoming a capable and successful blockchain developer. Welcome to the exciting world of blockchain development!

Must-Have Tools for Blockchain Development

Hardhat is a development environment used by most solidity developers in the world. It’s used for smart contracts compiling, testing and deployments. Its unique functionality is built in the development server which allows you to run the tests out of the box without spending time on configuring external dependencies.

Truffle is another development environment used for testing, deployments, and task automation. In contrast to Hardhat it requires a local blockchain (for instance Ganache) for local testing. Because of this, our developers say it’s less flexible than     Hardhat and also not so commonly used.

Remix (online development environment); you can not only code contracts in it but also compile and simply run/execute them. Best for prototyping, quick testing, firing functions on not verified contracts which we have the code for, no setup needed.

Vscode most popular IDE for software development with Solidity plugin (works with hardhat as remix alternative).

Ethers library for interacting with blockchain from the Web application level. It ensures the ability to connect through various providers, call read/write functions, handle wallets, events subscriptions. Moreover, it provides a lot of EVM built-in     constants. It’s small ( just 377 KB), also tree-shakeable, so we can just get the functions we need for our build, instead of the whole package (unlike web3), very well TypeScript compatible.

 Web3 as an ethers alternative. Practically 100% of our dev team prefer to use ethers, but if you would like to give a try to another library for communication with blockchain from the web application — Web3 is probably the one you are looking for.

Ganache  the application that runs our own blockchain locally for fun/tests.

Brownie is an alternative to Hardhat and Truffle. It offers the same set of functionalities so if you prefer to use Python over JavaScript — it’s probably the tool you have to become familiar with.

The Road Ahead

The blockchain industry is in dire need of developers. If you're ready for a career change, start learning, stay patient, and don't forget to visit the Neti website. Don't shy away from joining the developer community on Discord, Telegram, or the websites of specific "chains." They are rich sources of valuable information and a great way to network. As you embark on this incredible journey, we're cheering for you and wish you the best of luck in mastering blockchain technology. Don't hesitate to reach out to Neti if you have questions or need further guidance – we're always here to help!

If you would like to know more, do not hesitate to contact Neti.