Jasmine Xu

Posted on Jan 18, 2022Read on Mirror.xyz

Web3 onboarding in a week

Getting started in Web3 can be daunting given how technical the space is. I originally put this content together for an audience that wanted to digest Web3 with only about 15-30 min per day. But, I think the content should be applicable for anyone trying to get into the space.

The primary goal of this onboarding is to:

  1. Give the reader a high level understanding of what Web3 is and key use cases it unlocks
  2. Give initial starting points for you to launch your own Web3 explorations

Web3 is really better learned via doing rather than reading. There’s no way to fully appreciate the nuance of everything without going through it yourself. Hope this inspires you to find whatever you’re most excited about!

Agenda

  1. Day 1: What is Web3
  2. Day 2: Blockchain basics
  3. Day 3: Set up a wallet and play with Web3
  4. Day 4: Key Web3 use cases: DeFi and NFTs
  5. Day 5: Choose your own adventure
  6. Day 6: Web3 for communities (DAOs)
  7. Day 7: Web3 for gaming

Day 1: What is Web3

From Dan Romero's tweet here

Day 2: Blockchain basics

Day 3: Set up a wallet and play with Web3

  • The best way to learn about Web3 is to actually play in it. Reading will only get you so far. We’ll go through basic wallet set up and practice interacting with the blockchain.
  • Learning material
  • To do:
    • Get fiat money into a self-custody wallet
      • Use a centralized finance (CeFi) solution like Coinbase to get some crypto.
      • Buy some ETH (may take a few days for you to be able to transfer the money out)
      • Assume you might need 0.1 E for gas, and 0.2 E to try a bunch of different use cases.
    • Create a wallet via Metamask
      • Save your seed phrase on a piece of paper and never tell it to anyone!!
      • Copy the address of your Metamask wallet into Coinbase so you can move your ETH from Coinbase out into Metamask
    • Note: ETH tends to be where most of the innovation happens, but gas fees can be terrible. If you want to do this with a cheaper chain, you can also try buying Solana and using the Phantom wallet to play with Solana, where gas fees are negligible

Day 4: Key Web3 use cases: DeFi and NFTs

  • Web3 enables the re-invention of traditional problem spaces. DeFi and NFTs have been two popular use cases.
  • Learning material
  • Bonus material
    • Additional content from Odyssey DAO:

Day 5: Choose your own adventure

  • The best way to enjoy Web3 is to make it a choose your own adventure. You’ll pick one of the use cases you learned about yesterday and dig deeper.
  • Learning material
  • To do
    • DeFi:
      1. Add Aurora mainnet to MetaMask (ref) (choosing a chain with no gas to make this process cheaper)
      2. Bridge money into Aurora (no gas fees) via Rainbow Bridge. This step may take 10-15 min
      3. Swap your 20% of your ETH for some NEAR on Trisolaris, a DEX
      4. Go to the “pool” tab. Add equal amounts of ETH and WNEAR to get liquidity pool tokens
      5. Go to “farm” and find the WNEAR - ETH pool and deposit your tokens.
      6. Refresh and watch yield accumulate real time!
    • NFTs:
      1. Go to Opensea and browse collections to find an NFT that you like
      2. Join the NFT’s community (can find them usually on the NFT’s Twitter page or on the Discord logo on the right side of a collection’s home page)
      3. Hang out in the Discord and explore the vibe
      4. Check out some other examples of strong communities: Crypto Coven, Doodles
      5. Check out sound.xyz (rethinking digital ownership for music)

Day 6: Web3 for communities (DAOs)

Day 7: Web3 for gaming

Other resources

Bonus reading

Podcasts

Web3