Note: None of the companies or projects mentioned in this blog post are paying me to write this. Would be cool though lol.
Recently announced my full time dive into the web3 space and a few folks have been asking me what kind of roadmap or resources I used to get into the space. I’ll open with an honest and maybe brutal truth: anyone who tells you there is a definitive list of things you can do to just become a dev in this space is probably feeding you some bullshit. That said, there are a lot of cool resources out there that can help but there is no one size fits all roadmap. That will ultimately depend on you, the journey you want to take, and where you want to end up in this space.
I’m going to share the resources I used along with an explanation of why I feel they are good. Not all of these resources will work for everyone, please keep that in mind. My take on this is going to probably be biased towards front end devs, why? Because I’m a frontend dev and that’s where I can share my expertise. I am learning and teaching blockchain development as well but as I am not someone with a paid job as a solidity or smart contract developer take what I say with a grain of salt.
First up is one of my favorite things and a great initial primer for learning solidity concepts! Crypto Zombies!
I like this a lot for practicing and learning some fundamentals of Solidity! If you want to practice Solidity in an interactive way then this is definitely a great way to start. You essentially start making smart contracts that support the creation of a Zombie Factory. It’s fun but I’m not going to lie, for me at least it gets a little dry after the first couple of sections. I like this as a way to skim through the start of some Solidity stuff but I don’t like the fact that you’re writing Solidity in an environment that does not mimic a production environment. Some important things that I don’t really get from this is well how do I start my own environment for my smart contracts? How do I deploy stuff?
So if you’re like me and like building stuff this might not keep your attention for too long. Speaking of building stuff though the next resource is one of my favorites.
Buildspace is awesome because you get to work on cool projects in a cohort based online environment that still allows you to go at your own pace if you choose. Buildspace usually launches a project on a weekend and the launch will be accompanied by a cool livestream that goes over what you will build as well as giving you an overview of some coding concepts that will help you with your project. I’ve done several of their projects and their tagline is definitely accurate. You learn some stuff, you use that to build, and then you ship.
Buildspace was instrumental for me in tying together a lot of the Solidity concepts I was learning with the frontend work that I was already doing. They do an incredible job in making sure that you have what you need to ship and get other people trying things out. While it is cohort based it is still almost entirely self paced and async as you can choose to hack away with others in the discord channel and occasionally receive or give help to other hackers while working on the projects. These cohorts are completely free and they even try to help you get a job in web3 if you complete some of their projects!
Some concerns I had have already been addressed as well. Previously you would have to wait for the day of the kick off to access the project but now you can just dive right in without waiting. They’ve even started trying to help fund some of the best projects that come up to get them launched on a main net so you can get a real life product onto the blockchain!
A person who shares a lot of cool resources to learn from is Nader Dabit. Here are some really helpful blog posts from him:
https://dev.to/dabit3/how-to-get-into-ethereum-crypto-web3-as-a-developer-9l6
https://dev.to/dabit3/building-scalable-full-stack-apps-on-ethereum-with-polygon-2cfb
I really enjoyed learning about Polygon while going through the NFT marketplace tutorial. It helped to get more exposure to things outside of the Ethereum main network which is fairly inaccessible for a lot people right now.
Other than these main resources a lot of my journey has just been trying to help people with their projects, teach what I learn, and just be active on crypto twitter in both following and interacting with people who are building cool things. A great place to find different resources that might bet better suited to your way of learning is this awesome site:
These are curated lists of tutorials, books, videos, games and challenges that can help you learn the things you need to dive into the space and get a job in web3. My advice is, don’t worry too much about how others, including myself, are learning. Get a feel an idea for it and then look at these resources to figure out what is the best way for you. What works for me might now necessarily work out for you and thats totally cool. I think a lot of folks would have more success much more quickly if they focused more on finding their own methods of learning rather than trying to emulate exactly what was successful for others. I’m happy to give pointers but remember, your journey is yours!