Ok, so you finally heard about blockchain and have decided you want to be part of the great blockchain revolution! Great, you just made the best decision of your life. Now all that's left to do is spend the next 10,000 hours mastering the art of blockchain development.
Now while mastering blockchain is not going to be a walk in the park. And the last thing you want to be doing when beginning your blockchain journey is to get lost in the ocean of information the internet throws at you. I thought I'd make it a little easy for everyone getting in the space to have a resource that
Start From Here
If you're new to the blockchain you have got to start from here, this is the blockchain Genesis! Without giving away too many spoilers - basically, there's this guy called Santoshi Nakamoto aka the Batman of Blockchain, who is enraged with how the Banks poorly handled the 2008 financial crisis.
So this unknown entity who calls himself Santoshi Nakamoto decides to wear the cape and a mask so he can save the entire world by publishing a white paper on bitcoin.
👉 Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
If you have no background in coding, cryptography, math, or finance and you're going through this white paper for the first time - you might be wondering why am I even recommending something that makes absolutely no sense to a beginner. That feeling is totally valid.
The reason you need to go through the white paper is to prime yourself with the concepts that build the foundation of blockchain:
- Transactions
- Ledgers
- Nodes
- Hashing
- Consensus
Hey, but isn't this supposed to be an article about solidity? We're getting there, trust me it's easier to know this basic stuff before you jump directly into development. But hey it's your life, live it large. Feel free to skip sections and jump to the juicy stuff.
Beginner Friendly Books On Blockchain And Bitcoin
Cool, so you understand some of the basic stuff about blockchain, you are now ready to take your next step in understanding the blockchain.
Let's go back to Santoshi (Batman) for a second. Remember that guy with the cape and the mask all set to save with world with his bitcoin idea. Well, he hasn't revealed his identity yet. But Santoshi just made a super-fan and his name is Andreas Antonopoulos.
Now Andreas hears about bitcoin and goes months obsessing over it, he forgets to eat & sleep. I mean this man is legit obsessed with the idea that there is a revolution coming. A couple of months pass and his obsession pays off. He puts out a Book called Mastering Bitcoin.
👉 Mastering Bitcoin
Here's the book on GitHub. Yup, he made it free for all! So go ahead and bookmark it.
Is this a beginner-friendly book on bitcoin? No. But, I mean you're smart enough to figure out by now that there is no easy way around learning blockchain. However, you could make your life a little easier by watching Andreas explain bitcoin in this video.
👉 Bitcoin Explained
I find this video really helpful because it builds on the ideas laid out in the white paper and sort of follows the structure of the Mastering Bitcoin book. The video is also helpful if you're halfway through reading the book and feeling a little overwhelmed.
Honestly, I didn't have the patience to go through the book cause it just made me fall asleep every time I decided to read the book. So I bought the audiobook - now I have a great young man putting me to sleep every night on audible.
Great books to get you started with Ethereum
So you read Mastering Bitcoin, and now you know all about bitcoin and blockchains. You are finally ready to get into developing on Ethereum. If you haven't read that book yet, at least go and bookmark the Github page. You might need it as we move forward.
Ok so back to Gotham...it's 2008, Santoshi (Batman) releases the white papers, and the world is going crazy. Folks from the cryptography space are losing their minds because they have finally got something exciting to do with all the cryptography that they have been working on for over a decade. And while the world is celebrating with excitement about this new technology. A 16-year-old kid called Vitalik Buterin is playing video games.
Vitalik's dad (who is a programmer) shows him some of the research happening in the space of blockchain. But Vitalik goes like "I don't have time for this!". However at some point, he does take it seriously, he even starts writing blogs where he would receive payment in bitcoins.
Vitalik had his side hustle going but then somewhere in 2013, he gets this crazy idea about a decentralised Turing complete computer that he calls Ethereum.
Now if that was a mouthful think of it as a computer in the sky. You can execute code on this computer and it also stores transactions. All this while still keeping the computer nice and decentralised. And you as a developer could build these Smart Contracts using this computer. So in short it's more like a badass potent version of bitcoin.
My man Andreas Antonopoulos now gets a new hobby and begins his obsessions over Ethereum and long and behold a couple of years later he writes a second book Mastering Ethereum
Does he put it up on GitHub for free? You bet he does!
👉 Mastering Ethereum
Now this book really goes in-depth with all you need to know about Ethereum and how it works. If you've read Mastering Bitcoin, digesting this book will be a lot easier.
Learn Programing in Solidity
So we finally get here, you are now ready to get down and dirty. It's time for you to start building some Billion dollar dApps on the blockchain using solidity. And the best place to start is by making some Zombies NFTs
👉 Crypto Zombies - Interactive Solidity Coding
Crypto Zombies is a really fun way to get started in Solidity. It's interactive, beginner-friendly and has a small learning curve.
Once you're done with crypto zombies, you feel you're a hardcore coder who has no time for silly zombie games. It's time for you to jump right into the solidity docs like the grown-ups!
👉 Solidity - Docs
The solidity docs are your best friend when you're getting on your development journey. The solidity version keeps changing so it's a good place to keep yourself updated on solidity.
Done with the docs, now it's time to go through some of their examples.
👉 Solidity by Example
Solidity by example really highlights some of the core applications that you would build on the blockchain. Obviously, you would be building much larger applications over time. But it's a great template to begin.
You're finally here! Reading solidity, making putting together your own dApps. But what if you learn better by watching instead of reading?
👉 Solidity by freecodecamp.com
The tutorial is great if you're getting started. Although a little disclaimer is that the video was made when Solidity was at version 0.6 and now it's at a much higher version so a few things would have changed since then.
A Better way to understand Solidity and the Blockchain
While it's really cool that you can make some zombies eat kittens on Crypto Zombies, you still have a long way to go towards building commercial-grade applications. And the best way to understand how to interact with the blockchain is by hacking your way through it.
👉 Ethernaut - CTF
Ethernaut was developed by the team at Open Zeppelin which primarily focuses on blockchain security. The idea behind Ethernaut was to create a CTF that allows you to understand all the vulnerabilities in a smart contract.
Once you know the vulnerability, you instantly become a rookie crypto hacker 😈
But more importantly, you become better at writing secure smart contracts. Here are some best practices.
👉 Smart Contract Security - Best Practices
While you head towards becoming a more seasoned blockchain developer, you would start to see how security is top priority for most companies in the space. Considering you would be building applications that would move other people's money around, it should also be our top priority.
Conclusion
Blockchain is complex, you have got to understand cryptography, math, finance, economics and so much more. But you don't need to know everthing right now. It's a long journey where you would get to explore new things and implement it. All you need to do keep building and improving.
While this isn't an ultimate guide on solidity, this article tries to lay down a good foundation that would help you becoming a good builder.