2020 for shaping up to be a booming year for blockchain technology.
It's one of the fastest growing technologies in all recorded history.
We've seen an explosion of blockchain use cases in just the past few years,
with DeFi,
NFTs, artificial intelligence, gaming, and much more, and billions of dollars are flowing into the industry to build the next generation of blockchain applications,
it's a massive opportunity for everyday people to get high value blockchain development skills that can capitalize on this opportunity.
Whether you want to break in the industry to become a highly paid blockchain developer,
code a lucrative blockchain app that other people will use,
you build your own trading bot with DeFi and flash loans, whatever it is you want to do.
I'm going to you all the essential skills you need to know in this video.
to achieve your goals.
I'm going to break everything down into a step-by-step roadmap that you can follow to go from zero to blockchain master,
even if you've never coded before.
I'm going to show you everything you need to know this video today as a blockchain developer myself who works this technology
on a daily basis ever since 2017.
We're going to talk about all the questions that you need to know like what blockchain should I use,
what programming languages do I need to learn?
How much can you make?
And do you break into the industry step by step?
So if you're new around here, hey, I'm Gregory.
And on this channel, I turn you into a blockchain master.
And I put a ton of time into creating this step by step roadmap completely for free on YouTube.
And the only two things that I ask in return is that you smash that like button down below for the YouTube algorithm.
and that you subscribe to this channel.
And if you like what you see in this video today
and you're compelled by this opportunity and you wanna take the next step to become a real world blockchain developer,
then I can try to become a blockchain master in a matter of months over at dapitadversity.com slash bootcamp.
Yeah.
Alright, so let's get into this roadmap on how to become a highly paid blockchain developer in 2024.
So really making this video because I do it every single year,
a lot has changed in this space,
and I want to give you the most up-to-date information that you need to know in order to take advantage of this big opportunity.
Alright, so here's an overview of what we're going to talk about today.
So first we're going to look at the state of blockchain in 2024.
We're going to about what inside the industry right now and what has changed over the past few years and you know
what's the opportunity like for developers once you get in the industry how much money
can you expect to make what will you be doing okay and then we're gonna talk about the skills
that you need to know so we're talking about the programming languages that you need to master
all the frameworks and everything like that and also ask the question like hey what do blockchain developers even do.
And I become one, like what kind of task will I perform?
Then we're gonna put everything into a step-by-step plan that you can follow,
even if you don't have any coding experience from basically like here's the first thing that you need to learn and then do this,
do that,
do that,
so that you can get the skills and also the steps after that that you wanna use in order to,
you know, break into the industry, build your own app, you know, trading bots, whatever.
And then finally,
I went and answered some frequently asked questions I get all the time like hey should I learn blockchain first
Do I need to learn a bunch of other programming languages?
Do I need a computer science degree?
Can do this without any coding experience, etc, etc.
Alright, so let's jump into section one Let's quantify the opportunity for blockchain developers
So like I was saying in the this video
blockchain is one of the fastest growing technologies of all time and really with that
does is it generates an insane amount of demand inside of the industry.
Okay.
And it's basic supply and demand economics.
So basically,
if you have the demand for blockchain developers,
which is really big and the supply of people who actually know how to do this stuff is relatively small,
there's a massive supply and demand imbalance.
So when the demand is that big relative to the supply,
that means that the price of compensation for blockchain developers is very high, especially compared to other fields in tech.
So development is one of the highest paying fields in tech with a national average salary of about $150,000 per year.
So how can you actually compare that to other salaries?
Okay, so if you look at it compared to something like
a web developer salary, the national average is $101,000 and something like a mobile developer, the average is $110,000.
So the average is about 40 to 50% more than these other disciplines.
Now granted,
that is for somebody with experience,
okay, you're probably not going to just watch this video and start making a 150k per year, but that's what you can expect to earn on average over time.
with some experience and how that compares to the other opportunities that you could potentially get into.
And in addition to, you know, having a high compensation, blockchain house, all these other things going for it besides just the money.
Okay, you're going to be working with really exciting technology that you can watch grow over time.
Okay, it's actually an interesting field to work in.
You get access to all types of other opportunities by being plucked.
inside the industry it's incredibly remote friendly so you can work from wherever you want
whenever you want there's tons of opportunities to things like freelancing and control your
own hours and outside of just getting a job there's all types of other opportunities okay
we've seen some really crazy stuff in the past like the 12 year old boy who made four hundred
thousand dollars in two months
on a summer holiday by coding his own NFT project or the 12 year old girl who made $6
million with her NFTs by launching her project not to mention all the crazy things that you can
do by building your own trading bots with flash loans.
I a video on my channel about a month ago talking about a developer made $180,000 in a single month by building their own blockchain
based trading bots.
So again,
this is not like a trading bot that tries to predict the future about what the cryptocurrency price is going to do is going to go up or down.
It's actually capitalizing opportunities in the right now where you can basically buy cryptocurrency on one exchange and sell on another exchange for a profit.
And you don't even have to hold the cryptocurrency order to do that.
You can borrow it with flash loans.
So I got several.
videos on my YouTube channel that show you how to do this type of thing and this is something that's actively working right now.
As said down to make this video,
I actually found a transaction of somebody who made about $97,000 in a single transaction with their trading bought all 100%
verifiable on chain.
Alright, so now let's move on to this section.
What the opportunity in black.
blockchain, it's one of the highest paying fields in tech, there's so many things you
can do in blockchain,
like get a job,
become a freelancer or work remotely,
you can build your own bots,
launch your own project,
but whatever you decide to do,
there's going to be a core set of essential skills that you must master, and that's exactly what we're going to about right now.
Alright, so in order to understand what blockchain developers are going to be doing, you need to understand the major use cases for blockchain.
Now, this list is growing all the time and I've updated this to talk about some of the hot trends that are emerging for 2024.
So the first major use case for blockchains is what I'm going to put under the umbrella of decentralized finance or DeFi.
Now this can include a lot of things.
Number one, it really includes just cryptocurrencies like how to basically send cryptocurrencies, move them around exchange.
them.
Major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, but also Ethereum-based tokens, okay.
So coins are a big part of this.
Basically, how can you transfer cryptocurrencies and program them inside of applications where you can do this on a blockchain rather than a centralized way?
So we've seen a ton of adoption in this area.
We have people like PayPal, in their own stable coin that you can move around the blockchain to pay for things.
We have other aspects of DeFi, like major traditional financial use cases like trading, lending, borrowing, all moving on a chain.
You can see applications like that were Aave, where you can basically deposit cryptocurrency into this bank and then borrow cryptocurrency on the other side.
There's so many things under this DeFi.
umbrella because you know finance is a perfect fit for blockchain because blockchain is a pay-to
-play system and you know when people are doing anything in finance they're usually paying in the first
place they need cryptocurrency to do that and it's a natural fit so that's by far the biggest one
so behind that is with NFTs or non-fungible tokens okay so most people think of NFTs is like collectibles.
They see a popular NFT collection like Crypto Punks or Bornepe Yacht Club, where basically you can own an item on the blockchain.
It's really popular, but I am particularly excited about what we can do with non-fungible tokens behind just digital collectibles.
We can do lots of other things like model intellectual property rights.
Okay, we've got big projects.
like Story Protocol doing that, we can actually facilitate ownership and transfer value inside of real estate.
We can also do things like tokenize real estate so that people can buy fractional shares and properties.
We're really just scratching the surface of what we can do with NFTs and I really anticipate this use case to continue to grow in 2024 and beyond.
So next is a use case of Web 3.0.
So basically taking all the web 2.0 things we do now and porting them over to use blockchain and other decentralized services.
So this is a very experimental field of technology,
but some of the trends that we're seeing really take off instead of web 3.0 are like decentralized social media or web 3.0 based
social media, where you can take advantage of things like censorship, resistance, etc.
where you can actually own content inside the space and lens protocol is one of the leaders in the space who's doing that.
In to that crypto gaming is really heating up inside of 2024 or basically you can play games that lets you own digital assets inside the game and actually
take those out and put them into a wallet on a blockchain where you own them outside of the game you can trade them,
you self-custy them, do everything you whatever you want to artificial intelligence is another sector that's really heating up us in the blockchain space.
We have,
of course,
seen an explosion of AI in the past year or so,
and there's a big overlap between AI and blockchain and we're seeing some really impressive implementations
inside of here where we can do things like better with AI and blockchain with things like
zero-knowledge machine learning or ZKML and then finally another
a big use case for blotching that's taking off in 2024 is decentralized physical infrastructure or a deep in.
So basically,
this is where you can take the model of like AWS or Amazon web services where you have cloud computing that's centralized and then decentralized that where anybody could
participate in running their computer hardware, what other people can basically use it.
and they can get paid as an incentive for doing that.
All So those are some of the types of major use cases that we have for blockchains in 2024 and beyond.
But now let's actually talk about, you know, why would you even use a blockchain in the first place?
What about it, you know, makes these other use cases possible to do it this way and not some other way?
Well, the values of blockchain are decentralization.
which basically means instead of having a centralized system where,
you know,
there's a single point of failure and one person has the control,
you decentralize it and you spread the responsibility out to multiple people where they all participate in doing this and there's fewer points of failure.
Okay.
So also censorship resistance.
So basically, you know, no central entity can just, you know, change.
something, right, blockchains, you can't really do that because everybody's participating in the network.
So trustlessness, you don't have to trust any intermediaries when you're making transactions or working with the data from the blockchain.
And then finally, transparency, you can see everything that's happening in the blockchain and actually audit yourself.
All right, so in order to understand that, let's actually get into a little bit of theory, some basics.
about what is a blockchain and how does it work?
So basically a blockchain is just a worldwide computer that lots of people participate in running, okay?
So basically a blockchain is just a peer-to-peer network of nodes that I'll talk to one another,
just like this to where each node is a computer,
like this is a computer,
this is a computer,
this is a computer,
this is a computer, but they all, work in redundant effort to make up a single computer that processes everything that happens in the blockchain.
So, for example, if you're going to be making a cryptocurrency transaction, let's just say
I want to send cryptocurrency from my account to yours,
I would sign that transaction and send it to one of these computers,
and then all the computers in the network would share the responsibility of saying, hey, this transaction's You know actually legit.
It's valid and we want to include that in the blockchain to actually update your balance Now you want to do this with a blockchain rather than the some centralized way because it wouldn't be a
very good idea To just let somebody who runs a web server control a money supply right because anybody who had full control over that
They could just change your balance anytime they wanted
to instill your money so instead you want to put that out a public ledger that multiple
people are responsible for that you have transparency into seeing how that works you
can see every transaction you know it's not going to get censored and you can trust it
that there's no intermediary or single point of failure and so that's how we can use block
chains for basic you know cryptocurrency transactions but then when you add in smart
That really changes the game for what's even possible with blockchain in the first place.
So smart contracts are just programs that run on the blockchain,
and part of what you do as a blockchain developer is you are a smart contract developer.
You're making these immutable programs that can't change and you're putting them on the
blockchain so that you can build any type of custom interaction that you want to.
There's lots of use cases for smart contracts like lots of the cryptocurrency that you actually use or powered by smart contract any token that you have that's not a native gas token on the network
usually is a smart contract any NFT that you own is going to be a smart contract anytime you're using a decentralized application like a decentralized exchange like a DEX for example or any of the
DeFi apps.
are listed, those are powered by smart contracts and put in the blockchain.
And what gives burst to all these other use cases like DeFi, NFTs, Web 3.0, Gaming, AI, and D-pin.
So let's talk about,
you know,
the values of blockchain and how they are embodied into these use cases and why you might want to do this with blockchain instead of some other way.
So with DeFi, you know, in cryptocurrency, obviously, We talked about how you don't want to have somebody with single control over your money supply.
That's pretty obvious.
But with other things like savings and lending, basically it's permissionless.
Anybody can go do savings and lending without having to be whitelisted to do that.
If you want to go to a blockchain app and then borrow money, you can do it.
You can also do things like flash loans where you can borrow millions of dollars or cryptocurrency for free as long as you pay back in the same transaction and that's only
possible because of the transaction processing that you can do on blockchain with smart contracts.
So with NFTs,
obviously you want something that's digitally scarce that you can prove that nobody can tamper with whether it's a collectible or you're talking about ownership in
real estate with wed 3.0 with like the social media use case that I've talked about,
you censorship is a big problem in social media that is top of mind for a of people.
And you know, Web 3.0 social media presents some alternative to get around that type of censorship with Web 3.0 gaming.
If you have some type of in game asset,
obviously you want to be able to take full control over that asset without any type of intermediary with artificial
intelligent speaking basically improve the transparency of what's happening in AI and the decentralized physical infrastructure gives us a way to take cloud
Computing and spread the responsibility out to multiple people to avoid any type of centralized control.
All right So now let's talk about what type of blockchain developer you should be because when somebody says blockchain developer
It can mean a couple of different things and you need to narrow down an example exactly what that is,
so that you can determine the skills that you need in order to achieve your goal, and I'm going to you do that right now.
So, broadly speaking, I would sort of classify blockchain developers into two major camps.
So one is going to be application developers, and the other is going to be core developers.
So, core developers are going to be basically building like blockchain infrastructure.
nodes, clients, and really low level architecture.
Okay.
And the other side is going to be application developers,
you know, people who are building user facing applications that users are actually clicking on and using.
So like if you're going to go trade a token on uni swap,
you know, you're doing that through a website that talked to smart contracts of the blockchain, that's something the user can see.
And that's the track that I recommend doing.
It's what I personally do.
Now, if you're dead set on becoming a core developer, you can do that.
But the reason that I focus on application development that I personally do it and I help other people do that as well is because,
you know, core development is more of a niche skill set.
Okay, it's gonna be less demand and it's even harder for beginners to learn as opposed to application development, which is a lot easier for new people to learn or even experienced developers.
And there's more demand for it.
So you have more options about, you know, where you work in this industry and also how to build your own useful applications.
And if you already know that you want to become a core developer, you can definitely do that.
But if you're just getting in this space and you don't know what you want to do,
I definitely highly recommend being becoming an application developer for all the reasons that I just mentioned.
So that being said,
once you've decided to become an application developer,
that really breaks down into a couple of different categories, okay, because applications have multiple layers to them.
They have the smart contract side of things, which lives in the blockchain.
Again, these are the immutable programs that you write to put on the blockchain.
But you know, you're still going to have user facing features.
I'm going to show you some examples of real world blockchain applications here in a minute that
have like websites and mobile clients that people will actually use to interact with the applications.
So the front end is what the user sees, either website or a mobile app.
And as a developer, as a blockchain developer, on this part of the stack as well, okay?
And so with the backend side of things,
you know, we still use traditional databases inside of blockchain development for things that aren't as important to put on the blockchain, okay?
But we also treat the blockchain like a backend in and of itself.
So, you know, developing smart contracts and putting them on the blockchain is kind of part of the backend side of blockchain as well.
All right, so let's look at some examples of real world blockchain applications and how they're actually created.
Okay, how does it work?
And if you're developer, what do you do in order to create something like this?
How does the front end work?
How does the backend work?
What's the application do?
So we're going to start off with UniSwap, which is the most popular blockchain application by far.
So, it is a decentralized exchange or a DEX, where basically you can trade crypto currencies with a single click of a button, all right?
So, basically how it works is you go to the Uniswap website, you get your blockchain wallet,
like for example, you can see my little Fox icon up here in my browser.
And you tell it what cryptocurrency you have and what cryptocurrency you want back.
So, for example, I in one ether here and I say I want USDC.
I just connect my wallet, click swap and it spits out the cryptocurrency that I want.
So, how does it do that?
Where does that cryptocurrency from?
Come from?
Well, it comes from the backend of the application which is powered by smart contracts in the blockchain with these things called liquidity pools.
So, uniswap
market maker,
which basically means there's a bunch of cryptocurrency parked into the app with these people called liquidity providers who are basically,
you know,
anybody that wants to just provide their cryptocurrency for a passive income reward,
they give money to the application so that other people can trade it and then they earn,
you know, a passive income reward for doing that.
And so when I say like, Hey, I want to swap tokens, that's where the money's coming from.
And if you look at an application like uni swap info,
that is the analytics for everything that's actually happening on the uni swap protocol,
you can see all the different cryptocurrencies that are currently trading on it.
And a lot of these are also Ethereum based tokens,
all right, that are powered by smart contracts that are being swapped around on the blockchain as well.
And if you go to a website like Etherscan, okay, you can actually see the smart contracts for Uniswap.
You can go through and read the code and see everything that's actually powering the protocol itself.
You can go see all the transactions and everything that's happening on the exchange in real time.
Now, let's break this up into multiple layers.
Like what's on the front end, what's on the back end, what would a blockchain developer be doing create something like this.
Like say, hey, you wanted to create unique swap from scratch, well, that'd be a great portfolio project.
And what you need to know in order to do that.
So let's start off the backend.
So again, when I'm using this website, it's talking directly to the blockchain.
And when I'm showing you right here on Etherscan,
are the smart contracts that power the Uniswap protocol on the back end for the automated market maker.
So you can see the code verified here on Etherscan.
These are the smart contracts.
So this programming language that I'm showing you right here is solidity.
team.
So if you want to create,
you know,
solidity, if you want to create smart contracts for automated market maker, like any swap, you'll be coding those out in the solidity
programming language and putting them on any EVM compatible chain,
like, you know, Ethereum and Ethereum layer two, like optimism, arbitrum, or blockchain, like polygon or avalanche, finance, smart chain, whatever.
And then on the front end side, you have this website that actually talks directly to the blockchain.
So, you know, this is something that will be created completely separately.
All this in solidity.
That's what you'd use for the blockchain side of things.
You do this in a different programming language primarily with JavaScript.
Okay, so JavaScript is a widely used language in the blockchain space.
I'll talk about that more in a minute in the technologies and programming language you need to learn.
But basically you need JavaScript in order to create a website just like this so that other people can actually use your blockchain application.
You're also going to need to use some HTML and CSS to code this application out.
But JavaScript is going to facilitate everything that you can see inside the application, all the user interactions.
Anytime someone connects their MetaMask, you're going to use JavaScript to accept that connection.
Anytime they sign a transaction or do things like swapping and talking directly to the blockchain, you're going to use JavaScript on this.
front end to facilitate that as well.
And so if you wanted to create an app like you need to swap on your own,
you would need to know solidity to correct the back end with the smart contracts and you need to know JavaScript and HTML and CSS to go out the front end.
Now another thing I'll say is that oftentimes when you're in your professional setting, you have division of responsibilities.
And so if you want to become a blockchain developer and focus on front end development,
you can do Alright,
you can focus on HTML,
CSS, and and then no enough smart contract programming to be able to interact with that, and that's going to make you very valuable in a
blockchain setting.
Alright, so now let's talk about how a blockchain application like NFTs would work, okay?
So early in this video,
I talked about the 12 year old boy who made over $400,000 on his summer holiday, creating his own NFT collection.
selection, so let's just say that you want to do something like that.
So what we're going to do is we're going to look at the Board Ape Yacht Club as an example
of how to create something like this.
So Board Ape Yacht Club is definitely one of the most popular NFT collections indexed on a secondary marketplace like OpenSea, for example.
And so how does it work?
Well, basically, whenever you release an NFT, what you do is you have a NFT.
NFT drop where you have a website where you advertise like,
hey, this is where we're going to release the NFT And you can show up to the website with your metamask wallet and then you can mint the NFTs for a price and then whenever they
sell out They start trading on a website like open site see.
So how would you create something like this?
Well, first and foremost, let's start up with the smart contract side of things, because NFTs are powered by smart contracts in the blockchain.
Again, the whole value here is that you have something that's digitally scarce on the blockchain that where nobody can copy it and you actually own that thing
in the blockchain and forces that and only you can send it around.
Okay, so on the blockchain side of things, I've got the board AP Yacht Club smart contracts pulled up here.
So you need a smart contract in order to create this NFT project.
So this smart contract is written in solidity, just like you need to swap what you saw a ago.
So if you want to create it, you need to create a solidity smart contract and put on a blockchain like Ethereum.
Now, the good thing about a lot of these NFTs, And they kind of work the same way.
All And so they follow a very predictable standard called the ERC 721 standard,
which is just a standard that we say hey We want to agree on how NFT should work so they're compatible with our wallets
so that they're compatible with marketplaces like OpenSea and you get more or less use a template to start off with
template with some additional coding to create an NFT project really fast.
Okay, so once you've done that, you're also going to need to create the artwork for your NFTs.
So, you can use an artwork generator, I've actually got some of those that you can
see in my YouTube videos where you can essentially generate like 10,000 images completely from scratch and randomize them,
but then you need a place to put those images.
And that's exactly what IPFS is for.
So IPFS is a decentralized file storage system.
It's not really a blockchain,
it works kind of like a blockchain, but that's where you put your images because you don't really want to put pictures in a blockchain.
You put them out here so that they're permanent and then you get a hash that's the location of them.
When put that back inside your smart contract and then when you go see it inside your wallet on open C,
it talk to the smart contract, find the image and display it in your browser or your wallet.
Okay, so in addition to the smart contracts for the NFTs and the artwork and putting that
out there,
if you're going to drop an NFT and have people come up to a website and then buy it,
you need to need to create a for that.
So the core skills and technologies that are here are going to be more for front end development.
So need to know HTML and CSS and JavaScript order to create the website.
Now, in addition to that, you need to have some very specific skills for your website that enable it to talk to the blockchain.
So if people show up create So how their MetaMask wallet, you need to be able to use that wallet inside the website.
So exactly what a library like Ether's JS is going to do.
It's going to turn your application into a blockchain application so that it can connect their MetaMask wallet.
And whenever they click buy on your NFT, it can submit that transaction straight to the blockchain.
And that's exactly what Ether's JS does.
And you have to do that part in JavaScript.
a script as a front People, you can hold an FT, send them around.
You also swap cryptocurrencies directly inside the application.
Okay.
So what would you need to do in order to create something like this?
So first and foremost, you need to be able to create a mobile app.
So can do that a few different ways.
You know,
you can do this natively in the programming language for each different operating system because mobile apps typically run an iOS or Android
and they use different programming languages.
So if you're going to code an iOS app, you know, you could write it in Swift.
Okay.
And if you're to an Android app, you could do it natively in Java.
But the nice thing about knowing JavaScript, totally separate programming language is that you can use things like React Native to code out an application.
either platform.
Okay.
So if you know JavaScript, you can write mobile apps that are going to run on either iOS or Android.
That's a really nice thing about knowing that language.
And so I'm just going to say you're going to do that for now.
So if you know JavaScript,
you can create the mobile application that way, but then it actually has to talk to the blockchain and do a couple other things.
It has to be able to store the user's private key securely on the device, okay?
So you can use libraries like Ether's JS to create wallets,
and you can use ways to, you know, safely store the private key on the device in an encrypted way.
We never leave the device.
The user private key is totally safe.
All right.
If you're going to, you know, basically have user payments where they can...
credit card,
you can use services like moon pay to basically make those API calls and then get the cryptocurrency back and store on their wallet.
And if you want to add all the features like sending cryptocurrency out of the wallet to other people's accounts,
doing the swaps, then you're going to be able to talk to those external blockchain applications directly from the mobile application.
Now if you're using JavaScript,
the nice thing is you can use a library like Ether's JS,
which will let you talk to any smart contract on the blockchain directly from the application inside of JavaScript.
And you can also do things like send transactions for basic cryptocurrency directions directly to the blockchain with Ether's JS as well.
Alright, so now let's talk about like what programming languages should you learn and which blockchains should you use?
So I'm to answer both these questions at the same time.
So let's look at the major programming languages that are available for blockchain developers
and what each of them do and which ones that you should learn.
So we're going to start with Solidity right here.
So this is the primary language for writing Ethereum smart contracts and for other EVM compatible chains.
So if you know Solidity,
you can write smart contracts put them on Ethereum,
but can also put them on other blockchains like Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, any of the Ethereum layer twos, Polygon, etc.
etc.
So the other options are things like Rust and C++.
So if you want to write smart contracts for the Solana ecosystem, then you definitely need to know Rust, okay?
But then we have these secondary programming languages.
like JavaScript and Python.
So for JavaScript you can do things like create the user interfaces like the websites or the mobile applications that I talked
about in the previous section.
You can also do things like write tests for your smart contracts and automations and deploy them to the blockchain and write backends.
And then you have Python,
which also does a lot of the same types of things, but you can't really create websites very easily with it, okay?
So now which of these programming languages should you learn?
Now, I'm going give you a very opinionated stance on this, but this comes from lots of
experience, the helping lots of other people break in and learn and do this type of stuff.
So let's kind of look at some real world data to answer this question.
And let's look at where the actual use,
where actual programming languages are getting used and which black change are actually going to use more than others.
So if you look at a website like DeFi,
Lama, and you look at the activity on different blockchains, you're going to see that Ethereum is by far the largest blockchain that's used.
Okay.
And if you look at all the other blockchains behind it, like Tron, Bunny at Smart Chain, that's over two thirds.
And if you include this, it's a majority of the blockchains basically use Solidity as their smart contract programming language.
Okay.
So Solidity is the most demand in terms of actual...
You can see things like salon on here, which a much smaller slice of the pie.
Again, these ratios kind of change over time, but the big picture here is that Ethereum and
the languages that are used for Ethereum have been dominant for a very long time and I anticipate to stay in dominance.
And just in summary, you Solidity is the most demanded language across all these different smart contract development platforms.
back and look at that.
Really, you got two kind of forks in the road for your smart country development language.
You a solidity or mostly something like Rust, okay?
So why would you choose solidity over something like Rust?
Well, there's several major reasons.
Number the solidity, again, the demand, which I was just showing you a minute ago, you want to go where there's a lot of demand.
Also, when there's a lot of demand and there's a lot of developers, you want to be in an ecosystem where you can get help if you get stuck,
okay?
You don't want to be stuck inside of an ecosystem where you're trying to figure out how to do something and the developer tools aren't very good and you can't reach out and like Google
it on Stack Overflow or Ask Chat to get the answer and it can't really give you the answer because the technology is so new.
So Solidity's been around for a while,
the developer ecosystem is large and you're going to you're going to go with support if you go down that direction.
Now the other big reason reason to learn solidity over something like Rust,
especially if you're beginner, is that solidity is a much more beginner-friendly language to learn.
So if you're starting from scratch, Rust is a lot harder to learn.
It's a much more low-level language.
Solidity is a much more high level.
It reads a lot like JavaScript, and easier to pick up whether you're an experienced developer or just starting from scratch.
And the other big reason for solidity is you have all this flexibility.
Again, if you can write apps with solidity, you can put them on almost every single blockchain out there with just a few exceptions.
And so for all these reasons,
my number one recommendation for anybody getting into this space, if you don't know what you want to do, you should learn solidity.
contract development language for the back-end side of blockchain development.
Now, let's talk about another programming language because if you're going to become a
blockchain developer, you almost always need to know a secondary programming language to do things besides just write smart contracts, okay?
You need to be able to write tests for your smart contracts,
any type of scripts or automations,
and then also But speaking,
you want to be able to create some type of user interface that somebody can use your application,
okay, so they can see it actually working.
And so you kind of got two different options in this regard.
For your secondary program and language, you can use JavaScript, or you can use Python, okay?
My recommendation is to go down the JavaScript route for a few reasons.
Number one is that there's just more that you can do with JavaScript, okay?
Like I said,
you're going to need to do all these other tasks,
but typically speaking,
you want to create some type of front-end applications that people can actually see your application and work,
especially if you're trying to create a portfolio so that you can break into the industry.
Most want to see your app and actually be able to use it, and you're not going to do that.
really with Python.
Python's a really great powerful language.
If you know it already, it's a great thing to have in your cool belt.
If you're going to do more scripting and automations and backends with your,
you know, smart contracts, but you need to have something to show other people.
And that's exactly what JavaScript is going to lie to do.
So if you know JavaScript,
you can do all these other tasks that Python can still do, but then you get this added benefit of able to create front ends.
And also, if you know JavaScript, it's the lingua franca of the web.
Most developers know JavaScript, so you'll be able to communicate with them and then share code with them.
And also,
if you know JavaScript,
it gives you an additional point into the industry
where you could break into the blockchain industry
as a front end developer
that sometimes that's a really easy way to get started and then work your way into the smart contract development side of things.
And so,
in summary,
if you don't know what you wanna do and you're just getting started in this space
and you want my opinionated stance on how to get started,
you wanna learn solidity for smart contract development because it's the easiest one to learn.
It's the most widely supported and you've got the most options about where you can use it.
Okay, it's also the most.
most demand and then picking JavaScript as your secondary programming language because you can do way more with it.
It's to open up so many possibilities for you as a blockchain developer and also just a regular developer.
All right.
So let's talk about all the tools and technologies that you need to know in order to become a blockchain developer.
So in the last section,
we talked about the programming languages like Solidity and JavaScript,
but But then there's some additional tools that you need to have in your toolkit to actually create these applications.
So go through those one by one.
So the first one definitely is Solidity.
Okay, so again, this is going to be the main programming language that you're going to use to write smart contracts.
Again, these are the building blocks and blockchain based applications.
So Solidity is a pretty beginner friendly language to learn.
So if you're starting from scratch.
It's pretty easy to pick up on the grand scheme of things compared to other languages and if you're an experienced developer already
You can kind of get what's happening with that solidity pretty quickly
It's a turn complete programming language
You can do you know almost everything that you can do in any other programming language directly inside of solidity now again
You need some type of secondary programming language in order to create black?
applications, whether you want to write tests, deploy contracts, write scripts, put them
on a blockchain, and what I highly recommend that you use JavaScript for.
Because at the end of the day,
most people are going to want to go to your application and actually see it and click a button in order to do something,
and that's what you should use JavaScript for.
So now let's actually about different frameworks.
and tools that you can use on your computer in order to build the smart contracts and build the applications as a blockchain developer.
So the main framework that you just know about is hard hat.
So first let's back up and talk about what is a framework in the first place.
So a framework is just set up tools that you set up on your computer that facilitates the development process.
that makes it a lot easier, so that you're not doing everything from scratch.
Okay, you're going to have certain types of things to do over and over again, like create
new smart contracts, run tests, write scripts, deploy them, and you don't want to do all this stuff like completely manually.
There's a lot of tools outside the box that you get from a hard hat from a smart country that will like hard hat.
But Hat is the number one smart contract development that I recommend for smart contract developers, okay?
You can do things with it like create smart contracts.
You can run Solidity locally on your computer.
You can debug your smart contracts.
You can write tests for them.
They have all types of plugins that you can add to your development environment.
You can extend it in any way that you want to.
You can write it in TypeScript if you so choose.
And also it's got the hard hat nodes that you can run a development blockchain or in a computer,
which I'll talk about here in a second.
And so that's what hard hat is.
It's a smart counter development framework that you run on your computer, okay?
And that's my number one recommendation for creating smart contracts on your computer.
But what?
smart contract in your browser with an IDE.
Well, that's exactly what remix is.
So remix is a workspace where you can code smart contracts in your browser without having to install anything on your computer.
So this can be nice if you just want to create a smart contract without having to install anything,
okay, or you want to hand test some things with a smart contract in your browser.
That's exactly what remix is.
You can go see it at remix.athereum.org.
You can add new files over here.
You can save them in the cloud.
you can also do things like compile the smart contracts inside your browser.
And if you connect your MetaMask wallet to it, you can actually deploy the smart contract live to a blockchain straight from your browser.
You can also use a fake blockchain inside your browsers that you can test things out without having to spend any real cryptocurrency.
Now, I don't consider this something that you're gonna wanna use for big professional projects.
This is more for lightweight types of development.
If you're gonna do more professional development
where you need to actually save your work and push it up to the cloud and collaborate with other developers.
for keeps,
then I highly recommend using a fully fledged framework like hardhat for example, but remix is a nice thing to have in your tool belt.
All So now let's talk about some libraries that you need to understand and use if you're going to become a blockchain developer.
So definitely is going to be Ether's JS.
So what is this?
Well, this is a JavaScript library that lets you interact with, you know,
the blockchain So let's look at an example of why you would need it in the first place.
So if you go back to our example of Uniswap,
you know, the most popular blockchain application out there where basically you just tell it what cryptocurrency you have and which cryptocurrency you want back.
Let's say you want to swap Ether for USDC.
You go in here, you connect your MetaMask wallet, you click a button and you swap the tokens.
And whenever you perform that swap,
it basically submits that to the blockchain,
and you cannot even talk to the blockchain out of the box in JavaScript, you need a special library to do that.
And that's exactly what Ether's JS does.
So basically said another way, Ether's JS turns your application into a blockchain application.
And so, So for that reason, Ethers is a must know library.
It's the most popular JavaScript library for interacting with different blockchains.
You can do things like get user balances.
You can send cryptocurrencies around.
You can deploy smart contracts.
You can talk to other smart contracts like UniSwap and actually make swaps inside of JavaScript from the application.
All right, so next tool that you need to understand is MetaMask.
So what is it?
Well, it's just a browser extension that basically turns your web browser into a blockchain browser.
So a second ago, I was about Ether's JS, turns your application into a blockchain application.
Well, basically, most web browsers don't support connection.
the blockchain outside of the box,
you need a special browser to do that,
that's what Metamask does, so it turns your web browser into a blockchain browser, just Ether.js turns your application into a blockchain application.
So in order to use any blockchain application,
people need a wallet installed like Metamask,
they can see this little fox icon up here in my corner,
they can connect to it,
they can connect to an app like Uniswap,
They can sign transactions from their wallet to swap tokens on the blockchain itself and you need to have that installed Understand
to use it in order to create these types of blockchain applications So it's kind of confusing because it's a wallet it lets you hold a cryptocurrency
But also if you're gonna sign any transaction inside of a blockchain app you have to sign it from that extension as well All right,
so next major library of framework that you know understand is React.js.
So if you're going on the JavaScript route and you're going to create user interfaces for your application, you can create those in JavaScript.
But I highly recommend using a JavaScript framework to make your life much, much easier.
All right, and the most popular framework by far is going to be React.js.
So React is a library for creating user interfaces.
You can use React to create website.
You can use great mobile applications.
Okay, it's a component-based library where basically you can organize your code into reusable components that are very organized and modular so that you can maintain
your code base much easier.
It gives you a lot of powerful functionality out of the box for free so you to code everything out from scratch.
So react is my number one recommendation for creating front ends for your blockchain applications.
You can do things like import Ether's JS into your react application and turn it into a blockchain application.
Now another one you need to have on your radar is next JS because this is sort of like the modern version of react.
People really migrated from using,
you know, vanilla react out of the box to using next JS, which really is just a super set of react.
And if you know react, you can basically transfer everything over to next JS with really minimal changes.
All right, the final thing you need in your tool belt is no JS.
So what is it and why do you need it?
Well, basically, if you're gonna be writing things in JavaScript, you know, JavaScript is a language that is native to your web browser.
All right, that's the environment that is designed to run in.
But if you want to use JavaScript,
like on your computer, outside of the context of a web browser, you need a runtime environment where you can actually execute JavaScript.
And that's exactly what Node.js is four.
Now, that's what enables you to do things like run hard hat on your computer, where you can write JavaScript and develop your smart contracts that way.
Node is going to be a core dependency to let you do that.
Also, if you want to write any type of scripts, you need Node.js to run those scripts on your computer.
If going to execute JavaScript in that environment.
Now, another thing about Node.js is it comes bundled with Node package manager, which is
the main thing that you're going to do to install all the other libraries that you need on your computer for blockchain development.
Like if you want to install hardhat, you're going to need Node.js that you can install it with NPM.
If you want to install Ether's.js on your computer, you need Node.js.
Ether's JS to use it for your blockchain applications.
Alright, so now let's put everything together into a step-by-step plan on how to become a blockchain developer completely from scratch.
So before you get into actually learning the skills of blockchain development,
if you haven't really used the blockchain that much before, then the first preliminary step is to actually go use it.
use some blockchain applications so that you can see what the user experience is like and
actually get your hands dirty and that's going to sort of set you up to understand how to develop the applications themselves.
So the easiest way to do that is to just use a website like Uniswap which I was showing you before.
So if you've never set up a blockchain wallet before, you You need to set up MetaMask, okay?
If you've never held cryptocurrency in that wallet,
you need to be able to do that and then you'll be able to actually sign a transaction.
So how would you do that step by step?
So first of all, you need to install the MetaMask extension in your browser, okay?
You need to set up a wallet where you can, you know, see your account here and you can see the actual cryptocurrency balance.
but then you need to have some cryptocurrency in your wallet to pay the gas fees.
Now you could sign up for a centralized exchange
like Coinbase or Kraken inside the US and then buy some gas tokens like Ethereum and then send them to your wallet.
Or if you want to skip that step entirely,
If you go to Uniswap,
right now they have an option where you can just buy some crypto directly in your browser with a credit card.
Let's say that you want to just spend whatever your limit is, 30 bucks or something like that in order to get started with this.
Basically, you could fund your wallet that way.
And you could just swap a token like Ether for USDC and then just see what that
experience is like and then look at the transaction receipt on the blockchain.
Watch that go through and just sort of be like, Oh, that's how this stuff works.
Okay.
So another option is if you don't care about swapping cryptocurrencies,
you could do things like buy a low cost NFT on something like open C,
for example, again, you need a metamask wallet, you need to be.
on gas token to buy those like Ether, for example, you go through the same steps with all this process.
Now, I'll give you some alternatives if you don't want to spend a lot of money or you want to do this completely free.
I know the fees on a chain like Ethereum can be high.
So what could you do instead?
Well, Uniswap is supported by multiple different blockchains, so you could do it on a lower-cost chain like Polygon for just a few dollars, okay?
It's not that expensive or any of the other layer two systems for Ethereum like Arbitrum Optimism or base blockchain.
You can also buy the cryptocurrencies inside the Uniswap application with Moonpay directly with your credit card that way and just send it straight to
your wallet.
Alright, another option if you want it complete for free is uni swap does run on test networks where you can use fake cryptocurrency in order to do this, but you have to go to a
faucet and request some ether to your wallet and we're going to do that as well.
Alright, so now you've got a taste of what it's like to use the blockchain.
Let's actually talk about how to become a blockchain developer.
And first what I want to do is talk about the philosophy for how you should learn this.
to do it the fastest, most efficient and effective way.
So really, you should learn programming just like you would learn a foreign language.
All So the fastest best way to actually learn a foreign language?
Well, it's by immersion.
Okay.
So basically getting into a culture where you have to speak the language in order to keep up.
Okay.
So It's really hard to learn a different language by just like getting a phrase book and studying
the phrases and then like practicing that forever and hoping that you'll eventually get it.
That's the wrong way to learn and it's the same with programming because what a lot of
people try to do is they go to try to learn a bunch of programming languages,
you know, in isolation by themselves and learn the fundamentals of the programming language before they actually try to learn build real world applications.
And they get there, they don't have the context to see how that actually works.
And they get confused and they can't do anything.
So you should flip that around.
Basically, you should learn to code by building applications through immersion, just like you learn a foreign language, you learn by doing and you learn all the programming
languages as you need to go.
Bye.
building real-world applications and when people go try to learn programming languages in isolation,
it's just like you hear this complaint in school all the time.
People like, when am I ever going to use this?
I don't understand why I'm learning this.
And that's exactly what you're going to feel like if you try to do a of language tutorials first before you go build an application.
But if you learn the programming language is as you go through immersion,
while you're building applications, then you're never gonna ask that question, you're gonna have the context while you're doing it.
It's much faster and more effective.
All right, so that's the philosophy of how you should learn blockchain development, but let's actually break this down into each incremental step.
So step one is what I'm gonna call guided development, okay?
So, what you're going to want to do is learn by doing in a guided fashion where an
expert is taking you over the shoulder and showing you how to create a blockchain application where you're learning the coding languages as you go,
you know, while you're building that app.
Whenever you finish, you'll actually have something of value and you learn a lot along the way.
Okay.
So how can you get started doing this today completely for free?
Well, you go to my YouTube homepage here.
All right.
You down here.
You can see this playlist called free blotching development courses.
And there's lots of different examples of these types of applications where you're going to build something and learn the programming language as you go.
So I'm just going to pick one out from random here.
This is like code of Web 3.0 real estate app like Zillow step by step.
And inside this video,
I show you how to a blockchain based Zillow clone, where you can buy and sell real estate with NFTs directly in the blockchain.
So inside of this tutorial,
what you're going to do is you're going to create the smart contracts that let people buy and sell real estate with NFTs.
You're going to put the NFTs in the blockchain.
You're going to people pay for the purchase,
you in cryptocurrency, send to escrow, let people sign up on the transaction and then facilitate the actual transfer, the ownership of the sale.
All once everything has gone through.
And then you're also going to create a website where people can go shop for real estate online.
And then once they find one, they can go through the process of actually purchasing it with cryptocurrency directly on the blockchain.
So throughout this process,
I will guide you step by step from square one from creating the application from scratch on your computer,
going in and creating the smart contracts fully guided along the way so you'll learn slittered through the process and you'll see how those smart
contracts are created for this particular use case.
You'll put that in a blockchain.
And then we'll create this front-end application with React.js with JavaScript so that people
can use it and you'll learn the fundamentals of these programming languages while you're doing this.
And of just a few-hour period, you'll have a huge primer into how all this stuff works.
And so you can see how that's way faster and more efficient than just like,
hey, go do these JavaScript tutorials and then, hey, go to these Solidity tutorials.
No, you condense all that stuff down in a guided fashion in just a few hour period.
All right.
So that's the first step in the guided development process is basically take a more
beginner friendly look tutorial like this that shows you the basics of the programming language is and how to create an application,
you know, step by step where you're learning everything as you go.
Now, that's why just the first step.
Okay.
So all the free courses that I have here on my YouTube homepage,
those are more what I would consider kind of like beginner level tutorials.
Now to take the next step in the guide development process,
I highly recommend creating something a little more complex,
something that's more professional grade, like you'd be asked to create a job or a few, you we're going to try and real well that.
application, something that's much more industrial strength.
So show you an So this is the type of application that I would show you to build in the blockchain boot camp,
for Okay, this is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that you can actually use to swap real world cryptocurrencies.
All it's got a bunch of analytics inside of it,
like,
candlestick charts to see the cryptocurrency price changes,
you can deposit real cryptocurrencies inside of your,
you can swap them,
you can make orders in the order book,
you can do the trades,
it's got a very professional website, and that's the type of thing that you'd be more tasked to do at a real world job, okay.
So, if you go over the shoulder and you create something like this with an expert who's done
it quite a bit,
then you're going to get,
you you're going to raise your skills up to that level of that professional level so that you've got that before you can move on
to the next step.
Alright, so once you've completed that guided development process where somebody
basically is holding your hand at the entire process to create an application,
you want to move on to this next step is which I'm going to call.
development.
So, at the end of the day, in order to become a professional developer, you have to get the
skills where somebody's not telling you exactly what to do every time, okay?
You actually have to be able to write code yourself without explicit instructions.
So how do you develop that skill?
Well, it's you do it through unguided development.
So what do I mean by that?
Well,
basically, And looks like thinking of something that you want to create and then just figuring
out how do I write the code in order to do that.
All Now this can kind of be scary, but I want to show you probably one of the easiest ways to get started doing this.
So that's to take an existing project that you've already built, whether it's like one of these tutorials, like the real estate clones.
that I was showing you before the Zillow clone,
or maybe like the blockchain bootcamp exchange that I was you a ago,
and then taking something that you've already built,
you've seen how it works, but then adding a new feature on top of it that it doesn't already do.
Okay.
So with the,
you know, real estate clone, maybe you want to let people, um, you know, buy multiple properties at one time or something like that.
Okay.
That'd be a simple feature.
And should think about, okay, I've already seen how to, to do one property.
How can I make a do two?
All right.
But if you, and that scares you, you can start off a simple task.
Like, how do I change the color on the page or how do I change the name of the smart contract?
You can really start simple and in the complex, you can increase the challenge over time.
Now, that's how you get your feet wet.
That's how you start creating a new code where you don't have the instructions is to
base it off something you've already seen and then just start changing it.
Now, you want to kick that up to a notch after that and eventually create a complete application from scrap.
Okay.
So how do you do this?
Well, you can still take what you've learned before because through the guideline process, you've seen how to create an app.
All right, you can do that.
You can reference how you did it before.
You've seen how to create a smart contract.
You can start to do that and then you'll start to notice patterns like once you've done stuff multiple times,
you'll be like, okay, I need to do this and some of my smart contract and we're going to that.
But first and foremost, you want to pick a project.
So pick like any type of blockchain project if you want just an example of something you could
create You could create a basic NFT marketplace like OpenSea where people can just like list NFTs on there and they can buy them
So you have to reverse engineer inside your head.
What do I need to do that?
Well, I need to have an NFT Well, I saw how to do that inside this real estate clones of boom.
I'll create a new NFT just like that I need to be able to list the NFT in the marketplace Well,
I saw that inside the real estate clone and I'm going to try to use what I learned there Create my own smart contract that lets them list it on a marketplace.
Okay And then you can see how you put all the knowledge together from previous things you've done to create something new completely from scratch.
And through this iterative process over and over again, you'll be able to create a real world application for yourself without somebody else's help.
And that's how you take your skills up to the next level.
Now, once you've finished creating that, you will have basically completed the unguided development process.
And then boom, you've created an application all on your own.
I to show everybody that you've done this because this is how you prove that you have the skills.
So what you're gonna want to do is take the smart contract for the application that you created,
put them live on a blockchain,
you can use a test network so you don't have to pay any real cryptocurrency in order to do this.
You're going to take your website and deploy it live to the web so that other people can
connect to your application and actually use it.
You want to send that link out to your friends and get some feedback, all Let use it, make sure it actually works.
And then you can use this as your,
you know,
main portfolio project that you can use as your resume piece whenever you're going to start applying for jobs or building your own applications,
whatever it got the application out there in the wilds that we can use it.
Now you're going to want to take the application and actually put it into a portfolio website that you can use to
market yourself as a blockchain developer.
Okay, so you can see, you know, all types of different portfolio websites that are out there.
Basically, what you want to do is make this like your digital business card and your resume.
Okay, because this is really important because 99% of developers will not even do this step.
And if you do this step,
it's going to put you way ahead of other people because when other people try to break in the industry and network with other people or apply for jobs,
a lot of times they're just like sending out PDF resumes that are just getting lost and their employer's inbox.
boxes, okay?
But if you actually take the time to create a portfolio website, that's going to help you stand out like crazy.
So basically, it's going to show people who you are and what you can do.
And it's going to pre-qualify you in a way that shows that you're going the extra mile and presents you in a way,
higher caliber than somebody who just sent out a resume.
So once you create that portfolio website that tells people who you are and what you can do,
you're actually gonna show them what you do.
You're not gonna just tell them, you're gonna show them what you can do, and that's exactly what your portfolio project does.
So you've got your project and your website.
Your website tells them who you are,
but then you're gonna take that project
that you deployed live to the web and then put it in your portfolio site so they can see it.
they can click through to it, they can actually use the application to prove that you can do what you say you're going to do.
And then you can take the code that you've written,
you can put it on a website like GitHub to open source it where they can go through and see the code and look through it
and say that, hey, yeah, this person's got their head on straight.
They can actually write code.
A bonus tip here is that you can create a video on your portfolio project that tells people
who you are and explain your application and how to use it because a lot of times
people just want to pre-qualify you before they even talk to you.
If I see a video of you and a portfolio that looks great, they're getting a sense of what it's like.
and what you can do and how you communicate,
and going to get you,
you way ahead of everybody else who, where they don't really get that connection unless they go through something like this.
So, highly recommend creating a portfolio that shows people who you are, what you can do, communicates, and then has your projects to show that you actually have the skills to pay the bills.
Alright, so once you've gone through the unguided development,
process, you've created a portfolio application, you've created a portfolio website, you've put it
out there, it's time to start marketing yourself as a blockchain developer.
So let's talk about, you know, when should you start applying for blockchain jobs?
Because is a really common question.
Well, I'm going to give you a counterintuitive answer.
Well, I say that as soon as you have a portfolio project out there in the wild,
that you can do this, then that's when it's time to start applying because most people wait way too long.
They get to their portfolio and think, oh, I'm not good enough.
We're not ready to start.
And they kind of get this imposter syndrome and this fear of taking action.
And they wait way too long to really go down the process.
That's not what you should do.
You should start applying right away.
Now that doesn't mean that you're necessarily just to instantly get a job, right?
That's not what I'm saying.
But you're going to get that feedback really quickly because you need to learn what it's like to apply for a job in the first place.
That's kind of a little bit of a skill in and of itself.
So you can start that stuff immediately.
And if you get any type of feedback from the marketplace on way that you can improve,
then you can start taking action on that because you don't want to wait months down the road.
to get that feedback because you're gonna wait so much longer.
So that's my recommendation.
As soon as you have a portfolio,
as soon as it's out there in the wild, then it's time to jump in or to the job search.
All right, so let's talk about how do you actually get a job in blockchain?
So there's multiple different strategies and you kind of have to take inventory on, you know, what advantages do you have or disadvantage?
Do you have and how can you you know what what strategies write for you based on your current situation?
So the first thing I'll say is if you know anybody who works at a blockchain company and you have any type of referral
Of somebody who can vouch for you,
and that's definitely gonna be one of the absolute fastest ways to get a job Okay, because then you can cut through the application process.
If can vouch for your skills, you can have a referral.
It's going to increase the likelihood that you can get hired at a company exponentially.
Okay, now.
I know most people don't have that option, but some people do and they forget that that's one of the best ways to do it.
So I want to bring that up in this video.
Also if you are a already and you're at a company that uses blockchain or wants to start using blockchain,
I see this happen a or basically people can kind of create a job for themselves at their current company.
Again, this is not an option for most people, but I want to throw it out there in case that has applied to you.
All right.
So you don't have either of those options available to you,
then how can you basically find a blockchain job if you're just starting
So you can just go to the traditional route of just like looking for jobs online with traditional job postings like,
you know, on indeed.com, you can just search for, you know, jobs for a blockchain developer.
And then go down that road.
Now, some tips.
If looking on job postings on websites like this, you want to be looking for different types of keywords.
Okay, you want to be looking for blockchain developer.
You want to be looking for a solidity developer,
blockchain engineer,
any type of keyword that's related to blockchain developer will help you find stuff that may get hidden if you're just searching for one type of term.
Okay, you can also look for specific things like junior, solidity developer, junior, blockchain developer.
Now, one common problem that I see with people
when they, is they look at job postings that, you know, require all kinds of experience they feel like they don't have.
They say, oh, I need like five years of experience in this or two years of experience in this.
Well, what if I don't have the experience, right?
Well, what I would say is as long as you meet like 50%
of the requirements that are listed on the job posting that it's okay to apply, all right?
Because, you know, people want certain levels of experience, but they can't always get that based on the supply that's actually in the marketplace.
So it never hurts to apply, even if you don't meet all the criteria.
So another thing that I'll say is,
some people say,
well, I don't see junior to the So I do see lots of specific junior developer jobs listed all the time, but they're going to
be fewer than these other ones.
One of the is people, you know, often have to pay to advertise on these websites.
sites, and they get a higher ROI of paying to advertise for more senior developer roles.
But what you can do is if somebody hiring a mid or senior level position,
many times, not all the time, but many times they will potentially be open to hiring a junior developer.
So even if you don't see a junior job,
you can still reach out to the company and see if they'd be willing to hire you as a junior.
So in addition to indy.com for traditional job postings, you can look at crypto specific websites like crypto jobs list.com.
They're going to have special filters for things like salinity developers or just developer jobs that are specific for credit.
Again, you can look at other types of things where maybe you want to look at front-end
developer jobs for a blockchain company where you start off with JavaScript and maybe you're
not doing as much solidity but you know how to interact with the blockchain,
that's a good way to get started in the industry as well.
So in addition to just applying for jobs online,
there's different strategies that you can use to get your foot in the door and start working somewhere.
So you can do things like do hackathons, okay?
So this is an example of the ETH Global Hackathon, it's an hackathon.
You can also go to in-person hackathons where basically you show up,
you code out a project week if it's like an online type of event.
Alright, and they submit that project and other people judge it.
And if you create a good project, like you can get in front of some eyeballs of other people that might want to hire you.
And this is type of thing where you can kind of kill two birds with one stone.
If you want to create a portfolio project and do it through a hackathon, you can submit it here.
Alright, and then you can get people who might potentially want to hire you.
So in-person hackathons are super powerful because face-to-face interaction is one of
the fastest ways to form a connection with somebody that might want to hire you.
And going on that note, one thing that you can do is look for local meetups.
Alright, if you live in a major metropolitan area, there might be but- a blockchain meetups in your area.
And if you can go to those,
those can be some really powerful ways to make connections that can lead to your first role as a blockchain developer, okay.
So, that's actually how I became a developer, like a first professional paying gig as a developer.
Again, I was a developer before I got into blockchain, but I went to local meetups
in my area where there were other developers, and that's how I got hired.
So, what I would recommend here is that when you go to these meetups, you don't just like,
you know, walk say, hey, I'm looking for a job, you actually want to go and listen and contribute.
And as those conversations come up,
you can be like,
hey, yeah, you know, here's what I showed them that you had the experience, your portfolio, and say, I'm trying to get my first job.
And with those expectations said, you might be able to find who's hiring.
And if you go around the room and meet up, people are like, Hey, we're hiring.
We're hiring.
And then you can, you know, talk to those people when those conversations arise organically.
So in addition to these like in person meetups and hackathons,
you can also leverage social media as sort of a different way to land a blockchain developer job.
So one thing I would highly recommend is that you use LinkedIn if you're trying to become a developer.
So the nice thing about LinkedIn is that it's basically a search engine for people who are looking for developers.
So if you have a LinkedIn profile out there and you're actually posting kind content,
the about, you know, blockchain and blockchain development, then and you have your profile set up for other people.
can see that you have the specific keywords in there.
There are people searching on that platform who will find you and actually will send you messages.
A of times these are recruiters.
Sometimes they're direct employers themselves, but you want to basically have that visibility as an option for you.
You can also join groups since I've linked in where people are talking about blockchain development,
you can contribute to those types of things, and might see hiring opportunities inside there as well.
You can also take this strategy to other social media platforms like Twitter,
for example,
or Facebook,
or or Facebook,
or or or Okay,
and you can create a small web presence where you're just talking about the types of things you're building,
like while you're building your portfolio project, you can tweet about it.
You can share out videos or pictures of what you're doing and explain it.
You want to provide value out there into the world and then you'd be surprised at what
types of attention that can attract to you and what types of opportunities might come your way.
Okay, you can also do things like get inside a deal.
of projects that are actually building in some of the blockchain space and then,
you talk about, you'll say you want to build a project based on their, you know, technology.
Well, you can start doing that and ask them questions about how to do this.
And that can naturally lead to conversations where,
hey, maybe they're hiring and because you're already building with their technology, then maybe that can be a natural fit for you to start
working for them.
So you can see there's all these different strategies that you can take towards getting your first job,
whether it's the first,
excuse me,
whether it's like going the traditional route where you're applying for jobs,
whether you're going to meetups, doing hackathons, whether you're posting out there on social media, getting your LinkedIn together.
There's so many different levers that you can pull.
And ideally,
you want to be working with these things all at the same time,
you to have a lot of different irons in the fire,
because you don't know exactly which one is going to hit first and which one is going to provide the best opportunity for you.
But you have all these things in motion at the same time,
it's going to increase the likelihood that something is going to work out for you faster.
Whenever you get to that point, if you're just starting from scratch, you don't have a lot of development experience.
What you wanna do is lower your expectations for your first job.
This is what I recommend for everybody.
Basically just figure out what you need
in terms of your compensation just to kind of get by initially and then get in the door so that you can get that experience.
Because the real world experience is gonna be the most valuable thing for you.
And then once you've got that experience,
you've got that on your resume
where you can ask for a raise later or find a new job that will hire you much faster because you don't have,
because you have experience now where you did it before.
easier to find your second job than your first job.
So if you get your foot the door, you know, you get that experience, it's going to make everything else easier after that for you.
And when you go to try to get that first job,
what you really want to do is show them what you can do, use your portfolio, be honest about your skills.
But also what you want to do is clearly communicate that, hey, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get this job done.
I'm hungry to learn.
I'm here to provide value to you in whatever way that you need You want to make it a lot about what you contribute not about what you're trying to get from them
All right So that's an overview of the different levers that you can pull or to get your first job So again,
you want to you want to try to pursue as many things as possible You had talked as many people as possible.
You want to apply as many places as possible and then eventually something's going to hit.
Okay.
Now, again, I want to talk about rejection here because inevitably you're probably going to face some rejection during this process.
That really sucks.
I don't like getting rejected myself.
I know what that feels like, but you have to take that as a learning experience and not let it set you back.
The best thing that you can do from the rejection is try to get feedback from it and try to figure out,
hey, what's going
why did I not get this job, maybe it just wasn't a good fit or maybe there's something you need to work on.
If you can ask them what that is,
maybe they'll tell you what the answer that is, and hopefully you can take that as constructive feedback to do that.
But I believe that anybody with enough aptitude,
which if you're watching this YouTube video,
you probably have enough aptitude to do this,
who goes through everything that I'm talking about and does this
and is patient and just does this over and over
again until something actually opens up that the opportunity is for there and it's totally worth it if you just stick with it.
And you finally get that job, it's to sit back and celebrate.
All right, so now let's give it some frequently asked questions that I get all the time, which is basically, should I learn blockchain first?
Or should I go off and learn a bunch of other stuff?
stuff like computer science fundamentals, you algorithms and all this crazy stuff before I start specializing in actually learning blockchain development.
So my answer is 100% no.
You should not go learn a bunch of other stuff before you start blockchain.
You should start learning blockchain, which that's what you want to do.
That's what I recommend you do.
You should start learning blockchain.
and learn else as you go.
Okay, so here's why.
And I actually changed my opinion on this over time.
I used to think that you kind of needed some other basic programming knowledge before you got into blockchain,
but I had to change my opinion after I helped thousands of other people learn blockchain.
Many of them who had never coded before, they started with the blockchain and they used the exact methods that I had.
teach in order to become blockchain developers without having to go learn a bunch of computer science fundamentals,
you algorithms, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, before got into blockchain.
So it all goes back to that principle that I was talking about earlier about immersion,
where basically the fastest way to learn something is by learning through immersion and then
getting the blockchain specific skills and then learning programming through that paradigm And you do that more efficiently,
and you go to that process,
you know how to program,
you know how to program for blockchain, and then you get some basics of computer science and all this other stuff.
Now...
You won't have the same foundation as somebody who's done all that other stuff first, but you can learn all that stuff later, okay?
That's the whole point.
Every single programmer eventually ends up on the path of self-learning, all right?
And if you start off and you get the specific skills that you need,
you can get productive and actually get hired and start working in blockchain,
and then once you're professional, you can start learning all the other stuff that you need to around it.
Trust me,
when I became a software developer,
you I had a very limited skill set,
And then I learned everything else that I needed to throughout my career and doing this now that brings me to the second question which is
Can you learn blockchain as your first language?
So this should be a pretty easy answer from what I just said.
Yes, you can learn blockchain as your first language.
People think like, oh, I need to learn Python first.
I need to learn, you know, JavaScript first, just to get some basic programming knowledge.
No, I would definitely not say that.
I would do exactly what I was about,
learn by doing, holding on blockchain, and you can learn all these other programming languages that you need to do blockchain.
And if you want to learn more programming languages and add into your tool belt,
So, the next question is, do you need a computer science degree to do this?
Again, no, you don't need a computer science degree.
In fact, you don't need any degree necessarily to become a professional developer.
Because the end of the day, really, most people care about what you can do.
And if you can code and you can prove that you can code through everything that I've
talked about this video by learning it by doing the
creating your portfolio and like putting it out there where you can prove that you
have the skills to pay the bills then most people don't care about what
your degree is especially for trying to get some type of entry-level job.
Now there's certain types of jobs where you need a computer science degree but a vast majority of them you do not.
The whole point is if you want to become a blockchain developer you do not need a degree you don't even need a computer
science degree.
So the last thing I will say is, the last frequent next question I get all the time, which how long does this process take?
Okay, so, you know, the answer is always it depends.
So the fastest that I have personally helped somebody do this in is in two months.
Okay.
So, basically somebody was able to, I've actually got a video about it on my to homepage,
you can go see that,
basically, they were able to, without training, go from basically nothing to becoming a blockchain developer and getting their first job in a two month time frame.
Now, that's on the faster end of things, okay?
But you know, setting a timeline of three to four.
would be almost twice as long, but fast, okay?
But if you're doing this, you know, step by step completely on your own.
own, you could back out for your expectations and make that six months, you can make it nine months, you can make it 12 months.
It also depends on like, how much time do you actually have to devote to this?
You want to figure out like, Hey, do have five hours a week to do this?
Do I have 20 hours a week to do this?
Do have 40 hours a week to do this?
If have way more availability,
you maybe you're single,
maybe you have kids,
you have to figure out what that is,
then put it put together a plan of attack where you can actually work through the curriculum
and work through the steps that you need to do the entire roadmap that I'm talking about to forecast what that goal is.
Now, the filing on whatever your timeline is, you need to set a goal, okay?
And the maximum goal that I would recommend anybody do is one year, all right?
You could probably do it a lot sooner than that, but I would say a maximum goal is one year.
Now, why do I say set a goal?
Because work tends to take the amount of time that you give it,
and if you don't have a goal,
you're not gonna feel the urgency to do this,
all You're just gonna kind of sit back and be well,
yeah, I'll get around to it, but if you no, I'm gonna do this in six months,
You start reverse engineering and say, okay, in six months, I need to have this done by month one.
I need this done by month two, and you're gonna actually start executing towards those milestones.
If you say, I wanna do it in three months, well, then I've got a lot of work to do in three months, okay?
You could take everything I'm talking about in the roadmap to do this.
So you wanna give yourself a timeline,
you wanna set a goal,
and even if it's a little bit longer than that goal,
you still wanna have something that you're aiming toward in order to stay focused and actually take action.
All right, so that's an overview of how to become a blockchain developer in 2024.
So I cannot stress enough what an insane opportunity for in the blockchain industry in 2024.
It's one of the fastest growing fields in tech.
There's an insane demand for blockchain developers.
It's one of the highest paying fields in tech.
It's super remote friendly and you get to work on really exciting technology.
I mean, what's not to love?
So I hope you got a lot of value out of this video.
And if you want to take action on everything that I'm talking about today, then what can you do like?
right now when you're finished.
to follow in 2024 for free on this YouTube channel.
Now, you can go look at any of the courses that I've done already.
If you want to start that guided development process on my YouTube homepage,
you can pick anyone that looks interesting to you and get started learning their programming language today.
And once you go through those,
or maybe you want to skip past those and go straight for the throat and build
You know our real-world application like I showed you before that decentralized cryptocurrency exchange now
I can show you to do that step-by-step to start to finish over adaptive version dot com for slash
bootcamp You know you really have to be an to get started today of how people with zero coding experience become real world
Blatch and developers a matter of months.
So whether you want to break in the industry increase your salary will pass a hundred K build your own trading bots with D5 flash zones,
whatever.
I can show you everything step by step inside the blockchain booth.
