Learn Web3 and Blockchain (A complete guide)

Published in

BlockTrain

7 min readAug 2, 2022

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Here’s an all in one guide to learn everything in Web3 and Blockchain. It’s time to up skill yourself. Don’t be lazy and jump on the train that takes off very soon!

Visit blocktrain.info for all the amazing resources.

Topics

Quick 15 topics of Web3
Understanding the Web3 principles
Blockchain developer roadmap
Complete solidity course (developer)

Quick 15 topics of Web3

Complete guide: https://www.blocktrain.info/blog/15-days-of-web3

Day 1: What is web3

Web1 meant reading — web2 was about reading and writing — web3 is about ownership. When you use the current applications like Social Media, all the data gets stored on the company’s servers, and well the majority of big platforms are handled by only a handful of companies.

We trust these companies with our data and have faith in them. We do it because we don’t have any other options yet. Artists never really own the things that they make. You don’t ‘really’ have control over your own money — banks do. Banks have the power to freeze someone’s account and well in history it has happened where the withdrawals had stopped multiple times.

This was a gist for you about how we live in a centralized world.

There are plenty of other examples on why this is important and we need the world of decentralization and web3.

Think of sound.xyz and how it’s helping artists be independent and make more money through ownership.

Centralized platforms have been dominant for so long that many people have forgotten there is a better way to build internet services.

Cryptonetworks are a powerful way to develop community-owned networks and provide a level playing field for 3rd-party developers, creators, and businesses. We saw the value of decentralized systems in the first era of the internet. Hopefully we’ll get to see it again in the next.

Day 2: Blockchain basics

Blockchain is a chain of “blocks” or a shared ledger of data — everyone can see what is going on and all the transactions happening in real time.

If trust can be set by code, then creators don’t have to rely on middlemen. They:

Don’t have to trust banks to get paid
Don’t have to trust lawyers to draft a contract
Don’t have to trust social networks to make a living

Blockchains are:

Decentralized: Transactions are stored on a network of computers (nodes).
Immutable: Transactions cannot be changed once committed to the block.
Open: Transactions can be viewed by anyone.

Bitcoin uses blockchain and therefore is decentralized, immutable, and open. It’s also:

Hard capped: There will only ever be 21M bitcoin.
Single-purpose: Many holders just want it to be a digital token that stores value.

From a developer perspective, think of a backend which never goes down and people can see what you’re doing anonymously with an address. You can deploy your product and use it to create a decentralized app where everyone owns what they make.Blockchain provides:

Decentralization
Trustless System
Security

Day3: Wallets, Consensus Algorithms

On Blockchain, your wallet is your identity. There are no names, there are just wallet addresses.

An online wallet is just like the one in your pocket — we need that to store money.

These wallets are either software (e.g., Coinbase, Metamask, Rainbow) or hardware (e.g., Ledger).

Easiest way to get started is to just experiment with things. Find an exchange where you can purchase some crypto. Setup a wallet like metamask, transfer the money to that wallet, and then see if you can swap some tokens.

Every wallet has a security key that you need to keep safe with you. Make sure you don’t lose that. In the majority of cases, most people will just use an exchange to manage their money like binance and coinbase.

A consensus algorithm is a process in computer science used to achieve agreement on a single data value among distributed processes or systems.

Proof of work and proof of stake are 2 major consensus algorithm. Let’s discuss those.

POW: Nodes (miners) try to solve a problem — first one that solves it gets the reward — other nodes check if it’s correct.

POS: miners stake their share to solve the problem — other validators check it and get a share if it’s correct — eventually add the block to the chain.

Day 4: Ethereum and coins

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has a complete programming language inside it, so programmers can write code and make apps on Ethereum.

Bitcoin is a digital gold. It’s a store of value & a medium of exchange. Ethereum is the infrastructure of a digital city. It was imagined as a foundation for businesses and applications to be built atop.

You can use Solidity Language to code smart contracts and then build decentralized apps (dapps) on top of the ethereum blockchain. There are other (and faster) chains that you can develop on — like polygon, solana. Think of the blockchain as a big backend database which runs all the time and can store things for you!

For the coins, we see coins everywhere — shiba inu and dogecoin are going to the moon according to some people. Unfortunately, they don’t have any logic behind those products! They are just meme coins.

There is a lot of thought behind real projects like ethereum and a complete structure of ‘tokenomics’ is defined before launching the product.

There are other stablecoins which you can buy to earn passive income through staking, yield farming, lending, etc. Examples are DAI, USDT, etc.

Day 5 to 15 covered in the full guide

Read the full guide: https://www.blocktrain.info/blog/15-days-of-web3

Understand Web3 and Blockchain principles

Complete guide: https://www.blocktrain.info/blog/complete-web3-blockchain-course

Why do we need blockchain?

Web1 meant reading — web2 was about reading and writing — web3 is about ownership. When you use the current applications like Social Media, all the data gets stored on the company’s servers, and well the majority of big platforms are handled by only a handful of companies.

We trust these companies with our data and have faith in them. We do it because we don’t have any other options yet. Artists never really own the things that they make. You don’t ‘really’ have control over your own money — banks do. Banks have the power to freeze someone’s account and well in history it has happened where the withdrawals had stopped multiple times.

This was a gist for you about how we live in a centralized world.

There are plenty of other examples on why this is important and we need the world of decentralization and web3.

Think of sound.xyz and how it’s helping artists be independent and make more money through ownership.

Centralized platforms have been dominant for so long that many people have forgotten there is a better way to build internet services.

Crypto Networks are a powerful way to develop community-owned networks and provide a level playing field for 3rd-party developers, creators, and businesses. We saw the value of decentralized systems in the first era of the internet. Hopefully we’ll get to see it again in the next.

How does the blockchain work?

Blockchain is a chain of “blocks” or a shared ledger of data — everyone can see what is going on and all the transactions happening in real time.

If trust can be set by code, then creators don’t have to rely on middlemen. They:

Don’t have to trust banks to get paid
Don’t have to trust lawyers to draft a contract
Don’t have to trust social networks to make a living

Blockchains are:

Decentralized: Transactions are stored on a network of computers (nodes).
Immutable: Transactions cannot be changed once committed to the block.
Open: Transactions can be viewed by anyone.

Bitcoin uses blockchain and therefore is decentralized, immutable, and open. It’s also:

Hard capped: There will only ever be 21M bitcoin.
Single-purpose: Many holders just want it to be a digital token that stores value.

From a developer perspective, think of a backend which never goes down and people can see what you’re doing anonymously with an address. You can deploy your product and use it to create a decentralized app where everyone owns what they make.

Blockchain provides:

Decentralization
Trustless System
Security

Explore the blockchain

There are many tools that you can use to explore the world of blockchain.
Etherscan, mempool are 2 such tools where you can see what people are buying, selling, and doing on the chain.
You can look up any particular address or transaction on the blockchain.
You can also explore other things like whale movements — the accounts which hold massive amounts of cryptocurrencies.

Full stack decentralized app

Decentralized applications (dApps) are digital applications or programs that exist and run on a blockchain or peer-to-peer (P2P) network of computers instead of a single computer. DApps (also called “dapps”) are outside the purview and control of a single authority. DApps — which are often built on the Ethereum platform — can be developed for a variety of purposes including gaming, finance, and social media.

Let’s see how a decentralized app works and looks like behind the scenes.

A decentralized application is similar to a centralized web app with slight changes.
We use smart contracts to do things on the blockchain where the transactions get logged into.
The frontend is similar: HTML, ReactJS, React Native, Next JS, or anything else.

In the context of cryptocurrencies, dApps run on a blockchain network in a public, open-source, decentralized environment and are free from control and interference by any single authority. For example, a developer can create a Twitter-like dApp and put it on a blockchain where any user can publish messages. Once posted, no one — including the app creators — can delete the messages.