Blockchain Technology for Developers

Important tips for developers to help get started with blockchain development

Senudajayalath
5 min readFeb 12, 2022

What is Blockchain ? — In the Perspective of a Developer

Blockchain is a distributed ledger shared among nodes of a computer network which spans the whole world. It is well known for maintaining decentralized records and enabling secure transactions. If you are a software developer with some programming experience you might be aware that the basic components of a centralized application is a frontend, backend and a database. But blockchain technology has totally changed this conventional architecture of an application . I will discuss about the architecture of a DAPP (Decentralized APPlication) in a future article.

There are many popular blockchain networks around the world. These are some of the most famous among them,

  1. Bitcoin Network
  2. Ethereum Network
  3. Polygon Network
  4. Solana Network

As an entry level developer the best place to start work is in the Ethereum environment. The main reason for that would be that Ethereum is the second most popular blockchain network in the world. Another special feature that Ethereum network has is that you can implement logical functions in the form of “smart contracts” on top of Ethereum.

*Don’t worry if you don’t know these key words. I will explain them in my future articles.

Why You Should Learn Blockchain ?

If you are a seasoned software developer or even completely new to this field and looking to learn blockchain development, the first question everyone ask is, “why I should learn blockchain?”

The answer for me is simple. As I see it, it is the future of the internet. Blockchain is the driving force to build a fully decentralized ecosystem. It is the driving force of web3.0 which will fully revolutionize how we interact with websites and applications on the web. If you are interested in keeping up with new trends in technology I think there is no better time to get on board and ride the blockchain wave.

If we talk from the aspects of financial benefits of becoming a blockchain engineer, the sky is the limit. Due to the fact that blockchain is fairly new, the number of people who have expertise in this field is very low. Bu there is no shortage in demand. You know what happens when there is less supply and high demand right :-)

supply vs demand

Another cool fact about blockchain is that some of the most talked about topics like cryptocurrencies, NFTs and Metaverse has originated from the core concept of blockchain. The number of opportunities for developers in these new domains are endless and ever growing. The key as I believe is to enter this domain the earliest to be able to take the maximum benefits.

*If you are interested in topics like NFTs and Metaverse, I will explain them in my future articles.

Common Terms In the Developer Vocabulary

In this section of the article I will brief you through some of the must know terms as a developer in the Ethereum ecosystem

  1. Web 3.0

Web3.0 is in fact a broad term and cannot be explained in a couple of sentences. I will bring you an article about web3.0 and also its predecessors web1.0 and web2.0.

To explain to you in brief web1.0 is the internet in its earliest form where we were only able to read things on the internet. At present we have web2.0 where we can read and write content to the internet. For example we can watch video's on YouTube and also upload video content.

Web3.0 is the concept of decentralized internet. All applications running on the blockchain uses web3 technology. Frontend of any DAPP uses web3 to connect to the blockchain. There are many web3 libraries out of which web3.js is the most popular.

2. Wallets

Wallets are used to authenticate users and also act literally as a “wallet” when users interact with DAPPs. Mainly there are two types of wallets, software wallets and hardware wallets. A hardware wallet is a physical device that secures access to your cryptos offline while software wallets are the complete opposite.

As developers we will get to interact mostly with software wallets in developing applications. Out of them the most popular wallet is the Metamask Wallet.

src — https://moralis.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Blog-MetaMask-Logo.png

Metamask wallet is normally installed as a chrome extension. In a future article I will talk in-depth about wallets, specially the Metamask wallet.

3. Test Networks

During development it is essential to test our application if it is retrieving, storing and communicating with the blockchain network properly. But that is not a cheap thing to do. Doing transactions with a blockchain network costs you “gas fees” and believe me they are not cheap (for some blockchain networks). So then how do we test if our application is working properly before deployment?

If you have experience developing a usual web application, before hosting the application we normally run it on “localhost” to see if everything is working properly. Likewise, we can also implement a local blockchain inside our computer to mimic the functionality of the real blockchain. We use something called Ganache to do this.

Going a step further developers also use test networks to mimic the functionality of a real blockchain network even more closely. The main difference between the real network and test networks is that test networks don’t use real cryptocurrencies. Therefore, although test networks consume gas fees for doing transactions, they do not cost money. On the other hand test networks are a connection of many computer nodes, exactly like the real network. These are some of the popular test networks used,

  1. Ropsten Network
  2. Kovan Network
  3. Rinkeby Network

Resources for Learning Blockchain Development

After reading this article did you also wanted to join the blockchain revolution? If so, the burning question in your head right now would be how to get started and where to get started? If you are completely new to software development I would strongly suggest you to start from the basics by learning frontend frameworks like React and backend development. These are the basics of blockchain development and these skills will never be wasted.

If you are a seasoned full stack developer I would highly recommend you to learn Solidity language. Solidity is the language used to write smart contracts mainly for Ethereum and Polygon. These two networks are the most widely used and it is a good starting point for beginners.

You can find all the resources you need from YouTube, so I would highly recommend you to get started from there. Blog articles can also be really helpful for you to understand the underlying theory of blockchain.

Happy Learning!!

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Senudajayalath
Senudajayalath

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