Introduction to Blockchain Development
The word Blockchain is almost always associated with the world of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin and how one can earn a fortune from some smart investing!
However big this fad is, the core of everything behind it lies in the principles of Blockchain and its development. Blockchain Development is a new yet inquisitive and interesting domain of development that is yet to be tapped. Via this article, I hope to explain some key points and concepts for a beginner looking to start their journey in this field!
What is Blockchain Exactly
Blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger first founded by Satoshi Nakamoto that is designed to store and record transactions and bring much-needed transparency, efficiency, and added security to businesses. It is looked after as a peer-to-peer network where the nodes follow a certain protocol and communicated and form new blocks and store information in them. The formation of blockchain removed the need for a central authority and hence made cryptocurrency the ‘The Currency of the People’.
Why you should learn blockchain?
- High-paying jobs — The field of Blockchain Development is yet to be fully researched upon, and this means the number of openings for budding and passionate blockchain developers is in abundance. Figures estimate that the global market for Blockchain-related enterprises shall escalate 2.2 Billion USD upwards by 2022, thus escalating the prospects of getting a job.
- Adoption of Blockchain in Governance Systems — The Core Features of Blockchain like Transparency and Decentralisation, allow it to be great carriers of various government-related activities like voting and other security activities. For the common man, knowing this is truly advantageous to be a better citizen.
- Smarter Cryptocurrency Investments — Thorough Knowledge of Blockchain and its Development-related Principles, allow avid learners to better understand the cryptocurrency market thus making them take better Investment Related Decisions.
- Cutting Edge Technology — Blockchain being a new domain in development, it ought to be futuristic in terms of its goals, and hence anyone investing time in this automatically readies themselves for creating an impact in their career as well as understanding the acumen of the various industries that come along with it.
- Working with brilliant passionate minds — The Blockchain Community is very close-knit, with aspiring and passionate minds looking to create an impact via solution-driven products as well as ensure that every member is learning something new every day. There are various Open Source Communities striving to achieve this day in day out.
Important Tools, Technologies And Terminologies
- Token — A crypto token is a virtual currency token or a denomination of a cryptocurrency. It represents a tradable asset or utility that resides on its own blockchain and allows the holder to use it for investment or economic purposes.
- Solidity — Solidity is an object-oriented programming language for writing smart contracts. It is used for implementing smart contracts on various blockchain platforms, most notably, Ethereum
- Dapp — Decentralized applications (dApps) are digital applications or programs that exist and run on a blockchain or P2P network of computers instead of a single computer
- Addresses — These are usually used to receive and send transactions on the network. Associate degree address may be a string of alphanumerical characters, however, may be delineated as a scannable QR code.
- Gas — A measure of the computational difficulty required to process a smart contract function
- Node — Participant in a blockchain network that is connected to peers and is capable of validating and propagating new blocks
- Peer to Peer — P2P networks allows each peer to connect directly to all other peers in the network. P2P payments transfer value directly between actors without a processor or bank intermediary.
- Smart Contract — Code that is executable within the environment of a virtual machine. Blockchains use smart contracts in the context of the chain’s state to extend the functionality of the chain and provide trustless program execution.
How to get started
1. Learn a Language — The first step before divulging into the world of Blockchain Development is to effectively learn a programming language, it could be anything from JavaScript to GoLang to C++. It is important to have a grasp on the core principles of these languages so as to ease the process of integrating it with the principles of Blockchain.
2. Medium Pages — There are many medium articles that inform about the new technologies or features related to blockchain along with various code snippets or contracts to learn from.
3. Ethereum documentation — The Ethereum blockchain is one of the most popular blockchains. The documentation of Ethereum is also very nice and detailed.
4. Truffle framework and web3 docs — Truffle provides a development environment for the Ethereum blockchain and hence makes work very easy for new developers. Web3 is a set of javascript libraries that help to interact with nodes of a blockchain. The documentation of these two is also very helpful to get a clear understanding of things
Just to familiarise, this is how a sample code structure of a solidity contract would look like
The above image depicts a sample hello world contract in which the counter variable is predefined to a value of 5. After this, we are calling two basic arithmetic functions that perform increment and decrement actions respectively.
The above image entails a smart contract that is used to depict a to-do list written using Solidity. I have very cohesively written below the functions of this bit of code.
- In the uint taskCount , we are creating a public variable which has been initialized to 0.
- In the Struct task , we are creating a format of how all the tasks in Task object should look like.
- In mapping(unit => Task), we are creating a Task array which is then mapped on the basis of taskCount counter we initialized before.
- In the createTask function, we will be taking input of the task name from the user and then adding it into the task array. By default, all tasks have their Completed set as false. When this is completed, we will increment the taskCount counter and the task will have been added to the Task array.
- In the togglecompleted function, we will be taking input of the id of the task from the user and then changing the Completed status of that task to true.
Free Courses
- Blockchain Technology — by Berkley
- Bitcoin and Blockchain — by Khan Academy
- Cryptography Course — by Stanford
- Blockchain Fundamentals — by Plural sight
Cool Ways to make money
1.)Monetise your Dapp — Charge a percent of every transaction to be deposited in your account whenever someone makes a transaction on your app
2.)Create your own coin — The number of coins has increased exponentially and has made it quite easy to make your own coin
3.)Get paid for contributing to open-source networks — Huge established blockchains like Ethereum and Celo pay you to contribute to their blockchains
4.)Work at an established company to gain industrial experience on how to contribute to the world of blockchain and create solution-driven products that integrate its principles.
Future of blockchain
Since 2009, blockchain technology has worked its way from being a comparatively unknown technology to a system that has resulted in disruption of traditional industries and formations of new technologies formed completely on blockchain. Many have liked and supported the revolutionary possibilities of blockchain technology for example the Winklevoss twins who are the world’s first cryptocurrency billionaires. As interest in blockchain continues to increase, both organizations and individuals are exploring its real-world applications. These decentralized applications, or dApps, are characterized by their distributed and transparent nature.
In other words, dApps present blockchain developers with an opportunity to develop different kinds of products with zero downtime and safeguards to defend against manipulation. The smart contracts essentially function as a digital facilitator which will verify the complete completion of a credit transaction. As an increasing number of companies integrate blockchains like Ethereum, Celo, Solana, Ripple and many more into their business models, we’re witnessing a staggering amount of applicability for dApps altogether sorts of industries.
If any of you are curious about taking a look at a full-fledged product based on the Ethereum Blockchain that encompasses all the principles taught above on a larger scale, do feel free to check out the link below:
