Effectively Learning Distributed Ledger Technology
Learning keeping in mind what you would like to achieve with it!
In today’s world, blockchain engineers are making somewhere between $150,000 and $175,000 as annual salaries on an average, so shouldn’t this be enough of a reason to start learning blockchain! I don’t think so. To know the reason please follow along…
When I ask some “new DLT guru” how much time did it take you to learn Distributed ledger technology(in short DLT), most of the times I get to hear answers like one and a half months. Some extend the time-frame to a maximum of 3 months and some decrease it further to even 2 weeks!
Being a STEM Ph.D. dropout I have the idea that it demands a lot of time to even comprehend a single sentence of a scientific journal, let alone the journal in its entirety. Hence, the above answers make me dumbstruck because it is practically impossible to grasp concepts of DLT even superficially in such a short time frame, forget diving deeper for in-depth understanding. DLT is an ocean in itself and being very new, there is very limited content available on the internet explaining it. To be honest, I initially felt dumb realizing that I have been learning it for the past 3 years and still cannot claim that I have a complete understanding of DLT. However, all good things take time and in this article, I will try my best to address the elephant in the room(DLT) and break it down into parts for simplistic understanding.
So, what are the types of DLT and how to define the objective of learning DLT?
D Stands For Distributed
The data is distributed. In DLT systems, no one party has access to the data rather all the people that are part of the network have access to the data. If you are trying to become a part of the network then you will have to download the full network data in your computer.
L For Ledger
Ledger is simply a record-keeping book where all the records are kept but in chronological order.
So what is the purpose of having a distributed ledger system?
To ensure nobody can make a fool of us on a bright sunny April fool’s day. In other words, nobody is able to tamper with the data(records) as every participant has to agree to a proposed change to the ledger’s data. So the system is trustless(eg. you are not trusting Facebook with your data rather you are trusting 2 billion of its users).
Imagine you just got up in the morning to figure out that Mastercard has suffered a large system blackout and all your money is in an unusable state. With DLT this will never be a case because there is no single point of failure.
Most importantly, DLT is highly secured. The records of the DLT systems are cryptographically encrypted. Each DLT system has its own proof-of-validity algorithms to ensure the correctness of the records based on some set rules.
Now Coming To T For Technology
This is where things start getting complicated. Most of us have no clue how they work and what we should learn to better understand DLT or how we should proceed in the first place to start to learn DLT systems. This is where I’m going to help you in the upcoming few years(hopefully).
Currently, there are 3 focus points to learn DLT.
Blockchains, Directed Acyclic Graph(DAG) and hybrids and this is exactly where you will have to get your perspective right. Ask yourself a few questions-
What do you want to achieve in the future?
Do you want to be a blockchain developer?
If yes, then learning each and every technical detail about Bitcoin’s blockchain should be your starting point. Why Bitcoin and not any one of the hundreds of available open-source blockchains? Because bitcoin is time-tested, we are aware of some of its drawbacks and we have a good number of people out there to help us as it currently has the largest community support. After a while when we get a hang of Bitcoin’s blockchain, we can move forward to learn some of the Bitcoin’s clones or forks as they claim to solve some of Bitcoin’s drawbacks. Eventually, we can move forward to creating our own blockchains.
The immediate next question would be — Do you want to be a Dapp developer?
Then the obvious and recommended starting point would be to start with the Ethereum blockchain as it is well documented and comparatively easier to learn than the others. Once you have got your hands dirty and created your first fully functional Dapp, you can proceed to learn EOS’s blockchain easily. ‘Learning’ a blockchain here does not imply simply copying and pasting some of the code blocks from somewhere and executing them to achieve a certain functionality, instead what I mean is the complete end-to-end understanding of the codebase and tweaking it to achieve a particular desired functionality.
Do you want to serve the corporate world?
When it comes to serving corporate needs, it has to be hybrid. In this case, you should opt for Hyperledger developed by Linux in addition to several other big names like Intel, IBM, etc. Hyperledger fabric designed by IBM should be the starting point as this is created and maintained by some of the brightest people on the planet. Also, because it uses javascript-based tools which is a huge relief for self-learners like us.
Your familiarity with programming languages is another aspect that should play a meaty role when deciding which DLT you should learn.
Are you familiar with Javascript?
Then, it is recommended to start with your Dapp development using Ethereum blockchain, as Solidity, the language specifically designed to develop Dapps has strikingly similar syntax with Javascript. If you are more comfortable with C/C++, then Bitcoin’s blockchain should be the starting point for your DLT adventure. If you come from a Java/ Python background then Hyperledger should be your go-to DLT system.
The last question you should be asking me is what am I trying to achieve with this tutorial(Just kidding you can ask me a lot of questions). Well, I believe we have just started to set our foot in the decentralized world where we will be the sole people to control our data, finance and everything else that comes to your mind and this can only be possible if we have as large a community of DLT programmers as the current number of javascript programmers in the world. The above can only be possible when we come together, learn with each other. This is why we at BlockMiles have decided to spread blockchain education to everyone through detailed technical tutorials about Blockchains, Dapps, and Hyperledgers.
While some of the tutorials will always be free, but there will be tutorials for which you will have to pay a small fee. We are a group of startup founders who are working full-time on our startup and putting in that extra effort mostly through sleepless nights to put together these tutorials. Your contributions will help us keep going and let you learn hands-on from us who are working in the DLT space for the past 3 years and have a certain amount of knowledge to share.
At this point I would like to mention one thing, you will never learn how to trade cryptocurrencies from our articles. There won’t be any trading advice, so if you are only interested in the underlying technology of DLT systems and not on the price movements of the assets using this technology, only then drop in your email!
Lastly, we will be creating one article every day on the underlying principles of DLT and how to code your own DLT systems and there will be one homework assignment associated with each.
Next up: Basic terminology and operations of Bitcoin’s blockchain.
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