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To become a blockchain developer can dramatically improve your career while giving you a better understanding of the rapidly evolving world of decentralized applications and protocols.
We’ve asked top smart contracts developers worldwide for their go-to learning material when it comes to blockchain development and collected their suggestions in the complete blockchain developer roadmap.
In this guide on how to become a blockchain developer, you’ll find all the resources you need to kickstart your smart contract development career, from total beginner to writing advanced and secure smart contracts, as well as outstanding UIs for your decentralized applications.
Here's how to get started!
Before diving into this roadmap, if you want to become a blockchain developer or level up your smart contract auditing security career you should checkout our smart contract development and smart contract auditing courses on Cyfrin Updraft.
Updraft is the world's leading Web3 development and smart contracts security education platform. A fully-fledged learning hub, that will bring you skills as a smart contracts engineer to the flight:
Completely for free.
The paths on Cyfrin Updraft, are designed to give you a solid grounding in smart contract development, testing, and deployment, smart contract security auditing, and best practices, as well as a deep understanding of the industry-standard tools and development practices used by top-notch smart contract developers worldwide, setting the stage for your journey ahead.
With that said, let's get started on our roadmap!
If you're starting without any previous development experience, the first step to become a blockchain developer is learning how to code.
JavaScript is a highly recommended programming language for those who are starting out. It’s not only beginner-friendly but also versatile, making it particularly indicative to move your first steps as a developer.
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Once you have a broad understanding of how programming works, the next step is to learn how Web3, blockchains, and decentralized systems work.
We’ve watched all the resources available online, literally, and there are two courses, completely free, that cover the entire journey, from little programming experience to blockchain development.
On top of the fundamentals of blockchain, you will learn how to, develop, deploy, and test Solidity smart contracts using Hardhat and Foundry, advanced Solidity development tips, and best practices to enhance the security of your codebases.
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On top of those two courses, to strenghtnwe suggest you go and exercise your skills, build real-world projects, or go through the challenges on platforms like the ones listed below.
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Once you understand how blockchain, Ethereum, EVM, and smart contract development using Solidity work, it’s time to deepen your knowledge and start learning Vyper!
Vyper is a pythonic alternative to Solidity, that is rapidly gaining popularity amongst the community - A programming language for the Ethereum virtual machine with a focus on the security of the language, compiler simplicity, and audit-ability - as is considered to be more human readable.
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Once you have learned how to develop, deploy, and test smart contracts, using Solidity or Vyper you can move lower level, to start optimizing your Solidity smart contracts Gas consumption or simply for the curiosity of gaining a deeper understanding of how the EVM works. You should definitely learn Yul and Huff:
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Since 2008, more than $77,000,000,000 have been stolen from decentralized finance, smart contracts, and users’ wallets - Due to low-security awareness, creative hackers, and lack of education when it comes to smart contracts audits, smart contract developers are now starting to focus on, and taking, best practices and smart contract auditing, very seriously.
Source: competitive vs private audits the full comparison
This need for security has made it crucial for developers to spend the right amount of time learning how to write secure codebases and advanced best practices and protect the value of protocols and users.
In addition to the how to become a blockchain developer roadmap - we’ve put together a collection of the best resources and platforms to teach you about smart contract auditing blockchain hacks, audits, and best practices while monetizing your skills as a blockchain security expert through competitive and solo audits.
You should also checkout the smart contract auditing course on Cyfrin Updraft - the industry leading course for smart contract security researchers.
Once you’ve learned how to develop smart contracts, test them, and keep them secure, it’s time to learn how to create outstanding UIs to interact with them!
Some of the resources above will walk you through most of the things you’ll have to know to start creating apps front-ends, but if you want to dig deeper into the field, you can’t miss checking the tools and resources listed below.
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In this roadmap on how to become a blockchain developer there are all the resources you'll need to kickstart you smart contract developement or security career, from zero to top 1% web3 developer, completely for free. So, if you’ve made to hear! Congratulations 🎉 You only miss one thing now! Practice!
Go through the exercises in the resources listed above, create real-world projects, and keep an eye on the web3 and smart contract development courses on Cyfrin Updraft.
Also, do not miss any updates, join our join our Discord community of 5000+ developers and web3 auditors learning and making web3 more secure.
