Hello everyone,
It has been 6 months since I decided to go all-in with the Web3 world, learning and practicing more about Blockchain Development. This is the first article of a series where I'll be sharing my journey. I truly believe that the best way to understand something is to teach it and apply it to projects. These are the two goals of the Welcome to Web3 series.
I didn't want to start this series with the concepts of Blockchain theory or definitions of Web3 terms. Because it can be complicated and scary at first sight. So to avoid a sophisticated entry to this new field, we'll begin softly with concepts that can easily be understood. We will gradually upgrade as long as we get used to the Web3 world.
You may have heard about it, Blockchain Developers are one the highest paying jobs in the IT industry this year. So let’s get straight into it and talk about money 🤑
We will review all the prerequisites to start your blockchain development journey. Today, I will get you a wallet and (fake) money to make transactions.
Let’s go!
👛 Wallets
To make money, you need a wallet first. In our case a crypto wallet. If you don't know much about cryptocurrencies or blockchain, it's OK. Put simply, Blockchain is the technology that stores and records informations about cryptocurrencies. And this is why we need a wallet of crypto to become a Blockchain developer.
A wallet is a tool to store and manage your cryptocurrencies safely and securely. In fact, a wallet doesn’t hold your crypto but just the credentials to access them.
So let's open the wallet to see what's inside. There are many elements in a crypto wallet but the most important two are the public key and the private key.
Public Key: It's like your e-mail address when you use PayPal. You can share it with everyone. To receive transactions you use a public Address, which is just a short and hashed version of the public key.
Private Key: It's like your password for authentication. It aims to digitally sign transactions, which means verifying and proving the ownership of your crypto funds.
Just like any normal wallet, there are different types of crypto wallets.
- Hot Wallets also known as online wallets. Here the cryptos are transferred quickly and it’s easy to use with Web or Mobile apps. But it can be risky since the private keys are stored in the Cloud.
- Cold Wallets or offline wallets. These are a little harder to use but more secure because the private keys are in hardware (USB) or Paper. The transactions are signed offline and then broadcast to the blockchain network.
Choosing the right wallet can be difficult. There is so many options and you can get confused. For someone who wants to start with blockchain development and crypto, it’s best to begin with MetaMask wallet. But here are the best 3 entry-level wallets you should know.
So now that you know enough about Wallets and have set one up, let’s use it and make transactions.
💳 Transactions
You are probably asking yourself
I don’t understand why using a Wallet. I’m interested in Blockchain development not flipping crypto !
Well, even if you’re not planning to buy any cryptocurrency. You’ll need some hence a wallet.
In fact, when we mentioned transactions earlier with public and private keys, I didn’t mean only (de)financial transactions. Every action on the Blockchain is called a transaction.
For example, sending someone Ethereum is a transaction. Calling a function in our blockchain app is a transaction. Doing something that changes a variable in our app is considered a transaction. Deploying our app on the blockchain is also a transaction.
And all these transactions require money. Crypto money to be exact. If you find that weird, think about Cloud services in the backend of a Web2.0 App. To simplify things, we can say that the Blockchain is like the Backend of our stack.
You pay AWS or Google Cloud to store your data, manage your app and deploy it to the Cloud. Well, here we send everything to the Blockchain. To do so, we need to pay some fees known as gas fees. These fees are for the miners. It's the people that are maintaining the blockchain. Just like your AWS bill is for keeping the servers working and technical support.
At this point, we understand what transactions are in Web3. We will get more details on how these transactions work in other articles of this series.
🕸️ Testnet and Faucet 🚰
There are many Blockchains in the Web3 World. For example, Ethereum is a blockchain with its own cryptocurrency, called Ether (ETH) or Ethereum, and its own programming language, called Solidity. Ethereum blockchain is the most used blockchain to develop applications.
Now, after what we said about transactions, you are maybe afraid of spending a lot of money in order to make a blockchain project. Don't worry, it won't happen. Because when we are in Development Mode, building and testing the app, we don't use the real Blockchain network but a free Test network (Testnet). Yay ! 🎉
A testnet is a clone of what is called the "Ethereum mainnet". You need to understand that a testnet is exactly the same as the "mainnet". It's run by real miners and copies the real-world scenarios. The only difference is that we use fake money instead of real one.
It's important to remember that once we send something on the blockchain we can't change it (easily). The data cannot be altered. This is one of the principles of the Blockchain that makes this technology secure and transparent.
Thus, Testnets are so convenient. It's only when the app is coded, tested and deployed to the 'testnet' that we deploy it to the 'mainnet'.
There are a few testnets, and one of the most used is called "Rinkeby". If we want to deploy to Rinkeby, we need fake ether. How to get that fake Ethereum? By asking the network for some through a faucet. And let's remember that this fake Eth will only work on this specific testnet.
Here are some Faucets for Rinkeby
| Name | Link |
|---|---|
| Official Rinkeby | https://faucet.rinkeby.io/ |
| Buildspace | https://buildspace-faucet.vercel.app/ |
| Ethily | https://ethily.io/rinkeby-faucet/ |
| MyCrypto | https://app.mycrypto.com/faucet |
| Testnet Help | https://testnet.help/en/ethfaucet/rinkeby |
That's it!
Thanks for reading me.
Through the storyline of money, we managed to discover many essential concepts of Web3 development.
Hope that this first part wasn't too theoretical. It's important to have knowledge of the environment around Ethereum blockchain apps.
In the next article, we will get into coding our first blockchain app.