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Cooper Kunz
Cooper Kunz

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The Blockchain Developer's Toolkit

This is a post inspired by β€œThe Full Stack Developers Roadmap” but focused on topics that are relevant to helping existing full-stack developers get into the blockchain industry.

General Cryptography -

πŸ“• Crypto101
πŸ“ Secure hashing algorithms
πŸ”‘ Public key infrastructure (PKI)
πŸ— Decentralized public key infrastructure (DPKI)

Smart Contracts -

πŸ’Έ Solidity Programming Language

Decentralized file storage -

πŸͺ Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
πŸ”« Gun.js
πŸ—ƒ Filecoin

Wallets/authentication -

🎭 Metamask
πŸ”‘ Authereum
✨ Fortmatic

Decentralized Identity -

πŸ‘₯ Decentralized Identifiers (DID)
βœ… Verifiable Credentials
πŸ•Έ The Web of Trust

Testing/tools -

🍬 Truffle
🍫 Ganache
πŸ’» Remix

Conclusion

These are just a few resources for taking full-stack developers into the exciting world of blockchains and distributed ledgers - mostly focusing on the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem - so it's worth emphasizing up front that you don't need to know or learn all of these things in order to be successful.

In fact, newer networks like where I work at Hedera Hashgraph make it extremely easy for Java and JavaScript developers to start using these technologies. Take this example of sending cryptocurrency from one person to another in Node.js.

// Create a connection to Hedera with my account
const myHederaClient = Client.forTestnet(); 
myHederaClient.setOperator(myAccount, myPrivateKey);

// Define how much cryptocurrency to send
const hbarToTransfer = new Hbar(100);

// Create and execute a cryptocurrency transfer
new CryptoTransferTransaction()
        .addSender(myAccount, hbarToTransfer)
        .addRecipient(yourAccount, hbarToTransfer)
        .execute(myHederaClient);
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Are there any categories or specific technologies that I’m missing? Let me know in the comments!

Top comments (1)

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maithanhluong profile image
Mai Luong

This is a very helpful list, thanks for sharing! For smart contract development, check out DappStarter (decentology.com/dappstarter), which is a blockchain-agnostic platform that generates customized, full-stack project source code for decentralized applications. The source code includes the smart contract, the web UI, unit tests, and server-side API code. I hope you’ll find the tool useful!