Blockchain developers are in high demand due to the amount of money flowing into projects related to blockchain technology. ICOs have been a major driver of this capital injection, leading investors to believe that these developers must be extremely talented in order to be able to create successful applications.

I am here to tell you that you can do it too! I went from having no coding experience in March 2017, to becoming a smart contract developer and completing my first decentralized application (dApp) 6 months later.

With the influx of money and excitement in the cryptocurrency space, the demand for Smart Contract developers is on the rise. Due to the high demand, these developers can command very high salaries. When there is so much money being funneled towards ICOs, it becomes easy to pay developers high wages. For example, this ICO raised $35 million dollars in just 30 seconds. This year, ICO fundraising has even surpassed early stage VC funding.

In this article, I will explain how smart contract development is not much more difficult than learning to code in other languages. Furthermore, I will highlight the major benefits of committing to learning how to develop on the blockchain.

A few Caveats Before we Begin

I want to make a distinction that I am only talking about developing smart contracts, with a focus on Ethereum and Solidity. I am not talking about building an entirely new blockchain from scratch, which is way more difficult than building a dApp on Ethereum. The code and architecture for something like that is built by expert programmers, cryptographers, and computer scientists.

Although it may take more than seven months to become a good smart contract developer, the skills are in high enough demand that even beginners can command high salaries.

Why should you learn it ?

There are many reasons why becoming a smart contract developer is a great choice:

It pays extremely well. The supply of capital into the space, and the amount of excitement are causing salaries to be sky high. This will continue for some time, as the resources to learn smart contracts are very limited, and right now you get good at it through sheer perseverance. You’ll have to get used to spending 2–3 hours trying to fix a small bug because the literature on the web isn’t that helpful, and there aren’t as many stack overflow question answered as there are for a more established language. You’ll have to make the questions yourself, and they can often go unanswered. Solidity is a new language, and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is still in development as well.There are issues with both that make a developers life hard. Over time these will be ironed out but right now it can be a lot more frustrating than developing with a language like Javascript.

A bizarre thing happening in the blockchain space is that almost all of the good smart contract developers who have been doing it for over two years are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. This has happened because they almost certainly bought cryptocurrency when it was really cheap (Ethereum’s ICO was priced at about $0.30 per ether), putting the majority of them in a situation where they don’t have to work to live. This means the good devs can be extremely picky, and don’t have to settle for low offers. The exciting blockchain companies are attracting the really good smart contract developers because of their vision. This leaves open a lot of fin tech and banking companies that are stuck offering huge salaries to people with less than a year of smart contract development work.
It isn’t technically more challenging that most coding languages. To develop basic smart contracts, or decentralized applications (dApps), doesn’t required you to have a background in cryptography, game theory, protocol design, distributed computer networks, or anything of the like. You just need to learn how to use the API’s in order to read, write, and change data on the blockchain. It is similar to how you can be a web developer, but do not need to understand how HTTPS or TCP/IP works. You just need to be able to build applications that use the API’s to interact with the protocols.
You can get great investing insights into the landscape of blockchains and tokens, and as a result make a lot of money investing on the side. I can say that my ability to pick out scammy, crap ICOs has improved significantly since I have actually learned how to determine what good smart contract code looks like. It has also taught me a ton about investing because it is so volatile. I’ve learnt more in a few cycles of crypto crashes and rallies than in years of watching the stock market. The crypto market is on steroids.
I have gotten multiple job offers and have met a lot of new people just because I can develop smart contracts. I’ve got offers to do react work and web development work for projects involved in the crypto space, even though I am by no means an expert react developer. This is because being able to develop smart contracts separates you out from the crowd and shows you are committed to hard work. I’ve seen recruiters eyes light up when you tell them you are a smart contract developer. They are fully aware of how much they can make for connecting a good smart contract developer to a company in need.

How is It Different From Other types of programming?

The truth is it not not much different from any other type of programming, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

If anything it is more like hardware development than software development. Hardware development has to be very precise and accurate before you release your product. There is rigorous testing and prototyping done before any product is sold to the public. Compared to web development, where you want to move forward as quick as possible, get people testing the product, and send out version 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 all in one month. Fail forward and fail fast.
When you deploy smart contracts to a live network, if there are bugs in your code you could lose a lot of people’s money. This is very much like a hardware recall. A hardware recall costs the company huge sums of money, takes a long time to fix, and can tarnish the reputation of the manufacturer. Similarly, a bug in a smart contract can lower the value of the token, lose the owners of the token money, and lose reputation in the developers behind the token.
A huge smart contract bug in a well known token on Ethereum named Augur was found recently. Luckily this bug was caught by a team of professionals, and no money was stolen, but it is small subtleties like this that can cause massive loss of value on the blockchain.
You have to learn a new way of thinking when coding smart contracts. You need to think from the perspective of an adversary trying to hack your code, and build defenses and preventative measures in order to freeze the contract if something goes wrong. You need to think how to incentivize the users of your smart contract to use it appropriately, as well as provide a benefit to the network. You have to determine if there should be an owner of your smart contract who can reverse transactions in case of a bug. Giving that power to the owner comes with a big trade off because all of a sudden your smart contract is much less decentralized, as the users of the network have to fully trust the owner.

Some Warnings

There are some warnings to be mentioned before diving full force into becoming a smart contract developer:

It is possible that smart contract developer demand could go down in the short term if a bubble pops (I’m looking at you, ICO’s) in the crypto space. The demand for tech talent dropped in the short term after the dot com bubble, and there were even drops in enrollment for computer science degrees. However the long term underlying concept of coding trust and decentralization onto blockchains will be very valuable in the future no matter what. But to drop everything, quit your job, and pursue blockchain development might not be the safest path, as it is high risk, high reward. Basically just don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Put maybe half of your eggs into the blockchain basket.
Solidity might not turn out to be the defacto language for smart contract development, but it has a good head start. It also isn’t the only place to build smart contracts or dApps. Look into Blockstack. They have some very specific differences in their platform that allow for a different approach to to designing dApps. There are many other competitors in the smart contract space that are competing as well. However the principles behind smart contracts will carry over to any blockchain or smart contract language, so it is important to learn them in depth, and not just strictly study Solidity.

How To Become A Solidity Developer

The use of smart contracts has led to a new way of automation on digital platforms. With smart contracts, the parties involved in a transaction can trust the code rather than any centralized institution. As smart contracts are an integral part of the decentralized digital landscape, there is a need for expert smart contract developers.

The demand for Solidity developers has been increasing as Solidity has become the preferred tool for smart contract development. However, many people are unsure of what Solidity is and whether they need any special skills to learn the programming language of smart contracts. The job role of a Solidity programmer can be very promising for long-term professional development. This guide will help you understand everything you need to know about becoming a Solidity developer.

If you want to learn more about Solidity concepts, you can become a member and get access to the Solidity Fundamentals Course for free.

What is Solidity?

If you were to start reading a Solidity developer tutorial, the first thing you would likely encounter would be an introduction to the programming language itself. Solidity is similar to JavaScript in that it is an object-oriented programming language; however, it is focused specifically on smart contract development. Additionally, Solidity is compatible with multiple platforms, although the majority of Solidity-based applications are used on Ethereum.

Gavin Wood proposed the idea for the Solidity programming language in 2014. The similarities in Solidity’s syntax to JavaScript were a huge driver in its adoption. Solidity supports inheritance alongside C3 linearization and multiple inheritances, but it is slightly different than Java because it is an inertly typed language featuring only dynamic return types. Additionally, Solidity also has some elements of Python and C++.

for example, financial contracts, user-facing apps, ownership records, and many others. Solidity can be used for many things, such as financial contracts, user-facing apps, ownership records, and more.

Multi-signature wallets
Voting
Blind auctions
Crowdfunding

Reasons for Learning Solidity

Currently, there is a dearth of Solidity developers. The increasing demand for Solidity developer jobs is evident. The language is efficient for developing smart contracts on multiple blockchain networks. As a result, enterprises working on smart contract functionalities could improve their productivity. However, there is a lack of Solidity developers.

The following reasons can offer a viable answer as to why Solidity is a popular choice for smart contract development: -It is a statically typed language, meaning that every variable has a pre-defined type that cannot be changed. This allows for more secure code, as type errors can be caught during compilation. -It is based on JavaScript, making it relatively easy to learn for those already familiar with the language. -It is the language used by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the most popular platform for smart contract development.

Support for Ethereum Virtual Machine, which facilitates execution of machine-level code created by Solidity.
Flexibility for compilation is another promising advantage with Solidity programming language. Developers can choose a command-line compiler on their PC or a Remix online compiler according to their preferences.
The most prominent factor for the increasing demand for Solidity developer roles is the consistent improvement of Solidity itself. New language updates introduce many new features alongside bug fixes for improving the experience of developers.

Popularity of Solidity

The functionalities of Solidity are also jumps and bounds ahead of other traditional programming languages. Before you pursue a job as a Solidity developer, there are a few things you should take into account. Most importantly, you need to be aware of the functionality of the Solidity programming language. It is one of the most popular choices for developing smart contracts and its functionality surpasses that of traditional programming languages.

The Solidity Developer Survey 2020 found that almost 65% of respondents had been using Solidity for over a year.

The majority of respondents in the survey said they used Solidity for personal projects as well as work. Over two-thirds said they used it exclusively for work.

In the survey, respondents placed Solidity as the third favorite programming language, behind JavaScript and Python. However, when taking into account the views of Solidity Developers in the 2020 survey, it is clear that Solidity is one of the most used programming languages. 21% of respondents in the survey saidSolidity was the most used programming language.

Summary

Although it may seem daunting, learning how to code smart contracts is simply a new way of thinking and writing code to help humans interact and share trust and value over the internet. You will need to be determined to succeed, and currently the market is lacking in smart contract developers. If you are willing to put in the effort, you will be rewarded with high pay and your skills will be highly sought after.