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Getting Started on Ethereum

Getting Started on Ethereum

FEBRUARY 12, 2023 · CRYPTO · In Progress

Scratch notes from the road into blockchain development — the courses, the community, the install pain, and what to actually study first.

This document won't be maintained as the ecosystem changes constantly — treat it as a snapshot of my notes from the time I was getting up to speed.

01 · The Path

So you want to be a blockchain developer?

A solid starting reference: tr3y.io / how2bloccchain.

What blockchain devs commonly work with

  • Blockchains
  • Smart Contracts
  • Solidity
  • Truffle
  • Web3
  • React.js

Realistic timeframe

Aggressive if you already have technical or development background — assume 10–20 hours/week of focused study.

1–3 MONTHS

Possible work on a small NFT project or rug-pull ERC20 (your choice).

3–6 MONTHS

Small funded startup — more legitimate projects.

6–12 MONTHS

Larger or mid-size company, legitimate business.

Crypto Devs community on Discord

Highly recommend joining — but watch for scams in DMs.

Crypto Devs Discord

02 · Online Training

Self-paced courses.

Faster ramp, less brand recognition. Bigger employers may want more proof of knowledge, but these get you operational quickly.

Core Fundamentals

03 · University Track

Fast-track university bootcamps.

More traditional, well-known brands. Mostly FinTech-flavored:

04 · Solidity

Solidity training.

05 · In Their Words

A working dev's advice.

"You should start with Solidity. Remix is pretty popular. People use Hardhat as well, but I prefer Remix. remix.ethereum.org"

"Also, if you're going to be doing web3 functions you should get caught up on Linux servers, so you'll know how to deploy the web3 on the backend."

"There is a test network for both Polygon and Ethereum, so you can make free contracts with those. Just Google the stuff — learning material is slim right now since this is so new."

"To access web3 and set it up on Linux, you must build an Ethereum node, or go to quicknodes.com and get a membership. The free option has limited calls so you can learn and get started, but if you have the means it's best to run your own node."

06 · Setup

Install an Ethereum dev environment.

Follow along with this free YouTube tutorial. In my case I installed Fedora in a VM using Parallels on macOS:

  • →Install Parallels — smoothest onboarding.
  • →I had major performance issues using VirtualBox, even after installing VBox Tools.
  • →Install Fedora from the quick menu.
  • →Install dependencies from ethdocs.org.

Clone & install dependencies

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum.git
cd cpp-ethereum
dnf install boost-devel leveldb-devel curl-devel libmicrohttpd-devel miniupnpc-devel gmp-devel

Install Truffle via Snap

sudo dnf install snapd
sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap
# Reboot
sudo snap install truffle --beta

Download and run Ganache, install Sublime Text, add Ethereum/Solidity syntax highlighting, then:

npm install
npm install solc
sudo npm install -g truffle@5.1.39
sudo npm install solc-js@0.5.0
truffle version
Important: if truffle compile fails — check the versions, reboot, and if it's still broken, uninstall and reinstall truffle and solc globally.

07 · Fundamentals

Study the fundamentals.

Topics worth studying

Consensus algorithms Smart contracts Transactions / Gas / Prices Miner incentives & security PoW vs PoS Token standards Sharding

Written by Bryan Totty · Feb 2023

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