Blockchain Developer Monthly Newsletter ⛓

The 4th Edition of Blockchain Developer Monthly!

Hey everyone! Markus here. If you've been here before, you can skip this section. If it's your first time, keep reading.

What's this all about?!

Well there are lots of blockchain newsletters out there that will hype you up on the latest NFT project or predicting some new token that's going to the moon. Maybe not so much in the last few months given NFT volumes have fallen off the cliff... but you get the idea!

But it's hard to find any that actually go deep into things that are relevant for developers working in the space.

That's why I created this - a newsletter dedicated to developers who want to stay up-to-date and excel in the world of web3.

In case you aren't already convinced... Being a solidity, blockchain, & ethereum developer is a fantastic career option.

Regardless of whether you love or hate crypto, there's no denying blockchain is an exciting technology with tons of job opportunities. You can work around the world, you get to work on solutions to big problems, and you're on the cutting edge of the tech sector.

But things move FAST.

So staying up-to-date with the constantly evolving ecosystem can be tough. If you're still reading this, maybe you want to be a top-performing developer within the web3 landscape, but probably don’t have time to find, read, and synthesize all the articles, videos and podcasts that come out each month.

So this monthly Blockchain Developer Newsletter was born.

I keep you up-to-date with what's happening within the web3 industry, without wasting your valuable time, by curating the most important articles, guides, news, resources, podcasts and videos from the past month.

This newsletter was inspired by Andrei's Web Developer Monthly + Python Monthly and Daniel's Machine Learning Monthly.

Ok, let's dive into this issue. I hope you enjoy!

Let's dive in. Here's what you missed in October 2022 as a Blockchain Developer…

1. Devcon 6: The Biggest Crypto Conference (so far...)

Crypto has had a rocky year, but that doesn't mean the ecosystem has slowed down. This past month Devcon 6, the biggest crypto conference ever, was held in Bogota, Colombia.

Lots of great people, talks and events. It was my third Devcon and the best one yet!

If you've never attended Devcon, there's tons of side events and parties organized by the community, such as rAAVE, a rave organized by the lending protocol Aave and the ETH hackathon EthBogota for which you can find a great recap here.

2. The Oscars of Devcon

Speaking of Devcon... The best part is the amazing presentations jammed full of information for blockchain developers. Luckily for you, you can watch them all in the Devcon Archive.

But I know you're strapped for time, so here are my picks for the 2022 Waas Awards, a.k.a. my favorite picks that you should watch now to be on the cutting edge of blockchain development:

🏆 Best Presentation (Overall)

The award goes to...My Mother Hates Your Project (And Mine)! Why We Need More Soft Skills In Crypto.

This is a phenomenal presentation with a clear message: be creative and don’t suck at soft skills.

🏆 Best Presentation (Solidity)

There were so many amazing presentations that it's an 8-way tie! (You may be asking "How can that be allowed? This doesn't seem like a very legitimate awards show..." and the answer is that these are my awards so I make the rules 😏)

The award goes to...

1. What Would Solidity 1.0 and 2.0 Look Like? Sets out potential new features Solidity might have in the future.
2. Technical Details of the Solidity Compiler. Deep dive of the Solidity Compiler and potential new features.
3. Better Solidity Support in VSCode by Hardhat. A look at what this relatively new extension might look like in the future.
4. 5 Smart Contract Patterns I Wish More Devs Would Use. Provides some useful patterns to follow when developing your smart contracts.
5. Underhanded Solidity. Delves into interesting issues with contracts.
6. What's New in Remix. Sets out the latest updates for the Remix IDE.
7. Build Your First Contract with the Wizard of OZ. A very cool tool that makes the usage of Openzeppelin contracts easier.

🏆 Best Presentation (Ethereum)

This was a 2-way tie! (If you haven't figured it out yet, there are no rules for these awards...).

And the award goes to...

1. Decentralizing Infura. A commonly known issue of centralization in Ethereum these days is Infura. This provides a great overview of their plans towards decentralization.
2. Stateless Ethereum: How Verkle Trees Make Ethereum Lean and Mean. Describes the better version of Merkle Trees and how they can help Ethereum.

🏆 Best Presentation (Variety)

And the award goes to...

1. Thinking Like an Auditor to Develop Safer Smart Contracts. This is not yet online at time of publication (hopefully soon), but it's a great presentation that gives you a new perspective of smart contracts.
2. How to Not Be Worth Kidnapping. Interesting thoughts on how to stay safe.
3. How to Stay Up To Date With Web3 Technologies. A nice little tool currently in development that itself provides an overview of different crypto ecosystems and tools.

3. New Layer 1 Chain Launch: Aptos

A new layer 1 chain launched called Aptos.

It had funding from some big players, but the launch itself was somewhat questionable, ranging from technical issues to not publishing tokenomics before listing the token on exchanges. It remains to be seen how much adoption Aptos will get.

4. Interesting Finds & Tools

• Beginner's Guide to Polynomial Commitments: this guide is really helpful for beginners learning polynomial commitments. But fair warning: it's still not going to be that easy to understand! But that's half the fun, right?
• Debugging Transactions Tool: this provides an overview of existing transaction decoders for testnets, very useful to debug transactions.
• Root Cause Analysis: here's a root cause analysis from past DeFi incidents.
• EIP-2535 Finalized: EIP-2535 is now finalized. I’ve written a guide on it previously here.
• Generalized Property Tests for ERC4626 Vaults: a standardized way to test your contracts if you're trying to make them ERC-4626 compliant.
• New Solidity Patterns Repo: useful-solidity-patterns: new repo with a collection of some useful Solidity patterns.

On a personal note, I joined the HackWasm hackathon, the first ever CosmWasm hackathon in the world and made 3rd place 🙌. Think of it as Solidity smart contracts, but written in Rust for Cosmos blockchains.

See you next month!

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Blockchain Developer Monthly.

Something missing? Have an idea of what to include in a future post? Let me know.

See you next month,
Markus

By the way, I teach people how to code in Solidity and get hired as a Blockchain Developer in the most efficient way possible. Come check out a few of our Blockchain & Web3 Courses below and try out some of the free preview lessons.