In April during lockdowns, I decided to invest in learning Solidity. Given that I haven't seriously coded beyond HTML in almost 20 years, it was daunting 😨
But it doesn't have to be hard or scary to get started.
Here's how 👇
1/ Latest Solidity Documentation
Here's all the latest dev stuff/updates to @ethereum Solidity. I search for things in here a lot when I'm trying to see how to do something very specific. Don't try to read this like a book. Just search for things in it.
For me this was really great and fun. Starts from first principles and teaches via real smart contract examples. It cost only $14.99 and I did it in 3 weeks very casually. You could do it in less than a week (I have a day job!).
3/ @OpenZeppelin Github of audited Solidity contract templates
Fully audited, battle tested, and well documented. ERC20 and ERC721 (NFT) token contracts and more. Because they're so well explained, it's very easy follow once you understand the basics!
One of the beautiful things about crypto is that all of this is open source, so you can read through other projects' full code that in some cases have billions of $$$ in total value locked (TVL). I learned so much from these:
5/ Lastly, Remix is super easy for rapidly coding, prototyping, and testing your Solidity smart contracts functions, all within your browser. No need to learn or set anything else up until you're doing more sophisticated things (e.g., like building a UI).
6/ I hope that's helps and gets more people started! See? It wasn't that scary 😅
That was enough to get off the ground. Now I'm able to learn new things everyday by reading and talking to smarter people.
I wish someone had shared this with me! If I can do it, so can you 💪
7/ And if you end up building something awesome that you want to take into the world, DM me!
Note: Studied art, software design & economics in college—was a front-end designer & JavaScript coder when I was 19 but that was a *very* long time ago & didn’t continue as I went into finance for 15+ yrs
Technical, product & design mind but outdated coding skills prior to this
Note 2: It helps if you understand programming basics, particularly the basics of object oriented programming like Java/JavaScript, which I did but my skills were 20 years outdated.
You can learn this on @Codecademy for free in days:
2/ Is it nothing to think about? Or could it be laddering up to something more profound in 2021 and beyond in DeFi?
One view is that it's an innocuous thing (which could be true, for now). Another is that it'll take competitive strategy and game theory in crypto to a new level.
3/ I wrote a lot about competitive strategy in DeFi this year when @SushiSwap vampire attacked @UniswapProtocol via a fast follower fork. Below is my piece in @BanklessHQ in September about Fork Defense Strategies in DeFi.
0/ THREAD: Yesterday, we @ideocolab announced our new Startup Studio to accelerate the world's best blockchain startups, in partnership with over 20 leading organizations and protocols.
In this thread, I’ll share why and how we decided to do this.
2/ For many people in the #blockchain and #crypto community, this was the first time they've heard of @ideo, @ideocolab, or the fact that we've been working deeply in the blockchain/crypto space since early 2015 with many of the industry's leading crypto projects and people.
{THREAD} For a decentralized project to succeed, it needs:
1. Team 2. Vision 3. Governance & economic model 4. Plan 5. Capital 6. Service (usable in market) 7. Users
Not enough importance, energy, or discipline has been put into #7, nor how it affects #1-#6. I'll explain how...
1. Team.
Most projects don't have experienced product or design co-founders, or they hire a head of product or design too late.
Like startups today (e.g., Airbnb, Slack, Pinterest), bring them in at the beginning to balance deep tech with user-centric design.
2. Vision.
@m2jr looks for founding teams with "earned secrets," which often come from deep experience in the field working (& seeing pain points) with customers & users at a granular level. Teams & visions should be configured this way. How do we know X should be decentralized?
1/ For years, people have been waiting and hoping for crypto's "Netscape" moment. The gateway to the web that brought the internet to the main stream.
IMHO, looking for the Netscape for the #crypto space is not a relevant or applicable analogy. Here's why...
2/ The way people imagine crypto's "Netscape moment" is very literal: as a window, gateway, or browser (just like Netscape) to easily acquire, save, and use crypto and access the decentralized web.
3/ But that sounds a lot like a wallet and exchange, which already exists. And yet, even with these onramps and "browsers" into crypto, we haven't had that "Netscape moment" people are hoping for in terms of mass adoption.
1/ In the early 2000s, @ideo pioneered a process for venture development referred to as the "3 Circles" of Desirability, Viability & Feasibility (ideou.com/blogs/inspirat…). #crypto has a long way to go across all, but right now it is really struggling with the first: Desirability.
2/ Desirability is the question of "Do people want it?" and asks, what is the unique value proposition? How do people hear about, learn, try, buy, use, love, and share it? What are its functional but also emotional benefits? How is it 10x better than the current user experience?
3/ Iterating to product-market fit requires testing & ultimately proving at each stage of development that all three are true (it's desirable, feasible & viable) and work together. In the early stages of a venture, this means building evidence that they will be true in the future