Thread by @henrlihenrli

"Hey, how do I get started building on StarkNet?"

I often get asked this question, so here is a thread full of links.

From total noob to on chain wizard 👇

First of all, if you are totally new in web3, you'll need some background knowledge.

My favorite picks are still "Mastering Bitcoin" and "Mastering Ethereum", by @aantonop .

Both lay the foundations you'll need in your dev journey

github.com/bitcoinbook/bi…

Then, if you are new to smart contract programming, I'd recommend this tutorial.

It showcases simple functionalities one by one, and will get you to read & interact with smart contracts on StarkNet in order to grasp how they work.
github.com/starknet-edu/s…

If you already know how to program smart contracts and want to get into Cairo specifically, I'd recommend following this same tutorial

BUT

by following exercice 14 directly. Write a contract that validates all the exercices in one shot. I dare you.
github.com/starknet-edu/s…

Another excellent entry point to Cairo and StarkNet is StarkLings by @OnlyDust_xyz .

It is interactive and very well maintained, and the team at Only Dust will make your journey in the StarkNet ecosystem a pleasure
github.com/onlydustxyz/st…

Then let's talk about smart contract primitives you might be looking for.

How do you deploy an ERC20 on StarkNet?

Well, there's a tutorial for that. Note that it is made for people NOT familiar with ERC20, it's quite easy to get started
github.com/starknet-edu/s…

Same for ERC721: This tutorial is an introduction to how ERC721 tokens are designed and work, and how to customize and deploy one on StarkNet.

github.com/starknet-edu/s…

So far, we've seen "Doing stuff that you can do on Ethereum, on StarkNet".

What about the rest? Where is the good stuff, for hungry web3 people?

What can you do with StarkNet that you can't do anywhere else?

Let's start with cross layer communication. Design your own L1 <-> L2 bridge with this tutorial.

Burn tokens on a layer, mint them on the other one.
Send instructions, data or whatever you fancy.
github.com/starknet-edu/s…

Then let's talk about account abstraction.

There is no such thing as an EOA on StarkNet. Every account is a smart contract.
Scratch everything you thought you knew about UX and security trade offs on the blockchain.

Check this tutorial
github.com/starknet-edu/s…

Leverage computational power in your smart contracts.

Most people think "Scalability = cheap txs". What about "scalability = more complex txs"?

Physics on chain, anyone?
Explore this game github.com/Matchbox-DAO/f… and peer into the unknown

By this point, you'll need proper tools to debug your contracts.
Check out how to add breakpoints into your smart contracts
github.com/starknet-edu/s…

Do you want more magic?
How about trustlessly importing state from another blockchain into StarkNet

This is not a tutorial per se, but check out Fossil
github.com/OilerNetwork/f…

Maybe you are now wondering "But how does this all work?"

Explore the maths behind StarkNet, and StarkNet's inner working, with Basecamp.

github.com/starknet-edu/b…

What about Cairo?
Cairo is NOT a smart contract programming language.
It's a general purpose programming language, which allow you to write provable programs. Amongst which, smart contracts.
Explore the doc cairo-lang.org/docs/hello_cai… and use the playground
cairo-lang.org/playground/

"But I want moar maths"

There you go. Anatomy of a Stark is a great ressource
aszepieniec.github.io/stark-anatomy/

"How does the prover work?"

Write your own prover with this tutorial, and find out
starkware.co/stark-101/