FreeCodeCamp’s Solidity, Blockchain, Smart Contracts Beginner to Expert Course Summary, Part 1
A short Background
In December 2021, I decided to jump into the Web 3.0 world. The best way I know to learn something new is by active learning. I saw the course on YouTube. Published in September, it already had 1M views. What a bargain? 16 hours on FreeCodeCamp, which is an amazing channel. During the Christmas break, I started learning. Almost 3 months later, I’m writing a personal summary of what I’ve learned.
When I started the course, I had no idea how Blockchain works and had zero experience with Solidity. However, I’ve been coding for over 5 years.
Do you want to dive into Blockchain? Don’t you know where to begin? This course is an easy bet! Great teacher, a ton of practical experience, and a lot of fun are waiting for you! I still find it hard to believe that so much great content is available for FREE!
In the course, there is so much great content. Making a summary as a single article would be too much for a single sitting. So I’ll split it into a series of articles. Welcome to the 1st Part!
Disclaimer: In these articles, I’m sharing lessons learned. If you’re starting a journey into Web 3.0, you’ll find the articles useful. But if you’re experienced and find any inaccuracies, please leave a comment.
Let’s go!
Lesson 0: Welcome To Blockchain [Link]
Summary. This lesson is a 1-hour introduction to Blockchain. What’s more important, you meet Patrick. Immediately he became one of my favorite online teachers. He’s full of energy, always positive, and really funny! Just wait for the NFT Lesson… Or check out his YouTube Channel
Lessons Learned
- Cryptography is the main component of Blockchain functionality. There is the Blockchain 101 video that shows the basics of cryptography. I highly recommend watching it. You’ll get a better understanding of what’s happening on Blockchain.
- Ethereum is not the only Blockchain that uses Smart Contracts. However, many other protocols like Avalanche or Polygon are based on Ethereum. Thus understanding how to work on Ethereum is fundamental to understanding other solutions.
- Decentralization is the core principle of Blockchain. Probably this is the main reason why crypto is getting so much attention. There is no single instance that is in control. Node
- Other benefits of Blockchain:
- transparency: there is no hidden information. Everything is open source and visible to everybody
- trust minimized agreement: users don’t know who’s on the other side of transactions. They don’t have to trust them, because they trust the Smart Contract they’re using. Blockchain is trustless.
- immutability: once on Blockchain, always on Blockchain. It’s impossible to change, erase, or manipulate transactions.
- speed: transaction time on Blockchain is way faster compared to bank transfers.
New Terminology
- Ethereum: second most popular cryptocurrency. It was launched in 2015. Developers took the good things from Bitcoin and added Smart Contracts.
- Smart Contracts: written in a code set of instructions that live on Blockchain.
- Hybrid Smart Contracts: Smart Contracts with an off-chain component. It allows interaction with real-world data.
- Transaction Fee: every transaction on Blockchain costs money. It requires computational power called gas in a crypto world. The more computations, the more gas, the more expensive transaction. Unfortunately, the prices also increase if there is a lot of traffic on a Blockchain. Transactions on Ethereum cost a ridiculous amount of money.
- Dapp (Decentralized Application): applications that run on Blockchain. Often used interchangeably with Smart Contracts but they’re not exactly the same.
- DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization): an organization that has both a community and a Smart Contract.
- Node: a single instance in a decentralized network.
- Chainlink: a decentralized Oracle Network. Its goal is to solve The Oracle Problem. I don’t want to get into detail here as I’m still confused about this topic. The Oracle Problem occurs when we want to use real-world data. Blockchain is decentralized and it should stay like this. However, off-chain (real-world) data is centralized. We need a way to pass off-chain data into a Blockchain without losing decentralization. Chainlink provides solutions to achieve exactly that.
- Ethereum 2.0: a new version of Ethereum with many upgrades such as:
- migration from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) as a Consensus Mechanism
- Sharding: increasing the number of Blockchain running parallel on Ethereum
- The Beacon Chain: a Proof-of-Stake Blockchain that runs parallel to Ethereum
Final Thoughts
If you are new to the space, you may be terrified by the number of words you’ve never seen. Don’t worry! Many of them are new to me. I have little to no knowledge about them. My goal is to show you how much there is to discover. Blockchain is fascinating! Jump right in and enjoy the journey!
I’ll see you in Part 2!
Resources
GitHub Repo. Actually, this is another gem. All the code is on Github. Documentation is full of useful resources.
