Week 6 of the boot camp experience has come to a close, you can find the technical recap here. It's also the end of my blockchain-focused learning and I'll be moving into smart contracts starting tomorrow. Unfortunately, I was not able to hold any informational interviews this week so I don't have anything to report from those, I do have more lined up already. It was a good wrap-up week for learning blockchain fundamentals and I'm looking forward to diving deeper into smart contracts now. 

Let's get into what I learned though, and if you're new here this is a weekly blog series where I reflect on what I'm learning while I go from coding newbie to working in web3. I'm also leaving this behind for others who might be interested in creating their own pathway like I am. 

Articles

I tweet every day about at least one web3 article, here are the biggest takeaways from those articles this week;

• Blockchain seems to have an ever-growing list of possible use cases in nearly every industry
• The Blockchain Trilemma establishes that only 2 of the 3 focuses can ever be achieved at one time (security, decentralization, scalability)
• To solve the trilemma, a combination of Layer 1 and 2 solutions must be utilized
• The 4 logical components of a blockchain ecosystem are;
  • Node Application
  • Shared Ledger
  • Consensus Algorithm
  • Virtual Machine
• The 4 components of a blockchain network are;
  • Blocks
  • Chain
  • Node
  • Master Node
• This technology lacks widespread understanding which in turn translates to a lack of widespread adoption
• There are 4 kinds of nodes;
  • Full Nodes
  • Lightweight Nodes
  • Miner Nodes
  • Listening Nodes
• A nonce (number only used once) is added to an encrypted block in a blockchain and is the first number a miner is looking for
• A hash function is used for security, turns input into a uniform length and structure, and makes it easy to id transactions.

And you can find my sources here;

• The growing list of applications and use cases of blockchain technology in business and life
• The Blockchain Trilemma: Fast, Secure, and Scalable Networks
• The Logical Components of Blockchain
• Blockchain Technology Explained- Components and Applications
• Future of Blockchain: How Will It Revolutionize The World In 2022 & Beyond!
• What Is a Blockchain Node and How Is It Used in Cryptocurrency?
• Nonce
• What is a hash function in a blockchain transaction?

What's Next?

I feel like I've learned all the basics I could at this point from a non-developer viewpoint, so I'm feeling confident in moving on to the next subject from my roadmap. I have a lot of interest in smart contracts, already strongly believing that they will continue to evolve and become standard across most industries as a method of doing business and securing agreements between private individuals. I'll also have to start including some prep materials in my study time for using GitHub as a team and learning how to build dApps because I'm putting a team together for our first hackathon and we're looking at pursuing the Chainlink Spring 2022 hackathon. 

If you'd like to join the learning community I'm building on Discord for web3, you can find the link for that here. It's a space that I am trying to build for myself and others to share their growing knowledge of all things web3. 

You can also find me here:

LinkedIn | GitHub | Twitter |  My Website