Why should you learn to build blockchain applications?

Last week we released the fourth lesson of CryptoZombies and continued to build a zombie army using the Ethereum programming language Solidity. Through this class, more than 9,000 people have used CryptoZombies and are more familiar with Decentralized Applications (DApps) development at Ethereum.

What we haven't explored yet is why you want to join this study? What can you get from it? Does this really make sense?

A well-established fact is that the current demand for blockchain developers (and often as blockchain engineers) is far more than supply, and this demand continues to grow over time.

Blockchain and Bitcoin are two of the top three fastest growing skills in the 2017 Upwork Quarterly Skills Index.

In this article, we'll look at some of the historical growth of similarly innovative platforms and some of the ways you can start making money as blockchain developers.

Lessons learned from the past: Google Play and the App Store

Let's take a look at some of the data in the two major app stores, Google Play and the App Store.

In March 2009, the Google Play Store (then called Android Market) had 2,300 apps on it. By the end of October 2010, this number had increased to 100,000. By February 2017, the number of apps on the Google Play app store was around 2.7 million.

The App Store shows similar growth:

App Store growth during 2008-2017

Will history repeat itself?

If the blockchain is really similar to the Internet in the early 1990s, then DApps is similar to the early stages of the app store. In the coming years, we will see a significant increase in DApp software developers.

I will extract a paragraph from the Wikipedia App Store (iOS) page.

The term app has become a popular buzzword; in January 2011, app was awarded the honor of being 2010’s “Word of the Year” [1]

Apply it to the DApp ecosystem and make bold predictions:

The term DApp has become a popular buzzword; in January 2019, DApp was awarded the honor of being 2018’s “Word of the Year”

The key point here is not whether the above prediction will be fulfilled, but when it will be fulfilled.

Do you really need to pay attention to this?

If you are excited about the words or things listed below:

Decentralization

Work with talented and passionate brains

Innovation

advanced technology

High salary (this is mainly because job demand is much higher than supply)

Then you should be familiar with blockchain development. Currently, individuals and startups and even larger companies [2] [3] are gradually bringing their own products to the blockchain industry, and they are actively looking for more employees to join their projects.

As a way for blockchain developers to make money

Based on your current skills, there are many ways to make money by building Dapp.

1. Build your own DApp and monetize it

Take CryptoKitties as an example, you can build a monetized DApp. There is huge potential here - CryptoKitties sold more than $12 million in the first month after its launch.

On DappRadar, you can see the volume of transactions being carried out by different DApps, and CryptoCountries currently tops the list with sales of $40 million over the past 7 days. Developers can get a 2-5% share in each transaction, so you should figure out what a profit opportunity to build your own DApp-based game.

In our next article, we'll dive into the different business models that can be used to make money in your DApp.

2. Get paid by contributing to open source projects

Gitcoin aims to promote the development of the open source community by attaching a reward for the Ethereum to github issues. Currently, there are already more than $8,000 attached to 20 rewards waiting to be picked up!

All you have to do is solve a problem, and if the reward submitter approves your plan, you will get paid in Ethereum through a smart contract.

How does Gitcoin work? | https://gitcoin.co

3. Create your own startup or cryptocurrency

Thanks to OpenZeppelin, it makes publishing an Ethereum token that is safe and reliable and can be used for value trading as easy as writing a few lines of code. After you complete the development of the token, you can raise funds through the ICO.

Here are the 10 lines of code used to create GustavoCoin (source: https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/how-to-create-token-and-initial-coin-offering-contracts-using-truffle-openzeppelin-1b7a5dae99b6):

Pragma solidity 0.4.19;

Import 'zeppelin-solidity/contracts/token/MintableToken.sol';

Contract GustavoCoin is MintableToken {

    String public name = "GUSTAVO COIN";

    String public symbol = "GUS";

    Uint8 public decimals = 18;

}

Of course, your project must have some value in order to raise the funds you need.

4. Working at a startup

If the time to set up your own startup is not mature, you can be hired as a developer in a company founded by someone else. There are many new projects that are always looking for developers. Many of these projects have raised millions of dollars through ICO and have a large budget to hire experienced developers.

You can take a quick look at AngelList and apply for a position that interests you.

Https://angel.co/blockchains/jobs

Because the needs of blockchain developers are so large, many of these positions can work remotely, which is a big attraction for many people.

5. Work as a freelancer

If you prefer a flexible, on-demand service approach, there will be a list of jobs available on potential freelance websites such as upwork.com or freelancer.com for potential projects that can work part-time or on a project basis.

You can search for job titles such as Solidity Developer or Blockchain Engineer on these sites to get an idea of the status of these positions.

6. Join a big company

Many large companies are continually recruiting developers to try to expand their own enterprise solutions.

Visa's position posted on LinkedIn

However, based on Visa's eight years of industry experience, either you are Satoshi Nakamoto or you can already drink Margarita on your own private island.

Usually these jobs are not for a fully open and decentralized system, so if you are a blockchain purist, this may not be your dish.

Ok, I was convinced. So how do I get started?

As more and more learning resources for writing these non-stop applications are made public, aspiring developers will be able to smoothly transition from traditional development to blockchain development.

For the Loom Network, we help achieve this by building communities around tools and tutorials for learning to build DApps on Ethereum, the fastest growing blockchain development platform.

Here's how we recommend you start learning about blockchain development:

Go to CryptoZombies.io, our interactive code school, which teaches you to write Ethereum DApps, by building your own encryption to collect games.

Join our telegraph community and join in the discussion of DApp development and scaling of the Ethereum crowd.

Check out our Medium page for additional articles on Solidity development.