How to Learn Web3 Development in 10 Steps (2023)

Written by Frederik B

Reviewed by Brady Werkheiser

Published on 2022-07-207 min read

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Web3 developer salaries are famously high in the blockchain industry, which makes learning web3 development a goal of many new and seasoned web2 developers.

According to Web3 Careers, Solidity developers earn up to $400,000 a year, and with remote-first work on globally distributed teams normal for many web3 startups, building in web3 is an attractive career choice for many developers. 

With so much excitement about blockchain technology and investments into web3 companies, developers are left asking how to learn web3 development and how to start working in the web3 industry.

Because web3 is a young vertical with rapidly changing technologies, becoming a blockchain developer can be challenging for people just starting their web3 journey.

In this article, we'll give you a 10-step guide to learning web3 development from following the best builders in crypto to learning through guided tutorials.

Step 1: Follow Web3 Devs on Twitter

Learning web3 development starts by finding experienced blockchain devs to learn what they are reading, the tools they are building with, and the types of projects they are developing.

Because Twitter is where crypto influencers share a lot of updates about their work, one of the best ways to learn is to follow web3 developers on Twitter. 

Some of our favorite crypto Twitter (CT) influencers for learning web3 include:‍

• @VitalikButerin - Co-founder of Ethereum

• @aeyakovenko - Co-founder of Solana

• @TimBeiko - core Ethereum developer leading many Ethereum updates 

Tools like TweetDeck or RSS can help you follow multiple feeds at once, and Twitter Lists are another way to organize the people you follow into different categories like Ethereum development, Solana development, or niche like DeFi and NFTs. 

We recommend searching by the niche you're interested in to find the best people to follow, and then looking at who they follow, retweet, and like tweets from to find additional relevant people in your desired niche.

Step 2: Subscribe to Web3 Devs on YouTube

In addition to Twitter, there's a growing number of web3 developers on YouTube. YouTube is an effective platform to visually demonstrate coding projects and to provide in-depth explanations of key concepts. Here are some of our favorites:

1. Web3 Foundation - official Web3 Foundation channel with tons of helpful content

2. Bankless - beginner-friendly uploads on NFTs, Ethereum, Bitcoin, DeFi, and more

3. Alchemy - Alchemy’s YouTube channel shows you how to build a staking application, how to verify a smart contract, and more video tutorials

4. Hashlips NFT - Hashlips is a popular NFT collection, but they also offer helpful educational videos, including on how to create your very own NFT collection

5. Patrick Collins - developer advocate Patrick Collins discusses smart contracts, blockchain, DeFi, Fintech, and programming languages

6. Nader Dabit - Nader offers highly technical videos for those looking to go a level deeper

7. Smart Contract Programmer - tens of thousands of budding developers turn to Smart Contract Programmer’s 200+ videos on Solidity 0.8 and Viper 0.8.

Visual learners will find these web3 YouTubers to be a great resource for improving their skills because of the topics they cover, how clearly they communicate challenging topics for beginners, and the tips to share to speed up the web3 learning process.

Step 3: Sign Up for Web3 Developer Newsletters

Finding the best resources for learning web3 development is a time consuming task that is solved by subscribing to crypto newsletters that aggregate news, web3 tools, and updates for developers.

Some of our favorite curated news feeds for learning about web3 development include:

• The Block Crypto - daily news roundup by market analysis website The Block

• EthHub Weekly - weekly newsletter about Ethereum with insights from devs

• Week in Ethereum - learn about The Merge, node upgrades, EIPs, and more

• The Daily Ape - Telegram newsletter with threads, deep dives, and more

This list is just a starting point for developers who want to stay up-to-date on the latest in web3 development, and there are many other useful newsletters out there.

Step 4: Join a Web3 Discord Server

Discord is a chat app popular among gamers, but it's also a place to find web3 development communities. Most Web3 projects feature their Discord profile links on their landing pages and social media accounts. 

For instance, the Ethereum Discord server has over 30,000 members, and the Alchemy Discord server has channels on general development, NFT development, feature requests, and more, with over 42,000 members.

In addition to project-specific servers, there are also general Discord servers for learning web3 development like Buildspace and CryptoDevHub. Buildspace for example boasts over 130,000 members! Web3 dev servers are perfect places to ask questions, find collaborators, or just chat with other like-minded individuals about improving web3 development skills.

Many of these servers also have channels for #jobs, #events, and #resources, which can be a good way to find new opportunities or learning resources. Contributing to a Web3 project's Discord, such as by answering users' questions, is also a great way to get involved and start building your portfolio.

Step 5: Join a Web3 Developer DAO

Joining one or more web3 developer DAOs is another way to meet people, discover exciting projects, collaborate with new teams, and build your portfolio, as most of these communities need volunteers to help support the community.

A DAO decentralized autonomous organization) is an organization that's run using decentralized governance. In other words, it's an organization that's owned and operated by its members. 

These developer-centric DAOs are usually open to anyone who wants to join and they're a good way to get more involved with a project you're passionate about.

These are some of our favorite developer-focused DAOs for learning web3:

• Developer DAO - over 5,000 members are learning Web3 together

• LearnWeb3DAO - over 25,000 members are learning through 4 learning tracks

• DXDAO - this DAO uses reputation-based governance to coordinate funds and operate products such as a multi-chain AMM and an IDO launchpad

Joining one of these DAOs will bring you closer to the Web3 developers community.

Step 6: Star the Best GitHub Repos

GitHub is the largest code repository in the world and it's where open-source web3 development happens. If you want to learn from the best developers who are building in public, following (and starring) popular web3 GitHub repositories will help you find Web3 builders.

Some of our favorite GitHub repos for learning how to develop on blockchains are:

• foundry-rs/foundry - a suite of Ethereum application development tools

• OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts - repo for launching Ethereum NFTs

• Rainbow-me/Rainbowkit - integrate wallets with your DApps

Starring repositories allows you to get notifications whenever new code is pushed, which helps you stay up-to-date on the latest developments. You can also browse through code to see how experienced developers solve problems.

Another way to discover popular repositories is to search for topics like Ethereum, DeFi, or NFTs and sort the repos by the most starred projects in GitHub’s Topic section.

Step 7: Complete a Web3 Tutorial

Following tutorials is the next step to learn the basics and get your feet wet with coding. They usually don't require prior knowledge and you can do them at your own pace. 

Once you've completed a couple web3 developer tutorials, you should have a better understanding of how web3 works and be able to start building simple applications. 

Some of our favorite tutorials for learning how to build web3 dApps include: 

• How to Create an ERC-20 Token - This simple Alchemy tutorial shows you how to deploy your own ERC-20 token on the testnet

• Build a Web3 App with Solidity - This Buildspace tutorial uses MetaMask and Hardhat to show you how to create a smart contract, connect a wallet, interact with the contract, and deploy

• Hardhat Tutorial for Beginners - This tutorial by the developer tool Hardhat explains how to create a project, configure a node.JS environment, use Ethers.js, and develop, debug, and deploy smart contracts 

While these tutorials won't make you an expert web3 developer, they should give you a good start in understanding how to build dApps.

Step 8: Sign Up for a Web3 Developer Course

Courses help aspiring web3 devs to go deep on a particular topic by learning from experienced instructors. There are free and paid web3 developer courses, and while each bootcamp varies in the amount of prerequisite knowledge required, they quickly level up your developer skills. 

Some of our favorite courses and bootcamps for learning web3 development include: 

• Alchemy University - a free, 7-week Ethereum developer bootcamp and 3-week Javascript for web3 crash course.

• Road to Web3 - This is a free, 10-week blockchain development course that teaches you how to make NFT smart contracts, token swap dApps, an NFT marketplace, a DeFi dApp, and more

• Web3 University - This collection of free blockchain development resources offers a variety of lesson tracks and featured resources

• Sol Dev - If you’re looking to develop on Solana, this free course will teach you get started on Solana, how to swap tokens with Rust, and more.

Courses usually come with assignments, so you can immediately start putting your new skills to use. They also tend to have active communities where you can ask questions and get feedback from other students.

When you're first starting out, it can be helpful to build a portfolio of small projects to show off your skills. This doesn't have to be anything fancy, even a simple Dapp or smart contract will do. 

Once you have a few projects under your belt, you can start adding them to your resume or LinkedIn profile. If you want to take things a step further, you can create a personal website or blog to showcase your work.

Some of these courses come with certificates that you can add to your resume or LinkedIn profile. In the Web3 world, there are also Proof-of-Knowledge NFTs and POAPs, which are non-transferable NFTs that can be earned by completing different tasks, which can be used as proxies for resumes. They're also great conversation starters when networking with other web3 developers.

Step 9: Attend a Web3 Hackathon

Hackathons help devs learn web3 through meeting developers, learning new web3 skills, and building a portfolio. Hackathons have varying durations, from a few hours to a few weeks, and they usually have a range of prizes for the best projects across different categories like Gaming and infrastructure.

Some of the best web3 hackathons for learning include: 

• ‍ETHDenver’s BUIDLathon - this annual event has both in-person and virtual participants, who compete for separate rewards pools.

• Solana Summer Camp - the latest Hackathon in Solana’s series of events for onboarding developers learning web3 development.

• Polygon BUIDLit - build dApps, infrastructure, and other Polygon applications

You don't need to be an experienced developer to participate in a hackathon. In fact, many of them are geared towards beginners looking to learn how to build in web3.

Even if you don't win any prizes, you'll still walk away with new friends and a lot of knowledge about blockchain development. Who knows, maybe you'll find your next co-founder or startup.

Step 10: Build Something on Alchemy

Alchemy is a leading provider of web3 infrastructure that is highly scalable, reliable, and accurate. Developers that build on Alchemy get access to some of the best blockchain development tools, APIs, services, and customer support to successfully build dApps. 

Some of Alchemy’s products include: 

• Supernode - A world-class API that makes it easy to interact with blockchain data, accounts, and smart contracts

• Alchemy Build - A suite of developer tools to prototype, debug, and ship products

• Alchemy Monitor - A dashboard to check app health, performance, and activity

• NFT API - An API to fetch NFTs, metadata, prices, owners, collections, and more

• SDK - A lightweight, modular SDK that encapsulates common usage patterns

• Alchemy Notify - Webhooks to get notifications for external, internal, & token transfers, mined and dropped transactions.

If you're serious about becoming a web3 developer, Alchemy is the best place to start. 

Now that you’ve learned about web3 development, it’s time to start building your first project.

To get started, create a free Alchemy account, and build something amazing!