Web3 Engineering (Part 1) 👾
A look at web3 tech qualities that make it interesting and different.
If you are anything like me, you may feel like this year (last year by now) the web3 / crypto space exploded, and you have loud friends and peers talking non-stop about it.
I personally know tons of engineers who now work on NFTs / blockchain games / dapps, and many who don’t but are looking at this space with interest and curiosity.
Notoriously, though, crypto has a steep learning curve. Many concepts look impenetrable unless you go down the proverbial rabbit hole and spend a solid amount of hours on them.
In fact, even though I have been aware and curious about this space for many years, I haven’t been able to dig into the tech side of it until recently. Or, more precisely, I tried in the past but couldn’t wrap my head around it.
The reason why I had a hard time is I lacked a proper mental model for this space. A general framework that gets the basics right, so that when I want to learn new concepts I can attach them to it with ease.
After months of research (and pain) I think I finally got it right in my head, so I am writing a primer on web3 engineering. It will be divided in two parts, with this being the first one.
This first part is about qualities that make web3 tech interesting and different. I will give you my take about why you should look into it, and why it might or might not be here to stay.
The second part will deep dive into the tech stack and development process. What are the most significant changes in the way you design an app? What shift of skills do you need to work on such apps? As always on Refactoring, this won’t be about a specific technology, but more around methods and practices.
In other words, the first part is about the why, the second is about the what and how.
I have not the pretence of covering any of these ideas in detail, as it would require hundreds of thousands of words. The goal here is to turn some of your unknown unknowns into — at least — known unknowns, so that if you want to study further, you know where to begin with.
Let’s dive in! 👇