Welcome to the Ethereum Developer Bootcamp 👋

# Welcome to the Ethereum Developer Bootcamp 👋 We're so excited to finally release this long-awaited content to the world. This bootcamp used to be worth $3000 per person! 😱 Alchemy and ChainShot teamed up to make this bootcamp **completely free** in an effort to further bolster the web3 development ecosystem. The Ethereum Developer Bootcamp has taught hundreds of developers across the world how to build smart contracts and dApps on Ethereum. We are so excited to see you build the next Facebook and Microsoft... 🛠 ## Best Practices to Maximize the Value of Bootcamp 🚀 Here’s a quick list of recommendations to maximize your AU student experience: ### 1. **Community, Community, Community!** 🏘 You are not expected to tackle *all* this content alone! Get involved, be active, reach out if you need help! Find your niche, find like-minded folks... then build cool shit with them - this is the way. **"The best way to learn is by teaching.”** If you see others who are stuck, help them out! This will not only get you street cred within the AU community but also, will help *you* solidify your own understanding of these concepts. Show us what you got! > Make sure to [join the AU Discord](https://discord.gg/alchemy-university) to connect and work together with peers! ### 2. **Choose Your Own Pace** 🏃‍♂️ AU is releasing most of its content for *asynchronous* learning, meaning, the course is completed at the pace that you choose. However, AU instructors will be hosting weekly town halls and community get-togethers in the AU Discord which will follow a 7-week structure. You are encouraged to join these sessions and keep up with the content in a 7-week format. > Note: for early access, we will be releasing the content on a week-by-week basis! ### 3. **You Get Out What You Put In** ♻️ Many folks ask us what is to be expected once they actually complete the content. The truth is, **it really depends on the student**. Generally, those that invest time for true learning and community networking, get out 2x to 10x the value. ### 4. LEARN! 📚 Be excited to learn! Go into rabbit holes. Adopt the student mindset. Read and research things that make you passionate. These technologies can change the world one day, so learn with excitement and patience. ### 5. If You Get Stuck... 🚫 ... that is a normal part of process! Our suggestion whenever you run into any issues is always a set flow: 1. **DYOR** - Do Your Own Research! Google around, see you if can find any similar issues to yours and debug that way. > We are not suggesting this first because we do not want to help you (of course we do!), rather, true developers are best at unblocking themselves and finding the resources they need dynamically. DYOR is possibly the #1 skill of all developers, web3 or not. So, get good at DYOR and you will get good at development! If you don't find anything with DYOR... 2. **Look to the AU Discord channels and ask the comunity for help!** Remember: thousands of students are taking these courses concurrently. The instructors will always look to help, but since instructors are much fewer, your second point of contact should be the broader AU community. ### 6. Give Us Feedback 👀 Remember, this is a beta release (aka: Early Access)! We've worked really hard to get the content and website in really good shape but it is inevitable some folks will encounter bugs here and there. If you ever run into any bug or issue, make sure to select the `Give us feedback!` button in your AU Dashboard. You will then be able to specify the nature of the bug and report it. We so appreciate your help, Early Access community, and patience as we craft this to be the greatest bootcamp in the world! ![feedback-sc](https://res.cloudinary.com/divzjiip8/image/upload/v1669152587/alchemyu/Screen_Shot_2022-11-22_at_1.28.52_PM.png) ## Content Format 📚 Alchemy University content contains a mix of instructional videos, research articles, guides, tutorials and coding challenges. The Ethereum Developer Bootcamp is 7 weeks worth of content. Each day covers a new topic and the intention is for the concepts to slowly but surely build up. The content within each day is typically separated into: - **1 instructor Loom video** - **1 article covering the same material as the instructor video** - **1 coding challenges** - **1 supplemental reading** - **1 weekend project** (per week) The instructor videos and articles are meant to be introductions to concepts further explored in that module’s guides and coding challenges. > It is completely up to you whether you want to use both the video and text article, or just euther one. They both cover about the same content! For coding challenges, you will also be working in the proprietary **Alchemy IDE**, a fully in-browser experience meant to get you up and running with coding JS, Solidity and more without the need for any environment setup. ## What Can I Do After The Course? 💯 As mentioned above, **you get out what you put in**. Many bootcamp graduates have found success in various areas: - Some choose to dedicate their new skills to win all the [ETHGlobal](https://ethglobal.com/) hackathons around the world. - Some use their newly-acquired skills to apply to web3 positions at companies like [OpenZeppelin](https://www.openzeppelin.com/), [Uniswap](https://uniswap.org/), [Alchemy](https://alchemy.com/), [OpenSea](https://opensea.io/) and more. - Some join high-impact DAOs like [Developer DAO](https://www.developerdao.com/) and [Raid Guild](https://www.raidguild.org/). - Some choose to start their own companies. One example is [Stader Labs](https://staderlabs.com/), who recently [raised at a $450M valuation](https://www.vccircle.com/crypto-staking-platform-stader-labs-raises-12-mn-valuation-jumps-to-450-mn). The sky is the limit. Start thinking early of what you want to optimize for! ## Weekly Content Breakdown 📝 The Ethereum Developer Bootcamp content is intended to build on itself week after week. Here is a rough outline of what to expect week-to-week: #### **Week 1** We first start by covering cryptography fundamentals. What are hash functions? What makes them special? How are they important to blockchains? Then, with the context of having learned cryptographic primitives like hashing, we dive into what makes blockchains work: consensus mechanisms. Basically, how the heck do decentralized networks agree on what is what. Week 1 ends with a project for the weekend: using what you learned over the week to create a secure public-private key server. #### Week 2 In this week, we start covering some of the data structures used to make blockchains work, mainly lots of trees! We also compare the UTXO model that Bitcoin uses to keep track of balances versus Ethereum's Account-based model. #### Week 3 This is the first week where we take a break from the heavy computer science fundamentals covered in Week 1 and Week 2 (cryptography, p2p networks, data structures, etc) and *finally* start to focus on Ethereum. We cover the difference between read and write requests and how these requests are sent/received (back as responses) using the well-known JSON-RPC interface loaded up on the standard Ethereum node. #### Week 4 We cover smart contract fundamentals (why are smart contracts cool?) as well as how to program them using Solidity. #### Week 5 Further mastery of the Solidity language. #### Week 6 Further mastery of the Solidity language. Advanced concepts covered. #### Week 7 Exploration of smart contract use cases, using applications like Aave, Uniswap and Chainlink to deepen learning and gain inspiration for student projects. At this point, students should be starting to ideate their own projects. ## Ready to dive in?... YOU GOT THIS!