AMA: Blockchain's Role in a Changing World

AMA: Blockchain's Role in a Changing World

Table of contents

No heading

No headings in the article.

Introduce yourself and your role in the Blockchain community, how you got into the space and how its been for you as a lady in tech

My name is Sharon Jebitok, I’m a software developer but in the blockchain space as a smart contract developer focusing on building my solidity skills. I got to learn about bitcoin in 2018 when I was sitting next to a friend of mine back then who happened to be checking the localbitcoins.com site that was my first time seeing the word bitcoin and from there I grew my curiosity about it. I couldn’t ask my friend for more details about it. So I started looking more into bitcoin and since I was active on Twitter at that time I decide to follow people who were talking more about bitcoin like Anthony Pompliano among others. During that time I learned that bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and is under blockchain technology.

My curiosity just grew over time I understood how valuable bitcoin is. At that time one bitcoin was about Ksh 500, 000 up to 800, 000 and I thought one has to buy a whole bitcoin in order to hold some. So I was intrigued to find alternatives ways of being in the blockchain space instead of investing and that’s when I found out that bitcoin code is open-source and it requires developers to contribute to it. I felt this option was good for me but I had to build my skills to become a software developer.

I had just graduated from campus that year and I thought I only needed to go back to school to learn computer science in order to be a developer. Towards the end of 2019, I came across BootCamp training on Twitter. I checked their website and I was impressed by the courses they were offering especially the full-stack software developer course. From there I started learning software development and still trying to understand general about blockchain, how bitcoin works, and P2P trading among others.

In 2021 I started attending short courses and hackathons linked to blockchain development. The main aim was to get the basics of solidity, smart contract development, and different Blockchain networks and use-cases. At the start of this year is where I took learning smart contract development seriously and it's been an amazing experience. Hoping to still grow my skills and eventually get involved in Web3 stuff more.

Being a lady in the tech space has been amazing especially since tech and mostly blockchain communities are open to everyone no matter your gender, race, age, employment status, or native language. Most communities also have a code of conduct that allows every feel free and welcome.

What is blockchain's role in the next generation of the Internet

Blockchain plays a major role in transforming the financial and economic growth of every nation and individual all over the world. With blockchain main use-cases like:

Cryptocurrencies, majorly Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin is highly likely to be adopted as legal tender for most countries or local governments in the coming years like El Salvador and states like Miami, Florida, etc in the USA that already use cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin already as means of tax payment, tax-evasion for bitcoin miners and legal tender for the case of El Salvador.

Ethereum blockchain is highly used in smart contract development majorly on blockchain use-cases like Decentralized finance(Defi) that enable modern-day banking where people of different races, gender, work status, age, etc can easily access staking, lending, and other banking services over the blockchain.

Entertainment is at the center of our day-to-day lives and with the rise of blockchain use-cases like the Metaverse and NFTs that have been highly receptive by artists, musicians, and a lot of people in society. The Non-Fungible Tokens(NFTs) push for the interaction of products like art, music, real estate, etc that have intellectual property rights and have it represented as NFTs over the internet(blockchain) and owners can sells and buyers can resell or HODL to get the value of the non-fungible tokens.

The blockchain-driven metaverse on the other hand is taking game development/gaming and NFTs to the next level and bringing virtual reality into life by introducing the users to the virtual worlds and bringing user-generated content as key as that’s what is driving the world at the moment.

The blockchain is generating career and opportunities for the next generation of the internet through the chance for individuals to come up with ideas or build projects that use blockchain technology and can be used by other people or in real-day life. These careers include smart contract developers, UI/UX designers, cloud computing experts, DevOps engineers, cyber-security engineers/auditors, marketers, blockchain consultants, startup founders, DAO contributors, Angel Investors, gamers, educators, etc

How is blockchain a trust machine and how does it enable transparency and collaboration

Blockchain features make blockchain a trust machine as all transactions are recorded on a public ledger that anyone can access, transactions on the blockchain like bitcoin are peer-to-peer no third parties, the data on the blockchain are immutable, blockchain is not owned by any owner the code on the blockchain are open-source.

What is distributed ledger technology all about

Bitcoin uses distributed ledger technology i.e distributed storage, and public ledgers (it's open to everyone), prevents double-spending and is immutable to hacks difficult for hackers to modify transactions. Even though blockchain is prone to hacks it's minimal, and smart contract code undergoes a lot of smart contract audits before deploying on the main net to prevent this.

You said you are a smart contracts developer. What exactly are smart contracts and how did they come about in the 1st place

In 1994, Nick Szabo wrote an introduction to smart contracts, and in 1996 he wrote smart contracts as building blocks for digital markets built on automatic, cryptographic secure processes.

Smart contracts use-cases started getting popular when Vitalik Buterin and other founders of Ethereum blockchain came up with Solidity the smart contract development programming language that aimed at writing and building smart contracts. From that time we started seeing use-cases like tokens, DAOs, etc.

A smart contract is a small program that runs on the Ethereum blockchain which makes it different from other programs. They’re immutable, censorship-resistant, and don’t need servers, safe and easy transfer of money. They are also expensive to run(gas fees), slow to interact with smart contracts, and limited capabilities.

From your understanding of what are decentralized applications and what functionality do they have

Decentralized Applications(dApps) are applications that have their backend as a smart contract written using Solidity, Rust, or Clarity, and the frontend is made out of languages or frameworks like React, HTML, CSS & Javascript for the web or React-Native, Flutter, Java, etc for Mobile.

The front-end of the dApps is connected to the smart contract through libraries like Ethers.js, Web3.js, etc, the ABI generated when deploying the smart contract, and the environment variables like the secret key of address and RPC URL for a network of deployment.

The dApps allow the users to interact with the smart contract e.g connecting wallets to send tokens, staking, withdrawing, checking address balance, minting NFTs, etc, entering information on the blockchain etc.

What are the benefits to joining the blockchain bandwagon as a developer and also what would be your advice to someone who's green in the sectors to look out for

  • Web3 is a good path for developers to get into as there are alot of companies that are blockchain-related that already exist and many more are coming up. To be a blockchain developer/Smart contract developer:
    • you need to have at least a web2 background like HTML & CSS plus Javascript or Python among other tech stacks.
    • General understanding of blockchain if you’re not familiar already you can check academy.binance.com and other resources online or even blockchain meetups, communities and DAOs.
    • It's advisable to start with smart contract development on the Ethereum blockchain:
      • Start with understanding the Ethereum blockchain
      • Smart contract development language: Solidity: which is an object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts. Smart contracts are programs that govern the behavior of accounts within the Ethereum state.
      • Start building smart contracts using solidity: use:
        • OpenZeppelin’s Contracts like the ERC20, ERC721, Safe Math
        • Smart contract development environments like Hardhat, Truffle, or Foundry to write, test, compile, and deploy the smart contracts.
        • RPC providers like Alchemy, Moralis, and OpenZeppelin’s Defender Relay alongside your address secret key from Metamask while setting up the config files that you’ll use while hard-forking or deploying your contracts to Testnet or Mainnet of given blockchain networks like:
          • Ethereum Network(main-net or test-net like Rinkbey)
          • Polygon Network(main-net or test-net like Mumbai)
          • Binance Chain Network
        • Ether.js library and Metamask’s Ethereum Provider to integrate your smart contract to the frontend that you can build using React.js or Python framework or HTML & CSS.
        • Data storage like IPFS and Arweave for adding Metadata to your ERC721 NFTs when minting and publishing them to OpenSea
        • Smart contract review: other contracts
        • Smart contract audit
        • Seek experience by:
          • participating in hackathons
          • contributing to DAOs
          • Contributing to open-source projects: creating issues or working on issues on their GitHub repositories
          • Speaking at events
          • Creating technical content: blogs, articles, tweets, or videos
          • Building a network

What if I'm not a developer are there any benefits to learning about blockchain technology. What's your parting take?

For everyone, it would be good to get a general understanding of blockchain how it works, and different blockchain use-cases. From there you can decide to be:

  • UI/UX designer, Brand designer, UX researcher, and Project Manager for blockchain projects or DAOs.
  • a trader of crypto, NFTs, or other tokens
  • designer for different blockchain companies or DAO
  • marketer for blockchain events, companies, etc
  • educator
  • pay-as-you-earn model (earn tokens out of it)

What are the practical use cases of blockchain done today, and what are its potential implications in the future

The adoption of these blockchain use-cases will increase over time and there will be more of this coming as new blockchain networks are coming and building different this kind of projects on their network. With blockchain networks focusing on increasing stability we’ll see numbers going up.

How would blockchain facilitate the token economy through the use of tokens to incentivize behavior?

  • blockchain will facilitate a token economy through the use of tokens as a mode of payment or transfer of money between individuals and businesses.
  • through the play-to-earn models used in gaming projects on the blockchain networks where players earn tokens from playing
  • through the Defi projects where users stake and lend to earn tokens
  • blockchain-related companies paying their employees using cryptocurrencies
  • Airdrops: cryptocurrencies, tokens, NFTs for new community members, active contributors, etc.

Beyond just the tech, how have you found the culture and community in the crypto/blockchain space like

The crypto/blockchain community is open and more inclusive. It’s also opened room for sensitization and education programs linked to blockchain technology. The blockchain/crypto communities are the true definition of the world as a global village as we keep seeing people from different regions of the world pushing the same agent i.e blockchain and contributing to projects together.

What are some of the implications of blockchains to the economy, society, environment

economy:

  • if more governments adopt bitcoin as their legal tender, a form of tax payment, remove policies and laws that restrict cryptocurrencies and other tokens from being sold or transacted by citizens, tax-free policies for bitcoin/ other blockchain miners and startup founders in blockchains pace as incentive for more, the introduction of the CBDCs, etc the economies GDP will go up and cost of living will be favorable for its citizens
  • as more businesses accept bitcoin among other cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment the circulation and adoption of blockchain will be more

society:

  • more sensitization and awareness about **blockchain
  • introduction of blockchain courses in school curriculums
  • acceptance of crypto & tokens as modes of payment.
  • entertainment & gaming via the metaverse, NFTs, play-to-earn models
  • more common interest communities formed as DAOs

environment:

  • there has been a lot of research and discussion on how clean energy can be used in bitcoin mining and for other blockchain projects that have less impact on the environment here are some projects/papers:
    • Sustainable Bitcoin Standard
      • Miners who use clean energy sources to mine bitcoin apply to the Sustainable Bitcoin Standard for certification.
      • verifies that bitcoin was mined using green energy and issues a Sustainable Bitcoin Certificate for each BTC mined, built as a smart contract on the Stacks blockchain.
      • Sustainable Bitcoin Certificate allows miners and investors to make sustainability claims for BTC in their possession without disrupting fungibility
    • Blockchain and the environment

What are some of the goals and aspirations of the blockchain community

  • to drive blockchain adoption by everyone globally
  • bringing blockchain projects and incentives closer to the people
  • growing common interests and creation of work opportunities like marketers, trainers, developers, designers, advocates, etc

Thank you for reading through my article. You can follow and support Crypto Academy who conducted the AMA session and many more blockchain/crypto education programs. You can leave a comment or suggestion below. We can also connect more on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Did you find this article valuable?

Support Sharon Jebitok by becoming a sponsor. Any amount is appreciated!