Hello, World! There is a new technology tipped to be as revolutionary as the internet. Although not novel, it is slowly coming on the radar of more individuals every single day to the point where you cannot ignore it anymore.

If you are someone like me who had been living under a rock, and now wants to explore the buzz about the ‘block’, you are welcome to join my month-long journey. In January 2022, I went down the rabbit hole of learning all-things blockchain. My goals were to:

• Learn all the core concepts related to it,
• Make a few simple decentralized applications or dApps (I will tell you what I mean by that), and
• Explore potential business applications of blockchain across sectors.

By the time I finished this journey, I wanted to go from rookie to intermediate level in understanding and applying the technology to create value in the business world. Most importantly, I wanted to document the journey in the simplest terms for another beginner willing to undergo the same process.

Ready to see what I did? Here it is! But first of all,

In the link above, I gave you a brief overview of the technology. You may still have questions about the often-heard terms that sound like coming straight from sci-fi movies such as SHA-256, DeFi, Non-Fungible Token, etc. I have addressed all of those in the Glossary of Terms below. I recommend you to refer to the glossary whenever required while reading the project documentation.

Also, I know you have many other questions on the topic. I have tried answering as many as I could in the blog posts.

My Organization System

When I began the project, I had a few measurable goals on my mind that I wanted to accomplish in the month. What were those? I wanted to:

1. Write at least one simple decentralized application and deploy it on the global Testnet.
2. Create my own token.
3. Document the dApp and token creation process through blog posts.
4. Write at least 3 blog posts sharing my insights on how blockchain will affect our lives and businesses.
5. Create a Glossary page (added this goal in the first week).
6. Write 4 short blog posts giving weekly updates on the project.
7. Write a description of my Project Organization system.
8. Create an FAQs page.
9. Write 4 tweets on the topic.

This project was on a topic I had no prior exposure to. Hence, I could not predict how vast the subject was, how fast I could learn, and what was possible to be learned within a month. That meant, designing a good project plan right at the onset was ambitious. Regardless, I tried to create one and the plan underwent many iterations over the first couple of weeks. I discuss the rationale behind changing the organization system in my weekly updates in detail. For now, I will share what I actually accomplished in the month:

1. I wrote a simple Greeter dApp and deployed it on the global Ropsten Testnet.
2. I created my own token KB01.
3. I wrote 9 blog posts detailing my dApp and token creation processes.
4. I wrote 2 blog posts sharing my insights on how blockchain will affect our lives and businesses.
5. I created the Glossary page shared above.
6. I wrote the 4 blog posts giving weekly updates on the project.
7. I used Notion to organize my project
8. I decided not to create the FAQs page because I already answered most questions through the blog posts and the Glossary.
9. I had a lot to learn and intentionally avoided social media. So, I did not tweet as planned.
10. I shot one video giving an overview of Metamask.

Here is a glimpse of my organization system:

The Blog Posts I wrote

I wrote a total of 15 blog posts, including 2 analytical posts, 9 technical/process posts, and 4 update posts. Happy reading!

The Analytical Posts

1. Why blockchain is the Next Big Advancement in Reducing Transaction Costs
2. 5 reasons why Ethereum is the Old Logan of the Blockchain Universe

My Weekly Project Updates

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Things I did well during the Project

• Spending time on finding good information sources in the first week. Since I did that, I never got stuck whenever I didn’t understand any concept. I could quickly look it up from one of the lists of resources.
• Completing the dApp making course at the beginning was a very good decision. Although I didn’t know what I was doing then, it all came together later on. I could easily visualize the theoretical stuff I read later on because of the practical exposure to Solidity, Hardhat, Testnet, etc.
• I experimented a few times with the organization system I should have in place for the project. Although I initially started with a week-by-week plan, what I finally settled for didn’t bind me temporally. I see merit in such an approach in a project of this kind where the scope and the learning speed cannot be predicted beforehand. I started giving myself goals as things became clearer.

What I could have done better

I should have had the courage to write basic and probably factually incorrect blog articles right from the beginning. I say this because even at the end of the project, there are glaring gaps in my knowledge, and I have not worked with good sources of data to claim that my research is of the highest quality. But, when I started writing, I learned much faster and was more clear about the gaps in the knowledge. When I do such a ‘greenfield project’ again in the future, I won’t hesitate to be wrong in the initial days.

Going Forward

• I’ve curated a list of sub-topics related to blockchain that I would want to research further. I may even write blog posts on such topics if I discover something very interesting.
• Secondly, like everyone else, I would be keeping an eye out for interesting blockchain projects coming up. I am in a better position to understand these projects right now, and hopefully would be able to spot opportunities early on.
• Most importantly, I would want to adopt blockchain into my daily life. For example, I’m considering giving up playing Pokemon Go and getting into blockchain games such as Decentraland or Axie Infinity.

Jokes apart, thank you for reading my project! See you in the next one!