Blockchain has evolved drastically over a few years. Developers are important pillars of blockchain technology.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
Blockchain software developers create decentralized applications (Dapp) and web varieties. One of the most efficient developer platforms for building Dapps is NEAR Protocol as you will later get to agree with me at the end of this publication.
Firstly, to become a NEAR developer you have to have the skill and also have creative and innovative ideas that solve real-life problems. For those not so well-skilled, another good news is NEAR has workshops and learning materials for developers that will guide them to becoming better at their job.
NEAR Protocol as you may know has made breaking ground developments and made a name for itself, often referred to as one of Ethereum’s top competitor. NEAR offers a lot of value you won’t get anywhere else.
As a blockchain developer or a software developer interested in building on a blockchain, there are certain parameters you would want to look into. The global blockchain market was predicted to reach $42.3 Billion by 2021. Today the global blockchain market has a capitalisation of over $1.5 Trillion. The rise in demand for crypto and crypto-related projects can be attributed to a myriad of factors which will be discussed below, and why NEAR in its overall state is the best platform to build especially for Africans.
1. Transactions/Payments are secure: I wouldn’t say blockchain is 100% secure because in anything done by man there’s always a downside to it. But for blockchains like NEAR, its security infrastructure is built in such a way that beating the architecture laid is almost impossible. Also, you get to move away from very high and outrageous fees charged by traditional financial institutions.
2. Smart contracts: these contracts removes the need for third parties. Because they are built digitally and secured by the protocol of the blockchain. NEAR is a decentralised blockchain that allows for the building of applications that run with this technology.
3. Ownership and Cloud Storage: like every other digital asset you get full control of ownership of your data which can be shared at any time with others with very large cloud storage. NEAR being built with sharding to ensure scalability, with your private keys you can easily share your data at a speed faster than the speed of light.
4. Fast and Scalable: Ethereum has always faced the challenge of being not scalable. As transactions get compounded on the blockchain traffic is generated and hence sometimes being unnecessarily delayed. On NEAR the blockchain is sharded to such an extent that as much as up to 100000 transactions can be validated per second. While Ethereum works with the Proof of Work (PoW), NEAR works with the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus conundrum. Meaning fewer resources are needed to validate transactions on NEAR which is also another added advantage.
If you have some background in blockchain/software development and you’re interested in learning more please do well to check up on these resources.
- An introductory workshop for people with web development background: NEAR 101 https://bit.ly/near-101
- An introductory workshop for Ethereum developers: NEAR 102 https://bit.ly/near-102
- Workshop for entrepreneurs and hackers: NEAR 103 https://bit.ly/near-kba
- NEAR Learn website: https://near.org/learn/
Blockchain developers are the core members of any blockchain or protocol out there, as they handle the entire life cycle of a blockchain application. This includes but is not limited to, research, creating the architecture of the blockchain, smart contracts, optimize the protocol as well as execution of the blockchain.
Mainly we have two types of Blockchain developers,
1. Blockchain software developer; responsible for building software based on the blockchain protocol, build Decentralised apps (Dapps) as well as supervise the stacks that run the apps.
2. Core Blockchain developer; responsible for building the core architecture of the blockchain, design the consensus protocol and also responsible for the security of the blockchain network.
To be a blockchain developer, there are basic skills expected of you and include; Cryptography, smart contracts, data structures, and blockchain architecture.
As a blockchain developer, you’re expected to know the basic architecture of the blockchain which could be either, Private – where only a few people are part of the ecosystem as is seen on some organisations and are not decentralised; Public – a decentralised ecosystem, where anyone can be a part of the ecosystem by making transactions on them or mining as in bitcoin; or Consortium – where the architecture isn’t wholly centralised but members of a group have authority over the blockchain and are made up of more organisations.
To build on a blockchain or be a blockchain developer, some languages are expected of you to learn, Python, C++, Rust, Java and so on. The NEAR blockchain is built using the Rust programming language and with the basic background of programming you can easily launch your application on NEAR with ease in as little as “5 minutes”. To many developers with a background in the C/C++ languages understanding and transitioning into Rust, parallelism may be easy. But to others without this background may find it difficult this is because Rust doesn’t favour specific parallelism or concurrency abstraction. Read more here https://link.medium.com/g7cfizad7db
WHY YOU SHOULD BE BUILDING ON NEAR
Projects like Ethereum has shown that one can use blockchain to create decentralized applications. This has paved the way for decentralized apps to be built on blockchain. Ethereum has many loopholes ranging from the high gas fees to being extremely slow. NEAR on the other hand offers scalability which projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum are still yet to tackle. With the NEAR network being sharded it permits a scalable network that is fast and efficient.
NEAR also offers easy and popularly used programming languages like JavaScript and Rust
Building on NEAR also comes with a lot of good offers and packages like free cryptography and access to varieties of tools that make the whole process easier. Developers that have previously built on Ethereum and want to now build on NEAR will also have access to workshops.
NEAR Developer reward program is also different from other platforms as it is calculated every time a transaction is made and the developer ends a significant portion of the transaction fee.
A lot of interesting projects have already been Incorporated into the NEAR protocol and are already building on NEAR, some of which includes Balancer, Chainlink, Flux, Mintbase, and so many others.
Undoubtedly, NEAR is the most developer-friendly blockchain.
Written by NEARPROTOCOL NIGERIA (NPK GUILD)
Twitter @nearprotocolng
Join Near Protocol Nigeria on Telegram
About The Author
Nsikanabasi Edet 
Tony Chimdiuto