Smart Contract Developer

Now, before talking about how to become a smart contract developer, let’s first understand three things.

First, what is a smart contract ?

In simple words, a smart contract is a program written on the Blockchain.

Second, how a smart contract program is different from any other conventional programs (written in JavaScript, Java etc.). 

1. Immutable – Once a smart contract is deployed to a Blockchain. You cannot change the functionality of the smart contract. Why? because Blockchain is immutable in nature. 
2. Pay for every line of code – For every line of code in a smart contract, a gas fee is associated. This means you are paying for every single line of code that you are writing in your smart contract.

Third, who is a smart contract developer ? And what are his/her responsibilities ?

A smart contract developer is a person who creates smart contracts(programs) for the Blockchain. There are many programming languages for creating smart contracts such as Solidity (the most popular), Vyper etc.

As a smart contract developer, you have two main responsibilities.

• Creating safe and secure smart contracts.
• Creating smart contracts that consume less gas.

 Now, let us understand the step by step process in order to become a smart contract developer. 

 In order to become a smart contract developer, you need to know the following things –

1. Blockchain Infrastructure – It is very important to understand the Blockchain Infrastructure for which you are going to create a smart contract. For example – Ethereum uses Solidity for creating smart contracts, Solana uses Rust for creating smart contracts. If you can understand the blockchain infrastructure, you can save a lot of money for your organization. 
2. Smart Contract Security – You need to create a secure smart contract. Unlike any other programs, smart contract programs once deployed on the Blockchain cannot be changed. So you need to be very careful while creating a smart contract, otherwise your company could suffer large amounts of loss. You can learn from the DAO attack which happened on June 17, 2016.  Due to the DAO buggy code, investors lose millions of dollars. And how can you make a secure smart contract ? By having strong logic which can come from practice and by testing your smart contract before deploying to the Blockchain. You can use Mocha Framework in order to test your smart contract. Here is a course that I have made on how to test your smart contract – https://codedamn.com/learn/smart-contract-testing?coupon=USERNEW_85
3. Optimizable Smart Contract – You just do not need to create a smart contract. You need to create optimized smart contracts, smart contracts that consume the least amount of gas. As we discussed above in a smart contract, you need to pay for every single line of code. So, as a smart contract developer, it’s your responsibility to create smart contracts which consume the amount of gas. Let’s understand what I mean by optimizing smart contracts.

contract contract1 {
    function multiplyBy2( uint b) public pure returns(uint) {
       return b*2;
    }  
}

contract contract2 {
     uint a=2;
    function multiplyBy2() public view returns(uint) {
       return b*a;
    }  
}

Both of these above contracts give the same output. But contract1 is an efficient contract as compared as contract2, as contract2 is consuming gas when declaring a state variable a.

So these are the things that you should follow in order to become a smart contract developer.

Something, as a smart contract developer, you must do –

1. Readable Smart Contract – Write readable smart contract code. Because smart contract is something that is used in a decentralized application. So your smart contract code should be in such a way that it is easy to read by other developers also.
2. Use Libraries and Interfaces – If there are libraries and interfaces available for a smart contract, then you must use those as those libraries and interfaces are tried and tested. For example – we have OpenZeppelin (https://openzeppelin.com/contracts/)  library, which provides us with a lot of libraries.
3. Update yourself – The Blockchain world is changing at a very fast pace. So you need to keep on updating yourself and keep on learning new methods and methodologies in order to create a safe and secure smart contract.

All the best for your journey as a smart contract developer.