Hi guys, and welcome to a brand new module in the Web Development Course. 1
Now, if you're wondering what to learn in 2022 and beyond, this is where this module comes in. 2
So we want to make sure that we're always getting you at the bleeding edge of technology. 3
So we're introducing this module in collaboration with the Dfinity Foundation, where we're going 4
to learn all about blockchain technology and how to develop with blockchain. 5
Now, a little while ago, I put out a tweet and I asked, "What are you most excited to learn in 2022 6
and beyond?" 7
And this poll was answered by 2,834 people, and it was pretty staggering just how big web3 and blockchain 8
has become. 9
And it came out on top with 44.6% of the votes as the technology that people are most excited to learn. 10
So what we're going to be doing in this module is the latest and greatest in the world of programming 11
and technology. 12
And if you're wondering why that is? 13
Well, this comes from a LinkedIn survey that showed that there was a 12X growth in the number of job 14
opportunities offered for machine learning engineers. 15
But the number of job opportunities for blockchain developers grew 33 times which is absolutely massive. 16
And part of this is because blockchain technology is growing at a rapid rate, and they need more blockchain 17
developers than ever. 18
Which means that the starting salary of somebody who is a junior blockchain developer is somewhere around 19
$120,000 in the U.S., which means if you're just starting out and you're wondering, should I become 20
a web developer, a mobile app developer, or a data scientist, it's going to be pretty hard to beat 21
this kind of starting salary if you become a blockchain developer because they are just so hot and 22
there's just not enough of them out there right now. 23
So right now, as of the beginning of 2022, there is a massive amount of growth in the number of active 24
blockchain developers or web3 developers, and that trend is probably going to continue for the next 25
five years. 26
So what exactly is all of this? 27
What exactly is Web3 anyways? 28
Well, it's basically the new internet. 29
If you were around in the late 1990s and you heard about all of this Internet fever, what is the Internet? 30
How does it work? 31
And why is everybody throwing lots of money at it? 32
Well, that's kind of where we're at with Web3 right now. 33
There is a massive amount of investment into Web3 technologies, and this is the moment where this technology 34
is really taking off in a way that is really similar to the beginning of the Internet age. 35
But what exactly is it anyways? 36
Well, Web 3.0 describes the third iteration or the third sort of stage of the Web. 37
Now, Web 1.0 was back in the nineties at the peak of the new Internet, where we were browsing with 38
Netscape and we were looking at these websites which were basically read-only, 39
right? 40
There was Geocities, 41
there was Yahoo!, 42
there was Ask Jeeves 43
and this really is going to become a test of your age. 44
But in most of these websites, all you could do is read some information that somebody else put up, 45
and that's about it. 46
It was a read-only web. 47
Now, web 2.0 became interactive. 48
This is your Facebook, your Twitter, your Instagram. 49
All of these companies came out and built products that let you as the user, interact with them. 50
So inadvertently, you became the person who was creating the content. 51
And with all of the users across the world creating content, we built these social networks and we 52
built the content for all of these websites like TikTok or like Reddit. 53
And this is kind of the era that we're still in right now where we can read from websites, but we can 54
also write. 55
So we're interacting with these websites. 56
So what is Web 3.0? 57
Well, ever since 2018, people have started building websites and applications on the blockchain, 58
and this is the dawn of Web 3.0. 59
Now, you've already heard of Bitcoin and Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies, but we're not 60
here to talk about Bitcoin or Ethereum or or which cryptos to invest in. 61
There's plenty of that. 62
If you search for cryptocurrency on YouTube, you're going to get loads of people giving you dubious 63
recommendations about what to buy, what to not buy. 64
Now, if you think you can predict the future, then this is probably the path to go down. 65
But as developers, we can control the future, so we don't have to predict it. 66
Instead, we can build what Web3 will become. 67
And you can take a look at some of these awesome things that have been built on Web3. 68
For example, Helium is a really popular Web3 project, which is providing wireless internet to out 69
of the way places through individual people hosting their 5G network and owning cryptocurrency. Or Pool 70
Together, which lets you participate in no loss lotteries. 71
Now, even though it sounds like gambling, it's actually a very clever way of tricking you into saving 72
money. 73
This is a web3 application that takes everybody's money that they pledge and earns interest on the total 74
and then pays out the interest to one lucky winner. 75
But that means that the original money that you put in never gets lost, and you can withdraw your savings 76
at any time or build games on the blockchain like Axie Infinity, where people are actually giving up 77
their day jobs and playing this game where they're earning more than what they would in their local 78
currency. 79
So what is it anyways? 80
Well, Axie Infinity is a pokemon-like game, but the most important part is it allows you to buy and 81
sell and trade your axies. 82
And every single time one of these trades happen, the developers will take a 4.25% cut. 83
So if you look at the sales volumes, just for the last 24 hours, there's already been almost 3 million 84
worth of trades happening. 85
So if we calculate that, so that's 3 million times 0.0425, 86
so the developers have made somewhere around 127,000 in the last 24 hours, which is probably more than 87
some mainstream triple-A games. 88
And this really is just the beginning of what we're seeing in Web3. 89
The potential is huge, and this is one of the biggest opportunities in 2022 and beyond. 90
And this is something that I'm so excited to teach you about and we're going to learn about in the coming 91
lessons of this module. 92
But first, in order to make Web3 applications, we first have to understand how the blockchain works. 93
So for all of that and more, I'll see you in the next lesson.