Over the last few months I’ve begun to explore the crypto-currency space.

I initially began by reading the Mastering Bitcoin book and spinning up a few Bitcoin nodes. This was incredibly fascinating and exciting given how new some of the larger concepts around decentralization are (at least to me).

Then I began contributing to the open-source projects in Ethereum via the Ethereum C++ client and Solidity the smart contract programming language.

I am now actively taking development contracts to build Smart Contracts on Ethereum in a production environment. I’ve only just begun, so I don’t have that many under my belt at the moment.

I’ve done this simply to learn. I have no opinion on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solidity or any of these technologies at the moment. Nor do I have an opinion on these technologies replacing fiat currencies at the moment. I hope through this to learn more resulting in having an informed opinion, but not there yet.

Here is what I’ve learned so far

  • The communities are incredibly welcoming (at least what I have experienced so far)
  • The projects are setup to allow someone new to quickly get involved (I love those beginner labels on GitHub issues)
  • Core contributors have no problem taking time to answer questions, offer advice and direction
  • Communication is a bit fragmented between Gitter, Github, Telegram, and Slack

I’ll keep posting more as I get deeper into the space, but you can follow me on Github to track any progress and involvement.