It’s the Perfect Time to become a Tezos Developer
Why is it a good time? Where do I start?
If you are involved in the Tezos community, it is no secret that there has been a massive boom in the ecosystem. There have been tons of new developer tools, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, tokens, and NFT platforms that have launched the ecosystem further than it has been in the previous few years. According to Teztools.io, there are at least 60 tokens built and traded on the decentralized exchange (DEX), Quipuswap. LunarCrush, a social media tracker that measures a tokens social media community dominance has ranked Tezos 70th out of 2,176 altcoins and reported in this week alone, there were tens of millions of Tezos engagement on various platforms. DappRadar, the leading decentralized application tracker has recently listed Tezos dapps on its website and displays Hice Et Nunc, a Tezos based NFT platform, as #4 in all marketplaces, surpassing Rariable and Foundation. Tezos currently has 4.8k nodes operating, 100+ projects and more than 20 million on-chain transactions. This stable and promising growth paired with the surplus of tools and resources to help develop smart contracts and decentralized apps (dapps), the time has never been better to develop on the Tezos blockchain.
When learning a new development language or toolkit, you want to make sure that there is a future in the technology you are using. You want to, and definitely should make sure that you are not wasting your time on learning skills that have no demand or will not in the future. When learning something new, especially in the software development world, you should look for communities that will be able to help you and answer your questions. Imagine what Stack Overflow would be like if there were only questions and no answers. People would eventually stop learning or become overwhelmed, feeling like they are in it alone. When there are many people learning the same skills, there are more opportunities to form relationships and join teams with these people. Additionally, a large community often has more articles, tools, tutorials, and overall resources to learn from. Tezos has all of these points with a thriving developer community. There will be more resources at the bottom of this article.
Equally important is that if you are just starting out with blockchain development, you do not want to be too early to a community because there will not be enough resources to learn from. Tezos has matured to the point where there are plenty of resources and a strong, supportive dev community. The ideal community is large, supportive, and long-lasting. The biggest factor in a long-lasting community is the demand for the skills you are all learning. A thriving community where everyone helps each other will be short-lived without a demand for the products the community is creating.
Just like the Tezos blockchain, the developer community is growing exponentially and with it, demand. Whether your goal is to get a job, or build a blockchain-based application people will use, there is a lot of potential for both. In the realm of jobs, there are many Tezos ecosystem teams and projects looking to hire developers. You can find jobs posted around Twitter from various teams, but ultimately the best way is to get involved in the developer ecosystem of Tezos and you will see many opportunities present themselves. As Zig Ziglar, an American author and motivational speaker said, “Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.” The beauty of this demand is that it is not an unattainable goal to become a Tezos blockchain developer with the tools and resources available.
If the goal is to build a project, there is a large audience of passionate and excited Tezos users constantly playing with new “toys” built by developers like you. There are approximately 1.4 million funded accounts (wallets) on the Tezos blockchain. That is a pretty strong market size of people who can test out and utilize your app! Do not forget about all the users you can attract, like Hice Et Nunc was able to do. To see how enthusiastic users get when a new application is launched on Tezos, just spend 10 minutes in the Tezos ecosystem on Twitter. There is demand for these projects and you can be the one to build them!
With dozens of different resources to learn from and a boom in demand, we are at the perfect point where it has never been more convenient and opportunistic to become a Tezos developer. The demand is there and here to stay for the long haul while you can still be an early adopter of the protocol.
So, where do we go from here? Let’s say your new goal is to become a Tezos blockchain developer. First (and lastly), check out this article I wrote on the Tezos ecosystem and how to start becoming a developer. It has the tools I used to learn the smart contract language, Ligo, and how to build your first dapp with a few tutorials to choose from. There are also tons of additional resources such as forums, PDF’s, online courses and more.
After practicing, if you are ready to launch your first project, reach out to us at Tezos Israel to learn more about our small grants program
The team at Tezos Israel is very excited to see what you will accomplish in the ecosystem! Follow us on Twitter @TezosIsrael and always feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (@adshinder) with any questions you may have.
