Do you need a Solidity certification, to become a solidity developer (2023)? Is Solidity hard to learn?

You do not need any certification to become an ethereum blockchain developer. There are no smart contract development certification requirements when applying for ethereum blockchain developer jobs. Solidity courses are not regulated and nothing is required to start developing smart contracts to help you get a good blockchain developer job.

If you decide to become a blockchain developer and you decide to purchase a paid Solidity course to learn how to create Solidity smart contracts, congratulations! This is the very best time to learn blockchain development to become a Solidity coder using cutting edge blockchain technology to deploy smart contracts, because Solidity programmers, Solidity engineers, and blockchain technology is still in high demand and I see this demand for Solidity developers that can use Solidity and smart contracts on the ethereum virtual machine to build a decentralized future for the ethereum blockchain, for years to come.

Is the Solidity programming language hard to learn? Can I learn Solidity on my own?

Yes and yes, Solidity is difficult to learn, but there are ways we can learn and master Solidity on our own for free.

What is the best Solidity course and how long does it take to learn Solidity development?

I would recommend starting with Capture The Flags, Coding Challenges, and/or Coding Games, because these are free to work on at your own pace, and they teach Solidity with a focus on cyber-security best practices in order to create, develop, and deploy smart contracts using Solidity and the Solidity language at the highest skills level possible.

You will be able to offer the most advanced and secure blockchain development concepts, and projects on any web3 platform, nft projects, or interactive dapps and meta-verse

If you take this path of self-study you will quickly find that google has everything you need to know.

Trust me I know what you are thinking, well if I can just find everything about the Solidity programming language on google why would I even bother with paying for a Solidity courses? Time and convenience, it is much more convenient and a lot quicker to pay for courses.

Here is a list of free Solidity courses I feel are the best for learning Solidity:

• Ethernaut

• Capture the Ether

• Damn Vulnerable DeFi

• Paradigm CTF

Ethernaut is the from the OpenZeppelin team, and below and with following posts I am going to Introduce you to Ethernaut and provide you with as many helpful tips, and hints, as I can think of while sharing ideas on work flow, tech usage, and set-up in order to get you up to a higher than average standard for your Solidity coding skills.

Introduction to Ethernaut

How to play:

• How do we start playing/learning this game/lesson Ethernaut?

🆘 After using help() we get the manual

• This manual describes some of the functions that can be used in the console of developer tools, for Ethernaut.

(index)	Value
player	'current player address'
ethernaut	'main game contract'
level	'current level contract address'
contract	'current level contract instance (if created)'
instance	'current level instance contract address (if created)'
version	'current game version'
getBalance(address)	'gets balance of address in ether'
getBlockNumber()	'gets current network block number'
sendTransaction({options})	'send transaction util'
getNetworkId()	'get ethereum network id'
toWei(ether)	'convert ether units to wei'
fromWei(wei)	'convert wei units to ether'

• Got it! So let's get hacking!

✂️ Code Snippets and 📝 Notes from smart contracts

Hopefully my notes throughout are clear and easy to follow:

• code snippets will help show what section of the smart contract we need to focus our attention to,

🔍👀 While on our search for more clues before the 💥 attack!

According to the instructions on the Etharnaut DApp for this level we start with step 1:

• a top level JavaScript await in console of the Ethernaut Instance web page in developer tools,

await contract.info()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

  /// @notice step 1
  function info() public pure returns (string memory) {
    return 'You will find what you need in info1().'; 
  }

On to step 2:

• more top level await,

await contract.info1()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/// @notice step 2
  function info1() public pure returns (string memory) {
    return 'Try info2(), but with "hello" as a parameter.'; 
  }

On to step 3:

• more top level await, but with a parameter!

await contract.info2('hello')

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/// @notice returned from await contract.info2('hello') step 3, must have 'hello' as parameter
  function info2(string memory param) public pure returns (string memory) {
    if(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(param)) == keccak256(abi.encodePacked('hello'))) {  
      return 'The property infoNum holds the number of the next info method to call.'; 
    }
    return 'Wrong parameter.';
  }

On to step 4:

💯 more 🕵️‍♂️ top level await,

await contract.infoNum()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/// @notice returned from await contract.infoNum() step 4
  uint8 public infoNum = 42;

On to step 5:

• more, more, mooOOAAAAR top level await, lol 😂 better get some ☕️ coffee we are only half way! lol 🤣

await contract.info42()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/// @notice returned from await contract.info42() step 5
  function info42() public pure returns (string memory) {
    return 'theMethodName is the name of the next method.'; 
  }

On to step 6:

• more top level await, 🥱 😴 💤 lol, jk 🤩 let's do this! Bring on more await, lol!

await contract.theMethodName()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/// @notice returned from await contract.theMethodName() step 6
  string public theMethodName = 'The method name is method7123949.';

On to step 7:

• 💯 🏆 💪 MORE 💪 🏆 🕵️‍♂️ top level await,

await contract.method7123949()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/// @notice returned from await contract.method7123949() step 7
  function method7123949() public pure returns (string memory) {

    return 'If you know the password, submit it to authenticate().'; 
  }

✨ And here we go a 🆘 vulnerability in the Solidity programming

• ethereum is transparent and public so storing vulnerable data like passwords is extremely risky ⚠️

On to step 8:

• 💯 more 🕵️‍♂️ top level await,

await contract.password()

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

/**  @notice password is assigned during deployment of contract in constructor, password found using await contract.password() returns "ethernaut0" step 8 */
  constructor(string memory _password) public {
    password = _password;
  }

• 🎉 get rekt, lol! 😇🤣

On to step 9:

💣💥 The attack on the smart contract

await contract.authenticate("ethernaut0")

• here is the code snippet from the contract showing this function and what it returns to us, as a string of info in console,

  function authenticate(string memory passkey) public {
    if(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(passkey)) == keccak256(abi.encodePacked(password))) {
      cleared = true; 
    }
  }

On to step 10, back to ethereum blockchain:

• Well that was fun! 🎉
• Click submit instance button on the Ethernaut Instance web page, step 10, checks if bool is true in order to clear level instance.

  function getCleared() public view returns (bool) { 
    return cleared;  
  }
}

In conclusion

Hopefully you have found this information helpful, if you have I kindly ask that you share this with anyone that might find this helpful or interesting.

• Oh yeah, when you are ready to get a web3 blockchain job or other dev job, Check this out! Developer Jobs Here!