Black Belt (1 Year)
Web3 has become a very complicated space. Over the last several years it has split into several verticals – such as cryptocurrencies, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, smart contract platforms and the metaverse – and, as of July 2022 there are over 20,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation and thousands of NFT projects.
As such, truly starting to get your arms around the space will likely take at least a year. If you’re up for it – and you’ve read all of the White, Blue, Purple and Brown Belt sections above – I would recommend the following:
1. Study Reading Lists and Canons: There is no shortage of curated reading lists (often called “canons”) on crypto. Some of these resources can each contain dozens to hundreds of dense articles and, as such, could take weeks or months to finish. While getting through a canon can be a ton of effort, in my opinion it’s well worth it if you want to truly start to learn. Some of my favorites include:
a16z’s Crypto Canon
Bankless’s Getting Started Guide
a16z’s NFT Canon
a16z’s DAO Canon
Gabby Goldberg’s Web3 Reading List
Richard Chen’s Crypto Reading List
Jon Radoff’s Metaverse Canon
Packy McCormick’s Tokenomics Reading List
Rabbit Hole’s Governance Library
CoinGecko’s How to DeFi Basic and Advanced Books have a great bibliography with a ton of good DeFi reads
2. Take a Few Courses: For those that excel in an academic environment, there are several free or relatively cheap courses available. Some of the more prominent include:
Course
|
Provider
|
Description
|
Berkeley | Developer-focused course teaching the fundametnals of Bitcoin, Ethereum, the basics of smart contract platforms and the building of decentralized applications. Course is 6 weeks at roughly 3-5 hours per week | |
Princeton University | One of the earliest and most popular introductory courses taught by Arvind Narayanan. Takes roughly 23 hours to complete | |
The Unversity of Hong Kong | Introductory course on the implications of blockchains on Fintech. Course lasts six weeks and requires 3-4 hours per week | |
Metrics DAO | Course teacher users how to gather and analyze on-chain data | |
MIT | Introduction to Cryptocurrencies taught by Gary Gensler (Chairperson of the SEC) | |
Coursera | Intermediate level course from Coursera, requiring approximately 17 hours to complete | |
Patrick McCorry | Highly technical 8-week class from Patrick McCorry, an engineer at Infura | |
MIT | Technical overvier of cryptocurrencies from MIT | |
Berkeley | 12-week deep dive on DeFi from UC Berkeley | |
Udemy | Relatively short (2 hours of video) introductory course on Udemy | |
University of Nicosia | Overview of NFTs and the Metaverse taught by Punk6529 with several prominent guests (such as Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon and Yat Siu). This is a relatively new course that will span 12 weeks | |
Token Engineering Academy | 100-hour course focused on tokenomics, governance and the technical design of tokens |
3. Read Whitepapers: In my experience as a VC, after you have a solid understanding of the “top-down” dynamics of a space, one of the best ways to master it is through a “bottoms-up” approach, by learning about of its key players, companies and projects. As such, I’d recommend reading as many whitepapers – the official documentation about what a project does and how it works – as you can. I’d recommend starting with projects you are interested in, but if you need a little nudge then research the dozens of protocols that I mention in my articles. Most projects whitepapers can be found on their website or though a simple Google search.
4. Gain Practical Experience: The absolute best way to understand Web3 is to experience it first hand. Make a loan on Aave, a trade on Uniswap, buy a few NFTs, join a DAO, try out the metaverse, use a bridge, etc…
If you are unsure where to start, check out Rabbithole, a website that pays you in crypto for performing simple Web-3 related tasks (such as buying an NFT, taking out a loan on Aave or voting in a DAO)
Join a DAO and participate!
Get a job in Web3
5. Keep Up with the News: As discussed, crypto moves very fast, so it’s important to keep on top of trends by reading the news, following key Twitter and Reddit accounts and even paying for research. Some of my favorite sources for this include:
Free Sources: Some of the absolute best sources for to keep on top of crypto news are free. In particular, check out these lists of helpful pages and accounts from Reddit and Twitter (or my list of top podcasts if that’s more your thing)
Paid Sources: While expensive, paid sources can be worth it in that they provide deep analysis on projects, verticals and trends (in fact, many of my favorite articles come from paid sources, but I tried not to include them in earlier sections because I wanted to keep the focus on free resources as much as possible). My favorite paid sources include: Messari, The Block and Delphi Digital
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