Blockchain Developer
Blockchain developers work at the intersection of cryptography, economics, and software engineering. This path covers the highly specific vocabulary of smart contracts, token standards, gas optimisation, and DeFi protocol design — plus the English for audits, whitepapers, and documentation.
Topics covered
- Smart contracts
- Web3 & dApps
- DeFi & tokenomics
- Consensus mechanisms
- Security & audits
- Layer-2 scaling
Vocabulary spotlight
4 terms every Blockchain Developer should know in English:
A unit measuring the computational effort required to execute an Ethereum transaction
"The gas fee spiked because of high network congestion during the NFT mint."
The difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which it executes
"Set your slippage tolerance to 0.5% to avoid failed swaps."
A vulnerability where a contract calls an external contract that then calls back into the original
"The DAO hack exploited a reentrancy vulnerability in the withdrawal function."
A service that provides smart contracts with external, off-chain data
"We use a Chainlink oracle to get the ETH/USD price on-chain."
📚 Vocabulary Reference
Key terms organised by category for Blockchain Developers:
Core Concepts
Smart Contracts
DeFi
Security
Recommended exercises
Real-world scenarios you'll practise
- Explaining gas optimisation trade-offs to a non-technical co-founder
- Writing a security audit report for a DeFi protocol
- Presenting a tokenomics design to investors
- Documenting a smart contract API for third-party integrators
🎯 Interview questions specific to this role
Practise answering these questions out loud — or in writing. Each question targets a real interviewer concern for Blockchain Developers.
- What is the difference between a token and a coin?
- How does Proof of Stake differ from Proof of Work?
- What is a reentrancy attack and how do you prevent it?
- What are the trade-offs between Layer-1 and Layer-2 solutions?
- How do you test smart contracts before deploying to mainnet?