Educating a new generation of BSV developers is of paramount importance in the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain technology. By training a new cohort of developers, we can ensure the continued growth and innovation of the BSV ecosystem, which has the potential to revolutionise various industries.
These developers will be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to build secure, scalable, and efficient blockchain applications, paving the way for a future where blockchain technology can be seamlessly integrated into various sectors such as finance, healthcare, supply chain management, and more.
One person who is at the forefront of these education initiatives is Xiaohui Liu (Founder and CEO of sCrypt), a company dedicated to providing integrated on-chain smart contracting solutions on BSV.
Liu recently hosted the first sCrypt hackathon for four days at the University of Exeter in June. The workshop was designed to introduce the students to smart contracts built on a scalable public blockchain using sCrypt tooling. Following the workshop, students had a few months to design their web-based applications using the skills they learned.
Developing smart contacts on Bitcoin
As part of the hackathon, Liu gave a full presentation on developing smart contacts on Bitcoin using BSV. sCrypt is a TypeScript framework for BSV smart contracts. The BSV blockchain supports smart contracts with its Forth-like stack-based Script language, but writing smart contracts in native Script is cumbersome and error-prone. sCrypt is designed to facilitate writing complex smart contracts running on-chain.
In this session, Liu covered several important topics, including:
- The difference between instances, providers and signers;
- Deploying a contract;
- Calls with signatures;
- BSV submodules;
- Customising transactions;
- Testing and debugging;
- Package management;
- A scripting tutorial built around a game of tic-tac-toe.
Getting the basics of blockchain right
While there are no specific qualifications required to become a blockchain developer, a sound understanding of the basics is required. A blockchain developer should have at least some proficiency in blockchain programming languages. For Bitcoin developers, this typically includes C++, Python, JavaScript, and Solidity.
More importantly, developers require a fundamental understanding of how blockchain works, its components, and its benefits. One of the best ways to learn more about the technology is by signing up for the BSV Academy’s courses.
BSV Academy is an online education platform for Bitcoin which offers academia-quality, university-style courses and learning materials categorised under Bitcoin in Law, Bitcoin for Software Engineering, Bitcoin for Software Development and Bitcoin for Business in addition to several short courses covering specific concepts and content in more detail.
Developed and run by the BSV Association, the BSV Academy has been created to make learning about the Bitcoin protocol – the way creator Satoshi Nakamoto designed it – accessible, accurate, and understandable.