DEV Community: Latricia Nickelberry

The power of the command line

Latricia Nickelberry — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 01:05:35 +0000

I started studying the command line this week, simply because I got stuck on an error while building out a project. I reached out to the community and the person that helped had me use commands like ls -alF as an example. I asked myself what does that mean?

Opened up my eyes to how powerful the command line is
This lead me to asking the person that helped me if he could provide me with resources about the command line. I got sent an article to read. You can checkout the article [here] this article was very helpful.(https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/command-line-for-beginners#1-overview)
This made me realize that understanding these basic commands are very useful:

-pwd
-ls
-cd

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You are able to delete files, delete directories, move files etc. The process when using the command line is so much quicker than doing it through the GUI.

I challenge anyone who have been putting it off to learning the command line, take baby steps you will not regret it later on.

Happy coding.

NFT

Latricia Nickelberry — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 00:08:37 +0000

The blockchain space has been really popular lately and you might here about all of these different terms and its kind of hard to keep up with what is going on. Today I am going to talk about one of the buzz words NFT.

What is a NFT anyway?
You may have heard NFT, but what is a NFT exactly? NFT is a non-fungible token. You can think of it as like a piece of art or digital collectable that cant be exchange for something else, like bitcoin for example.

How do NFT's work?

At a high level NFT's are part of the Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum blockchain is used to build things. ERC-721 is the standard for a NFT, you can read more about this topic here

What are people using NFT's for?

NFT's can pretty much be anything. You can create music, digital art, or various things. You might have heard of crypto punks. These NFT's are pretty popular and cost a lot. I notice the people that are within the Ethereum network, are using the crypto punks as there profile pictures, especially on twitter.

So why own a NFT?
With blockchain technology you are storing your information on a public ledger. This means that when you purchase a NFT it will show that you are the original owner. Therefore, if you decide to sell your NFT that also will be documented on the blockchain. You will always know if something is real or not.

Gaming NFT what??

Another cool thing about NFT's is that gaming is really big in the blockchain space right now and NFT's are part of it. You can collect NFT's from certain games and trade them in and out of games in some instances. Check out this cool game here

NFT's are really hot right now. I would definitely check them out. If you would like to see various collections click here and here

I hope this was helpful.

Happy coding!

List websites for crypto jobs

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 17:14:47 +0000

In this post I would like to make a list of websites that you can use to checkout job postings for crypto jobs. I will be adding more sites to the list as I discover them.

Consistency is the key

Latricia Nickelberry — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:01:51 +0000

This past week has been great to me in regards to coding. The reason being is because not only have I been learning a lot, but I felt the results of all the work that I have been putting in.

My goal is to get a job as a blockchain developer and as I have been working towards this goal, in the beginning it did not feel like I was getting anywhere. I just felt that I had all of this stuff to learn and I was drowning in it. Anyone who is involved in this space knows that you have a ton to learn and new protocols are created all the time. Honestly, I love that the technology is fast paced, but when you are learning to be developer it is a lot of information to take in.

This past week was special because things really are clicking. I have read blog post and tweets about this feeling, but to actually feel it is amazing. Errors that pop up are no longer feeling super foreign. I am understanding the solidity programming language a lot better. It is true being consistent is the key. Having a plan and sticking to it produces results.

Here are some tips if you would like to get better as a developer:

Create a schedule for yourself and stick to it
Try to code everyday. Even the days when you get stuck. If you are stuck look up the error on google, reach out to the community. Just do not give up.
Document certain processes while you code
Join a community
Its okay to take breaks. A fresh pair of eyes is better than drained ones.
Build things!!! This really helps you understand things.
Have fun!

That is all I have. Have a great day!

Happy coding!

IPFS or HTTP

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 17:01:04 +0000

Today I am going to talk about IPFS and what it is. IPFS or InterPlanentary File systems is a protocol and peer to peer distributed file system. You can compare IPFS to HTTP, which I will discuss soon.

Right now when we surf the web our data is being kept tracked by big tech companies such as Google and Facebook. They are able to store the data that they have about each user in a central location and use the data however they would like to. We as a user do not have any control over the data that they have.

Lets talk about how centralized applications store data and how IPFS stores data. In centralized applications location based addressing is used and IPFS uses content based addressing as you can see below.

With IPFS you are able to store the following:

text
images
videos
websites
dapps

The data is stored decentralized and you have control over your data not another company. That is powerful because you as a user have full control of the data that you produce. The data can not be changed or manipulated by another user.

Many companies are using IPFS, such as Brave, Audius and Fleek to name a few. IPFS is a really powerful tool and I look forward to using it in future projects.

Here is a link to the IPFS white paper if you would like to learn more about the protocol.

https://github.com/ipfs/papers/raw/master/ipfs-cap2pfs/ipfs-p2p-file-system.pdf

Thanks for reading.

Happy coding!

Solidity Error Resolved

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 18:30:00 +0000

I was working on this error for a few days and could not seem to figure out.

I attempted to reconfigure the truffle.config.js file.

That did not fix the error, so I kept trying to mess around with the file and nothing was working.
Here is example of the code.
Take a look at it very closely and see if you can see what the error is.

If you are like me. You missed seeing that I closed off the whole contract right after adopters.

Sometimes we over look the smallest of details. I hope this was helpful.

Why blockchain

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 14:42:51 +0000

After graduating from Flatiron school I found myself studying algorithms, data structures and practicing for technical interviews. I spent a lot of time learning data structures and it has been helpful in understanding different ways to solve problems within a program. I also had a strong interest in blockchain development. I began to read articles and got lost in the rabbit hole.

Which brings me to now. I realized then that I am really passionate about blockchain, so I decided to focus on being a blockchain developer. I started watching Dapp University, who has been a great foundation and supplies a ton of resources for building Dapps and understanding the ecosystem. Dapp Universtiy provides a lot of knowledge on becoming a blockchain developer and has plenty of videos to watch if you are interested. I have definitely been soaking up all the knowledge that has been provided.

My journey has been great. I have been learning about web3, truffle, metamask, infura, hardhat and different tooling that you can use in this eco system. Since it is so new a lot of different things have been being created. I love that its so open. It reminds me of when the internet was first introduced and how people were trying to learn how to use it.

Be sure to check out the resource that I provided. You will be glad that you did.

Blockchain Resources

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 14:24:44 +0000

Here are some resources that I found very useful for getting started with blockchain development. I will link the resource pages that I have found very helpful in my journey in learning about development.

Here is Stephen Grider's course on Udemy. It is really long, but I really like how he goes in depth on whatever topic that he discuss.

https://www.udemy.com/course/ethereum-and-solidity-the-complete-developers-guide/

Next, GitHub has a list of resources that you can checkout.

https://github.com/protofire/blockchain-learning-path

The last resource that I have to share is Crypto Zombies. This is a game that teaches you how to write smart contracts.

https://cryptozombies.io/

I hope that you find these resources useful in learning about blockchain development.

Happy coding!

Smart Contracts

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 20 Jun 2021 16:31:29 +0000

Lets discuss what a smart contract is and how to write a simple one. Smart Contracts are simply programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. They typically are used to automate the execution of an agreement so that all participants can be immediately certain of the outcome, without any intermediary's involvement or time loss. This is a great definition given by IBM.

Smart contracts are pretty cool. You do not need a middle person to conduct business. Instead all you need to do is implement all the terms and conditions within the contract and it will be executed. You can create contracts for pretty much anything that you can think of, such as for selling something, for finances, the thing is that the contract will never be lost or tampered with and it will be permanent on the blockchain.

Here is a sample of an actual contract using the programing language solidity.

You have to make sure that you start your contract with pragma and the version. Since solidity is a statically typed language you have to define the key words such as with the next line the key word contract followed by the name of the contract. We have contracts that are excepted and used widely, such as Erc-20 token and Erc-721 tokens. I am going to discuss what is needed to create a Erc-20 Token.
Erc-20 requirements:
- Events

Transfer event
- approve event

- Mandatory Functions

totalSupply ( ) function
- balanceOf ( ) function
- transfer ( ) function
- transferFrom ( ) function
- approve ( ) function
- allowance ( ) function

This is what has to be in every Erc-20 token in order for it to be valid.

Connecting to Ethereum

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 20:49:09 +0000

While studying blockchain development. I just learned about how to connect to the Ethereum blockchain. The two ways that I discovered, so far is downloading the complete node which can take a long time and take up a lot of space or use an application to assist with it.

I am going to be discussing the application that you can use to connect quickly and not worry about taking days or hours to sync to the blockchain. Infura is an infrastructure that allows developers to implement blockchain applications from testing to deployment with simple access to Ethereum.

The client that Infura uses is called Geth. Geth is a golang implementation of the Ethereum blockchain. It is pretty cool that this application allows you to connect with simple ease. More to come soon.

Happy coding.

Consensus Algorithms

Latricia Nickelberry — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:25:07 +0000

I am going to discuss consensus algorithms. Lets first define what that is. I found this definition off of Geeks for Geeks website. A consensus algorithm is a procedure through which all the peers of the blockchain network reach a common agreement about the present state of the distributed ledger. The consensus protocol makes sure that every new block that is added is the one and only version and is the truth that is agreed upon all the nodes in the network.

Therefore, we have a lot of different consensus algorithms that various blockchains use. For example, bitcoin uses Proof of work(Pow) and you probably have heard that this involves miners that has to solve a equation and gets paid bitcoin for doing so. This involves a 51% consensus and this is all done with nodes that are all over the world. This is a pretty cool mechanism.

There are two main drawbacks to proof of work. The first is waste of energy, this is bad for the environment with all of the electricity that is used. The second major drawback is security. Proof of work provides good security only if there is a large network.

This brings us to the various algorithms that various blockchains have been trying to implement to solve this problem, either by building new blockchains or building blockchains that can be shared amongst other blockchains.

Here are a list of Consensus Algorithms

Proof of work
Proof of stake
Delegated Proof- of -Stake
Leased Proof-of-Stake
Proof of Elapsed Time
Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Simplified Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance
Directed Acyclic Graphs
Proof-of-Activity
Proof-of-Importance
Proof-of-Capacity
Proof-of-Burn
Proof-of-Weight

You can look up all of those and see how they work. You can see that any algorithm has drawbacks. Sometimes you are sacrificing security or decentralization. I see companies building off of other protocols providing strength in areas that are weaker. For example, Polygon uses Ethereum's security while providing functionality in other aspects.

Happy coding!

Blockchain Identification

Latricia Nickelberry — Sun, 30 May 2021 21:48:01 +0000

In this blog I am going to discuss blockchain identity and what that consists of on the blockchain. It can be confusing, so hopefully this helps clarify some of the confusion.

What is blockchain identity you might ask? Well blockchain identity is similar to a social security card, bank account or drivers license. A wallet in this case is what establishes your identity on the blockchain. Lets break down some components that are contained in a wallet. A wallet has a private key, public key and wallet address. Private key: is a secret number that allows you to spend Bitcoin or Ethereum for example. Public key: is a publicly shareable key that cannot be used to spend bitcoin. Wallet Address: is a unique identifier for your wallet.

Now that we know what a wallet is lets break down the different type of wallets. Non-deterministic wallet: a wallet where private keys are generated from random numbers. Deterministic wallet: is a wallet where addresses, private keys and public keys can be traced back to their original seed words. Hierarchical Deterministic wallet: is an advanced type of deterministic wallet that contains keys derived in a tree structure. Each one of these wallets are used in certain situations. For example, if you have a web server that sells memes you would want to keep track of each transaction independently. To do this you would have to have a master public key and generate a sequence of sub-public keys, each connected with a transaction and put that on a public web server with no private keys. That would be an example of a hierarchical deterministic wallet.

The blockchain has many layers when it comes to interacting with it. The wallet is crucial because in order to make transactions on the blockchain you need a wallet, but in order to use the wallet you have to understand how it works. I think of the wallet as my personal account that I only have control over. If I lose the account information then I can't or nobody else can access that information. It will be loss forever. That is why it is vital that you store your seed words in several places and make sure that you keep up with that information. You are basically your own bank with full control of your assets.

I hope that this makes block identity more clear. I will be discussing more about blockchain soon.

Happy coding!