Blockchain technology has become one of the prominent buzzwords for every business and individuals worldwide. Latest entries into the blockchain ecosystem, such as Solana, have gained massive levels of adoption in recent times. You can also become Solana developer and capitalize on the benefits of fast transactions and extremely low gas fees. It can serve as the ideal platform for building the next generation of web3 apps.
As a matter of fact, the demand for Solana developers has been increasing by exponential margins in recent times. On top of it, many web2 developers have been transitioning to web3 by leveraging Solana. However, it is important to remember that Solana presents a steep learning curve for beginners. Let us find out the important steps in a roadmap for becoming Solana developers.
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What is Solana Blockchain?
The first step in a Solana developer roadmap involves learning about the definition of Solana blockchain itself. Solana is a blockchain protocol that utilizes a variation of Proof of Stake consensus algorithm, known as the Proof of History or POH consensus. It is an innovative consensus mechanism that improves time synchronization among nodes through verifiable Proof of History. The Leader Schedule for validator nodes alongside the Gulfstream and Turbine data transfer protocols can help in synchronizing interaction between nodes. As a result, Solana could resolve the issues of orphan blocks found commonly in other blockchain networks.
Another prominent reason for growing demand for Solana developer jobs is the faster synchronization between nodes. In addition, the Solana blockchain has also introduced innovative developments like archivers, which could address the requirements of distributed data storage. You can also use Cloudbreak for optimized transaction recording.
The nodes in Solana blockchain could receive rewards for processing transactions in the form of SOL utility tokens. As compared to other Proof of Stake blockchains, the Solana blockchain does not impose restrictions on choosing a minimum number of coins required for creating a node.
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Why Should You Become a Solana Developer?
You must have some doubts about pursuing a career in Solana development, as it is a new blockchain. What’s wrong with becoming an Ethereum developer? There’s nothing wrong with Ethereum as an ideal platform for building web3 apps. However, the Solana developer career path could prepare you for web3 job roles and capitalize on the benefits of Solana blockchain for web3 development.
It also helps in building and deploying dApps with reduced time required for transaction finality. It offers the assurance of higher scalability alongside advanced features that can help in creating the next generation of decentralized apps. The comprehensive ecosystem of developers, entrepreneurs, and investors gives a strong community to Solana.
On top of it, the growing demand for dApps developed on Solana would invite more developers to use Solana. In terms of career benefits, the Solana developer salary estimate could help you find how a career in Solana development can help you. The average salary for a Solana developer is almost $115,000.
Interestingly, the median annual salary for software engineers at Solana Foundation is over $650,000. With the right set of skills, you could earn almost $140,000 as a Solana developer. Most important of all, the growing popularity of Solana in the domain of web3 also creates scope for Solana developers.
Roles and Responsibilities of Solana Developers
The beginning of your journey in Solana development revolves around identifying the important roles and responsibilities. The answers to “What does a Solana developer do?” can help in understanding what you have to do on the job. In addition, it can help you learn about the important skills that you need to become a Solana developer.
As a Solana developer, you must be familiar with Rust, fundamentals of web3, and Solana frameworks such as Anchor. In addition, you would be expected to have fluency in using Solana developer tools such as Sealevel and front-end frameworks such as React. You would find two distinct sets of responsibilities for Solana developers, depending on their job role.
The job responsibilities of junior Solana developers include,
- Working in collaboration with a team of engineers for developing Solana programs.
- Interacting with UI and wallet.
- Developing high-quality code with comprehensive testing.
- Developing, testing, and shipping customer-facing apps or features.
- Fast iteration according to feedback by users for the product.
The Solana developer roadmap would also lead you to senior roles. Here is an outline of the responsibilities of senior Solana developers.
- Serving a crucial role in defining architectural and design decisions alongside building an efficient solution.
- Research on multiple-edge blockchain technologies that could fit well in a project.
- Encourage the research and development process.
- Development of scalable, testable, robust, easy-to-maintain, and efficient code.
- Adapting to new security best practices.
- Guiding junior developers and participating in active code reviews.
- Automation of tasks by using the ideal tools and scripts.
- Documentation of the development phases and working of monitoring systems.
How Can You Become a Solana Developer?
Most of the guides to become Solana developer focus on different ways to choose training courses or certifications. In addition, some roadmaps would also include detailed explanations with links to academic resources. However, it is important to identify the important concepts that you should learn to become a Solana developer. Here is an outline of the important steps you must cover for learning Solana development.
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Specialize in Solana Programs
Solana programs refer to smart contracts on Solana blockchain with executable code that can help in interpreting instructions in blockchain transactions. The programs could be native programs developed on Solana blockchain and subject to upgrades with the software updates on Solana.
You can also find Solana programs as on-chain programs or user-written programs that you can deploy or update directly on the blockchain. Solana programs operate on the Sealevel runtime, which serves as the parallel processing model in the Solana blockchain.
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Familiarize with Solana Transactions
The journey of preparing for Solana developer jobs would also involve learning about Solana transactions. The unique highlight of Solana points to the submission of transactions to the cluster and the use of Solana runtime for processing the transactions. Transactions include a compact collection of signatures alongside a message. The message features a header, block hash, instructions, and account addresses. Each transaction is verified on the basis of a number of signatures alongside signing each transaction with the private key related to the public key.
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Solana Account Model
The next milestone in the roadmap for a lucrative Solana developer salary would focus on the Solana account model. The Sealevel runtime in Solana features a unique account model, where any account could store state. Solana ensures storage of smart contract state in other accounts, with every account assigning an owner contract for exclusive control. You can find two distinct variants of accounts in Sealevel such as executable and non-executable accounts.
- The Sealevel executable accounts are immutable and work on storing their executable bytecode or proxy address of accounts with mutable bytecode that you can execute.
- The non-executable accounts work for data storage, and the owners can only modify the accounts. Changes requested by other programs for non-executable accounts would be reversed.
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Solana Programming Languages
The steps for learning Solana development would be incomplete without referring to Solana programming languages. Programming languages utilized for Solana development feature Rust, C++, and C. The languages can help in building smart contracts that would be deployed on Solana blockchain. In addition, the Solana Runtime is responsible for running the smart contracts.
The Solana developer roadmap emphasizes programming languages, as your programming skills could help in building your new programs. Solana provides a JSON RPC API alongside different SDKs. Developers could utilize the tools for creating decentralized applications with similarities to traditional applications.
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Set Up the Solana Development Environment
If you want to learn the ideal approaches for becoming Solana developers, then you must familiarize yourself with the best practices for setting up the development environment. You can create Solana Programs only by building and testing the programs in a local development environment. Developers can rely on the core Solana developer tools for creating the local development environment. Some of the most popular core Solana developer tools include the Solana tool suite and the command line interface.
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Solana Development Frameworks
The answers to “What does a Solana developer do?” would also draw attention to the importance of development frameworks. As a professional Solana developer, you must have a detailed understanding of primary development frameworks to create Solana applications, such as Seahorse and Anchor. Anchor helps in abstraction of multiple complexities from the process of native application development in Rust. On the other hand, Seahorse is almost similar to Anchor and serves as an ideal framework for Solana development on Python.
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Best Practices for Solana Development
Once you have gained conceptual knowledge regarding Solana blockchain, you can move towards the technical phase of Solana development. At this point of your journey, you must have learned about the different tools used for building web3 applications. Interestingly, you can improve your Solana developer career path by using different developer resources to improve your Solana programming skills. Here are some of the recommended developer resources for elevating your Solana development skills.
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Solana Docs
The first destination for accessing relevant Solana developer resources is Solana Docs. You can access a collection of official documentation and resources by Solana to learn more about the project. Solana Docs can help you learn about the features, guides, and technical details of the platform. On top of it, you could also learn the best practices for building and deploying Solana dApps.
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Solana Developers
Solana Developers is another important official resource to become Solana developer with the guidance of the Solana team. It is a website that gives you flexible access to a broad range of learning resources and information. For example, it provides documentation, community support, and tutorials that can help you work on Solana development projects.
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Solana Cookbook
After familiarizing with Solana fundamentals in Solana Docs and the ideal ways to start development on Solana with resources on Solana Developers, you would need the Solana Cookbook. It is an essential resource for anyone preparing for Solana developer jobs, as it includes professional guidance on Solana blockchain development.
The Solana Cookbook has been classified into different sections covering core concepts, references, and guides to promote Solana development. In addition, developers also improve the Solana Cookbook with their suggestions according to established guidelines.
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Solana Blockchain Developer Bootcamp
You could prepare yourself for an impressive Solana developer salary package by gaining practical experience. The Solana Blockchain Developer Bootcamp can help you with in-depth learning about Solana architecture and its programming model.
It includes the foundation for development on Solana blockchain by using Rust for building, deploying, testing, and interacting with Solana blockchain. Developers would have an exclusive resource for learning directly from Solana teams with professional support.
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Learn How to Test and Deploy Solana Programs
Once you have completed the code, you could compile the code into BPF byte code and create a ‘.so’ file for deploying on the blockchain of your choice. However, you would also need fluency in the different tools by Solana for testing and debugging programs.
You can also use the ‘crate Solana-program-test’ for interactive testing of programs by leveraging a local runtime environment. It is also important to learn how to use a local validator node for testing programs. Such approaches could provide the assurance of more comprehensive testing, with close resemblance to the behavior of programs that have been deployed on Solana.
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Conclusion
The review of Solana fundamentals could help you find how a Solana developer career path could promise exceptional rewards. As you think of new ways to deliver efficient results as a web3 developer, blockchain networks like Solana can offer promising value improvements.
Most important of all, Solana guarantees better scalability alongside reducing transaction time without affecting security. The awareness of different concepts in a roadmap for Solana developers could help in acquiring the necessary skills for Solana development. Learn more about Solana fundamentals and find out how it fits within the web3 development landscape right now.
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