From E-commerce To Lead DevRel at WalletConnect

Redek is a self-taught blockchain developer and DevRel Lead at WalletConnect, a developer toolkit for connecting wallets and dApps. His path begins with Ruby on Rails and Python, weaves through e-commerce revenue optimization, and accelerates on Cyfrin Updraft, where he learned smart contract development.

How Cyfrin Updraft helped me transition from e-commerce to Lead DevRel

I’m Radek, Developer Relations Lead at WalletConnect, leading a team of developer advocates to make developers’ lives easier. I’ve been in DevRel for about 4 years after teaching myself Solidity smart contract development with Cyfrin Updraft courses, on YouTube at that time; starting at the bottom, in four years I’ve gone from junior to senior to lead. 

It’s a dual aspect role, which is awesome. It’s highly technical, deep into code. It’s also people-facing, working directly with the developer community. I love both aspects; I wanted both, I’m doing both, and loving it! 

The philosophy and promise of blockchain is what originally drew me in: democratizing technology and finance, decentralization, censorship resistance, public by default. 

The deeper I went, the more the technology spoke to me. Eventually, I realized the 4-5 hours per day (including weekends) spent learning would be better spent working professionally in the space. 

At that point, I was doing conversion and user experience optimization for e-commerce. Which, though seemingly unrelated, is incredibly helpful in developer relations. Understanding users, UX, and clear communication are fundamental concepts that speak to people’s basic nature and tendencies and translate well to developer advocacy.

My early career in software development–Ruby on Rails and Python–was also quite helpful. The frameworks, syntax, languages were not as foreign as they would be if I started from zero. When I think about things, it’s all a bit odd because I studied International Affairs at business school. 

I discovered Cyfrin Updraft courses in their sort of pre-alpha phase and they were a game-changer. Ultimately, the TL;DR is Updraft helped me get a Web3 job.

There weren’t many resources available to learn smart contract development completely. Aside from Updraft, there were a few tutorials but nothing complete. I was forced to create my own curriculum, to pick and choose hoping the stuff I chose was right. Obviously, this was challenging because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Sometimes I guessed right, others I did not.

Cyfrin Updraft takes all the guesswork out of learning blockchain development. A huge relief psychologically. When you’re learning something new and want to catch up quickly, you don’t want to end up in a dead end.

The quality of Updraft courses really stands out. After studying on Updraft–Solidity 101, Foundry Fundamentals, and Advanced Foundry and 4-years working in the industry, I trust Updraft curriculum one-hundred percent. 

Courses are high quality, relevant to the industry, and applicable to day-to-day work. All super-important considerations. 

Two things I appreciate most about the courses are: 

1. They do not omit anything–formatting, deployment scripts, file structure, naming, everything (topics most other learning resources don’t even mention). 
2. They go beyond intermediate level. Deep into detail, nuance, and advanced features, tools, frameworks, techniques.

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Getting into Web3

Cyfrin Updraft really is a one-stop-shop for getting into and going far in blockchain development. When people ask me for advice or how to be a  smart contract developer, I give them one URL: https://updraft.cyfrin.io/, fully confident they can find everything they need. 

I do share other tutorials and mini-courses like CryptoZombies and RareSkills but they are not as extensive as Updraft. Also, Twitter. It all starts there. If you hear about something often enough, from enough reputable people, it probably means you should go deeper into it.

Personally, curiosity and consistency are the two qualities people need before starting. Curiosity to discover and learn. Consistency to keep at it long enough, to learn enough, to get a job. 

The mantra I share is: 1 hour every day, for 100 days, including weekends. I tell people that if they do that, they’ll either know it’s not for them or they’ll learn enough to be dangerous and start looking for a role.

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Join The Party

Though I’m biased, I always advise people to look into blockchain and development. When I worked in web2, very rarely did I meet someone who did the job because they believed in it. In Web3, it happens a lot. It’s very refreshing, and working with such people (not just in the same company, but in the same industry) is a pure pleasure.

If you’d like to keep track of my journey, follow me on Twitter/X @velvet_shark.