Today I am going to show you how to build a GREAT portfolio for your Blockchain career. If you interested in getting a Blockchain job, read this article, because your portfolio is your greatest asset for your job search.
My experience with developers portfolio
I have been on both sides of the table. I have been a job seeker and a recruiter:
- As a job seeker, I built my own portfolio and I was hired based on this portfolio.
- And as a recruiter, I have interviewed interviewed 100’s of candidates for Blockchain development roles.
I have seen it all: Great portfolio, lousy portfolio, or even sometime, no portfolio.
A portfolio is very important for 2 reasons:
- It’s often the main element to evaluate a candidate
- And it some cases it can even get you the attention of a recruiter, meaning that you can get approached by a recruiter, just based on your portfolio. No need to apply. When this happens, you are 90pct sure to get the job.
On a CV, you can say whatever you want. But with a portfolio, it’s harder to inflate your skills.
After you worked so hard to acquire your technical skills, you don’t want to ruin everything by neglecting your portfolio. This is how you are going to be judged.
So let’s see how to build a great Blockchain portfolio. And I am going to tell you a couple of stories.
Story 1: Alex
First we have Alex.
- Alex is a web developer who wants to switch to Blockchain.
- Alex took a Blockchain course.
- At the end of this course, there was a final project.
- Alex did the final project, and uploaded it to his Github.
- A couple of weeks after, a recruiter contacted him for a job.
- Alex passed the interviews, and got his first 6-figure Blockchain job.
This is real story by the way, Alex was one of my student, and we recorded an interview on the channel. And here is where it gets interesting.
How did the recruiter found Alex? Thanks to his project on Github. He did exactly what I told him, and it worked.
And it’s not an isolated case. I have many other students who found jobs like this.
Story 2
Now let me tell you another story, James:
- James is a software developer who want to switch to Blockchain.
- James also took a Blockchain course, but instead of a paid one, he took a free one – You will understand why it matters.
This free course is very popular. It has millions of views on Youtube. And at the end there is also a good project. The project is even better than the paid course of Alex.
So James does this project, upload it to its Github. And… nothing happens…Why? Even though it’s a great project, there are so many people who have exactly the same. Zero originality, it’s not going to impress recruiters.
So you see, it’s not just as simple as just copying a project and uploading on Github.
So I am going to tell you exactly what you should do, and you should not do when you pick a project. But first, I want to give you a couple of project ideas.
Typical portfolio mistakes
There are many other mistakes to avoid when creating your portfolio
- For example, if you copy someone project, add some customization. Don’t just copy and paste
- Do not copy some code if you don’t understand it. During the interview you can be asked about the project. If you don’t understand it, you will fail the interview.
- Do not show projects that are too simple, like NFT marketplace, or basic ERC20 tokens. It make you look like a junior.
- Do not start a lot of projects, without finishing them. It tells employers that you are not a finisher, you are not someone serious. It’s better to work on just one project, but to do it really well.
- Do not create projects with just one giant commit with all your code. It shows that you don’t know how to use Git properly, and it’s harder to collaborate with you. It’s better to commit in smaller increments.
- Do not use keywords like “tutorial” or “course” in your github repo. It makes it look like the project is not serious.
- Avoid hardcoded addresses in your smart contract.
- Do not do a custom implementation if there are already well-established libraries: for example for ERC20, use Openzeppelin, don’t code it yourself
Tips for a great portfolio
So now you know what to avoid. But what about the things you should do?
The best portfolio is when you can sow real, production projects, or at least, projects that look real. In other words, don’t make your portfolio… look like a portfolio.
So how do you do that? Here are couple of tips:
- Have a README that explain
- It should explain what the project is about
- How to run it locally
- And how to deploy it
- Documentation is very important because when you have teammates your ability to communicate with others matters a lot
- Use good variable names, meaning consive but meaningful
- Make sure your handle errors
- Emit events in your smart contract when you update the state
- Format your code well, meaning format it consistently. There are tools called linter for that
- Comment your code, there is a specification called Natspec that I recommend you to follow
- Test your smart contracts
- Your tests should have a coverage of 100%, meaning they should cover all the smart contract code
- You can use tools like Foundry to measure coverage
- Deploy your projects to production
- It means deploy your smart contract to a public testnet, or mainnet
- And deploy the frontend to a real url, with a domain name that you bought. Yes, you have to spend some money to buy a URL, but for your portfolio it’s worth it
- It means you are really
- Make sure to fix security vulnerabilities. When you build your project, try to think how a hacker could hack your project, and fix the vulnerability
- Make sure you take into consideration gas usage. Some patterns should be avoided because they use a lot of gas, like storing an image on the Blockchain. Don’t do that
- Think of upgradability of your smart contract
- Make sure to have a frontend, don’t just deploy the smart contract
So this is a checklist that you can follow to make sure your project looks good. And next I want to give you a couple of project idea
Project idea 1: Decentralized exchange
The first project idea is a decentralized exchange, also called a DEX:
- A decentralized exchange is a Blockchain app to trade tokens on the Blockchain.
- The big advantage of a decentralized exchange compared to a centralized exchange is that users don’t need
- Uniswap is the most famous DEX
- Beside Uniswap, there are many other DEXes, many which are forks of Uniswap.
There are different ways you can implement a DEX.
- You can do what we call an on-chain orderbook, where everything happen in the smart contract. That’s the easiest.
- You can do an off-chain orderbook, where you match orders on a backend, and execute them on a smart contract. A bit more difficult, and an improvement over an on-chain orderbook.
- And finally the best is to copy the design of Uniswap, what we call an automated market makers. But it’s the hardest.
I don’t recommend to fork an existing protocol as your portfolio project because everybody can see that you just did a fork, and you will have no merit.
Project idea 2
Another project idea is DeFi wallet:
- For each new user, you will create a new wallet smart contract.
- In this wallet, you can have integration with DeFi protocol, like Uniswap. For example, you can buy and sell on Uniswap with the wallet.
- And you can also have a saving account feature, where the money in the wallet is automatically invested in a DeFi protocol.
How to find even more idea
But that absolute best is is if you can find your own ideas.
There are different categories
- Integrate with an existing protocol or not / It’s harder to integrate with an existing protocol but it’s also better because you tap into an existing user base and it’s easier to make your project useful
- Have a smart contract, or not. Some Blockchain projects just integrate with existing smart contracts. You don’t need to have a smart contract for your portfolio project. Unless you target explicitly a position of smart contract developer.
One way to get ideas is to be a crypto user. Especially in the DeFi space:
- Experiment with DeFi apps and try to notice what are the issues you run into.
- Join crypto communities, like Discord, reddit, twitter, and listen to what people say.
The most interesting is when you hear people complaining. When you hear complaints, you should think how to solve this? Maybe you can build a project for that, and that will be your portfolio.
Finding a good idea for a portfolio project is a bit similar to finding a business idea.
Your project is supposed to solve some existing problems. It’s way better than some tutorial idea that is completely artificial.
One last way to get idea is to take a web2 app, and make it a web3 app. For example, You can build a decentralized Twitter, or a decentralized Uber.
Conclusion
Remember – your portfolio is your proof of work. Make it count. Start with one solid project, make it production-ready, then move to the next. Quality beats quantity every time.
And to help you work on your portfolio, checkout my new Blockchain school, the 30 Day Academy.
This is a brand new course platform based on challenges. Every day, during 30 days you have one challenge to complete.
The 30 Day Academy is going to launch on November 29th. And for the launch event, you will get a special Black Friday deal.
To get the Black Friday deal, register with this link.
That’s it for today, bye!
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