**Unhased.io | Twitter | Linkedin**

<aside> 🤡 You’ll either die soon or live long enough to join Web3.

— Musharraf, Co-founder, Unhashed.io

</aside>

Jokes apart, I’m glad your curiosity brought you here.

It says that all the effort that Web3 developers and marketers are making is paying off.

Or maybe you just heard about how a nerdy dude named SBF fucked up the entire Web3 industry and you just wanted to know more.

I’d like to move forward with the assumption that you’re here because of the former. Optimism.

To help you get started in Web3, we (Mrig and Musharraf) curated the most interesting videos, blogs, documentations, and books that you can dig into.

A word from the wise: Go slow. It’s a long-term game.

<aside> 💡 If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us. We will have failed the web.

— Sir Tim Berners Lee, Inventor, World Wide Web (www)

</aside>

Smart people start with the fundamentals

Before we dive into each of the sections, I’ve added the simplest explanations to them that I possibly could come up with. Let’s get started.

Blockchain

Blockchain is an ever-growing database that records transactions of data and value such that the records are verified and stored by a distributed network of computers instead of a central entity/server. They’re decentralized, permissionless, and nearly immutable.

Basic

  1. How does a blockchain work - Simply Explained (this is where I started)
  2. The Blockchain FAQ for Beginners - Mohammad Musharraf

Intermediate

  1. Blockchain Basics and Cryptography - MIT OpenCourseWare
  2. What Is Blockchain Technology? The Ultimate Guide - Binance


Crypto currency, coins, tokens

Cryptocurrencies are permissionless digital assets that live on the blockchain and power the digital economy of blockchains and applications built on top of blockchains. They can be categorized into multiple types based on their inherent characteristics, which you will learn in the below pieces.

  1. What is a cryptocurrency - CoinDesk
  2. The Difference Between Coins and Tokens - Ledger
  3. What is Bitcoin - 99Bitcoins (highly reliable source for crypto guides)
  4. Beginner’s Guide to NFTs - Decrypt


Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Decentralized finance is a financial system built on the blockchain that offers an alternative to the centralized financial systems that we use today. It aims to replace centralized intermediaries and custodians from finance and help us completely own our assets.

  1. What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi) - Ethereum.org
  2. DeFi - The Future of Finance Explained - Finematics (a great channel to learn anything Web3)
  3. What are smart contracts - Finematics
  4. The BEST DeFi Playlist - The Defiant
  5. The DeFi Timeline - MakerDAO


Web3

Web3 is the next step in the internet’s evolution. It aims to create an internet that is more decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant, and user-centric. Apart from having everything that the current internet has, Web3 offers users more control over their data and assets.

  1. What is Web3 - Whiteboard crypto
  2. Web3 - Importance, Use Cases, Limitations
  3. The Web3 Landscape (research paper) - a16z


From Bitcoin to Web3: The Journey Through the Words of Visionaries

Phase one - It all started with Bitcoin

<aside> 💡 A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers. ** — Marc Andreessen, Co-Founder, a16z

</aside>

  1. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash (2008) — Satoshi Nakamoto (Comic Version - CoinSpice)
  2. Why I’m Interested in Bitcoin (2011) - Chris Dixon, General Partner, a16z
  3. Bitcoin Neutrality (2013) — Andreas Antonopoulos
  4. Why Bitcoin Matters (2014) — Marc Andreessen, CoFounder, a16z

Phase two - Then came Ethereum

  1. Ethereum White Paper (2104) — Vitalik Buterin, CoFounder Ethereum
  2. DApps: What Web3.0 Looks Like (2014) — Gavin Wood, CTO Ethereum
  3. WEB 3.0 – A CHAT WITH ETHEREUM’S GAVIN WOOD (2014)
  4. How Blockchain is Changing Money and Business — Don Tapscott, Co-Founder, Blockchain Research Institute
  5. The Meaning of Decentralization (2017) — Vitalik Buterin
  6. Decentralizing Everything (2017) — Vitalik Buterin and Naval Ravikant

Reading list on Ethereum

Phase three - And then, there was a revolution

  1. Crypto Tokens: A Breakthrough in Open Network Design (2017) - Chris Dixon
  2. Why We Need Web3.0? (2018) — Gavin Wood
  3. Third Generation Blockchains — Charles Hoskinson, Founder, Cardano
  4. And What Has the Blockchain Ever Done for Us? (2018)— Balaji Srinivasan
  5. a16z Podcast: The New Fan Club—Creators, Fans, and the Power of Markets (2020) — Jesse Walden, Founder, Variant Fund (ex a16z investor)
  6. A beginner’s guide to DAOs (2021) — Linda Xie
  7. Defining the Metaverse (2021) — Bankless

Into the Orange - Deep dive into Bitcoin

Should you find yourself amazed at how far we have come in the crypto journey, slow down… look back… there’s more history to it than you’ve uncovered yet:

Henry Hazlitt: Economics In One Lesson (1945)

Murray Rothbart: What Has Government Done To Our Money (1963)

Robert LeFevre: The Philosophy Of Ownership (1966)

Harry Brown: How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973)

<aside> 💡 But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object the establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

</aside>