What is a blockchain developer and what is their average yearly salary?

You’ve probably heard something about the blockchain by now, right? A technology based on cryptography that was created in order to make Bitcoin truly safe and decentralized, it quickly got a life of its own, thanks to Bitcoin’s source code being made freely available from the start.

Now, the blockchain is a security technology based around decentralization and trust, and is able to host much more than just cryptocurrencies coinmarket, including apps, artworks, and even entire games! The best example is probably the Ethereum ecosystem, which was born around Ethereum and now hosts many apps, NFTs, startups, and multiple cryptocurrencies binance us (the tokens, released in ICOs).

So, who is in charge of developing all of those ecosystems and making sure that they are safe and running smoothly? That’s right, the blockchain developer.

The blockchain as a technology

Today, the blockchain has evolved so much that you can take advantage of it in many more ways than just by using crypto.

Decentralized apps (Dapps) give a new way to create, publish and finance apps. Instead of having to pay a fee to be hosted in Google Apps or the Apple Store, you can host an app inside the blockchain, and it will be hosted within the app users’ copies of the blockchain, as well as the copies of other users of the blockchain.

Smart contracts also bring a new and agile way of doing business. In usual business practices, a trust bond between two parties is formed by a contract that is binding according to the local laws. If a contract is broken, a legal battle may start to get compensation. All of this is very bureaucratic and involves large sums being spent on lawyers and court fees.

In the blockchain, a decentralized environment, that way of generating trust doesn’t exist, as it is not regulated or under authority of any government. That’s where smart contracts come in: they are contract apps that live in the blockchain and are programmed to trigger automatically when it detects that the conditions have been met.

Not to mention blockchain as a security technology, whose safety has been so well proven that banks are starting to use it within their own systems, among many other possible applications. You may also Know: Top Paying Tech Jobs

Joining the blockchain

Still, while all those possibilities can bring you many benefits, they aren’t exactly very easy to take advantage of.

For example, developing an app for a blockchain isn’t like developing an app for Android or iOS. You’re not going to be able to create an app for it using Java, Kotlin or Swift. Each blockchain has its own rules, its own programming language, API, and other technicalities. So you can’t just get any app developer to create those kinds of apps, you need someone that specializes in it. That is, a blockchain developer.

This is also true if you are looking into developing your own blockchain. While you can have many types of programmers involved in that, you also need people that are experienced with creating and using blockchains and also know about cryptography in order to define how the blockchain will work, that is, what will validate each block, how the blocks will be structured, hashing algorithms to be used, blockchain API, among many other possible features that the blockchain needs to have.

Demand and salary

If you’re interested in the field but doesn’t know much about career prospects, don’t worry: it isn’t hard to get 100 thousand or more dollars per year even at an entry-level position.

Thanks to its flexibility and security, as well as for cryptocurrency prices, trending and the technology being pushed by tech personalities such as Elon Musk, the blockchain has been gaining traction throughout the world and new applications and derivative functions are being developed each day. Hence, the demand for professionals that know the ins and outs of the technology is also high, as knowledge about this new technology is critical to make it work correctly.

And the demand is bound to grow a lot for the next few years.