Introduction
About a decade ago, tech experts were worried about the emergence of a virtual currency supporting peer-to-peer transactions. Although this was one of the popular applications of the new—or future—version of the web called Web 3.0.
Fast forward to today there has been more adoption of Web 3.0. Soon the world would witness how web3 would revolutionize the web and change the conventional perception of digital identity and asset ownership.
Web3 is the vision for a new decentralized internet. The introduction to web3 tools and frameworks may look quite advanced, particularly for people who are yet to fully grasp the idea behind it and how it works. If you want to delve into the world of web3 development, the strength of web3 development tools can define your strength as a developer.
This article will look at the various tools and frameworks required for web3 development.
Tools
There are numerous tools available to make development in web3 seamless. However, for simplicity purposes, we will group these tools by categories and state as many examples under each category.
Wallet
A web3 wallet is the most fundamental requirement to do anything in web3. It serves as the bridge between you and the Blockchain.
Web3 wallets are designed to interact with the smart contracts that power web3 applications, integrating a user-friendly interface that can easily connect and interact with DApps on various blockchains.
A web3 wallet stores users' digital assets such as cryptocurrency, NFTs, etc. Popular web3 wallets include Metamask, Coinbase, trust wallet, Argent, etc.
Node Provider
Node providers are reliable and innovative toolkits offering effective platforms to help web3 developers.
A blockchain node provider builds and manages blockchain nodes available for others, transferring operating node control from an individual developer or business to the blockchain node service provider.
They help you avoid the burden of financial costs, reliability risks, and development time.
Node providers offer secure, accurate, and reliable blockchain nodes to support successful web3 applications. Popular node providers include Alchemy, Quicknode, Infura, Moralis, Ankr, Chainstacks, Nownodes, etc.
Integrated Development Environment
Most IDEs used in traditional software development are still applicable for development in web3. Some of these IDEs include VS Code, Sublime, Notepad, etc. However, Remix is a unique in-browser IDE which is beginner friendly and also used by experts.
A unique feature Remix has is its inbuilt contract deployment and testing GUI for testing and deploying your contracts on the go. There are also other development environments similar to Remix, which include EthFiddle, and Yakindu.
Web3 Programming Language
Web3 applications run on smart contracts. The majority of these smart contracts are written in the solidity programming language. Hence, it is better you master the programming language to become a web3 developer.
Aside from Solidity, the Rust programming language is used majorly in the Solana ecosystem for building the programs that power dApp that run on the Solana network. Popular ecosystems such as Polkadot and NEAR also use Rust.
Other emerging programming languages in the web3 space include Cairo, a Zk-compatible smart contract for starkNet and Vyper, a Pythonic programming language for writing smart contracts.
Storage
A beautiful thing about storage in web3 is it is decentralized. This decentralized model is used along with blockchain technology to store data using a distributed model.
Storage systems in web3 work by sharing peer-to-peer networks for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. Developers can use these storage tools to store files for their dApps on the cloud. These files can include images, videos, audio files, etc.
Popular examples of web3 storage include Filecoin, Interplanetary File Storage (IPFS), and Web3 Storage.
Software Development Kits (SDKs)
In web3, SDKs give you modern endpoints to build your web3 Applications. Most SDKs come with APIs and methods that help you perform certain functions with just one to a few lines of code.
Functions that help you communicate with your smart contracts, connect your web3 wallet, authenticate a user, validate transactions with your wallet, and many more functions. Also, these SDKs are written in ways easily integrated with popular programming languages like Javascript, Flutter, etc.
Popular Web3 SDKs include ether.js, Web3.js, Wagmi, Thirdweb, Viem, WalletConnect, Rainbowkit, AlchemySDK. There are also emerging technologies like Paper.
Development Frameworks
These frameworks help developers communicate with the Blockchain using Javascript, Python, and/or Solidity. These frameworks make it easy to deploy and test your smart contracts locally.
Most of these frameworks work with the Ethereum blockchain. However, there are emerging technologies that have multichain support and can interact with other blockchains aside from Ethereum.
Popular frameworks that interact with Ethereum include Hardhat, Brownie, and Foundry. While the first two work with Javascript, Brownie works with Python, and Foundry works with Solidity. Other examples with multichain support include Scaffold-Eth, web3cli, Sequence, and web3Scaffold.
Databases
Most databases in web3 operate using the hybrid architecture, bringing the benefits of traditional centralized databases to the web3 space in a decentralized manner.
While some of these databases, like WeaveDB, run a NoSQL model, others, like Tableand, run a relational database model. The choice of database to select for your web3 project depends on your application's needs and architecture.
Indexing
Due to the time-ordered nature of the Blockchain, which spreads information across several blocks, there is no built-in way to identify, categorize, or query the linked data.
As a result, indexes that allow users to search the Blockchain for specific keys would improve its usability, reach, and search power.
Indexing tools in web3 help to locate and retrieve data on Ethereum, just like other indexing tools can accomplish for traditional, centralized databases. Popular indexing tools include The Graph and Subsquid.
Conclusion
So far, we have covered a lot of web3 development tools which are used for development in web3. However, we did not cover other important tools like Layer 1 and Layer 2 Chains and Decentralized domains, including ENS and Unstoppable. Other tools include Oracles like Chainlink and Decentralized Socials like Lens Protocol.
During this article, we have seen a couple of tools available for developers in the web3 ecosystem. However, the web3 ecosystem is rapidly evolving;
new technologies keep evolving daily. Hence it would help if you kept yourself updated regularly.