dev.to staffWe are thrilled to collaborate with the Stellar Development Foundation to introduce the community to blockchain technology.
Running through August 18, the Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge provides an opportunity for web devs to learn all about decentralization, wallets, consensus, interoperability, and all the other lingo you may have heard floating around but never quite understood. This is your signal to dive in and unlock those a-ha moments!
We’ll share all the resources you need to learn the fundamentals, and you’ll come out of the challenge knowing how to build with Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform designed for scale and sensibility.
We have two prompts for this challenge, but six ways to win. Did we mention the $50,000 prize pool? And a free trip to London to attend the Meridian Conference?! Our biggest offering to-date, thanks to the generous Stellar Development Foundation.
Ready to get learning and building? Read on to learn about the prompts and how to get started.
Our Prompts
Prizes
We’ll be splitting our $50,000 prize pool six ways. Here is what our prompt winners and additional prize category winners will receive:
Prompt Winners (2):
- $13,000 USD
- An invitation to Meridian, Stellar’s annual conference in London (October 15-17, all travel expenses paid for).
- Exclusive DEV Badge
- A gift from the DEV Shop
Prize Category Winners (4):
- $6,000 USD
- Exclusive DEV Badge
- A gift from the DEV Shop
All Participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge on their DEV profile.
Getting Started
We know it can be a bit intimidating to jump into web3 and blockchain, so the Stellar team has published a companion guide that covers all the topics you need to get started:
Additionally, we encourage all participants to join the dev-hack channel in the Stellar Dev Discord, a community server for asking questions and meeting the community of developers building with Stellar.
Stellar Livestreams
The Stellar team will host a series of livestreams right on DEV throughout the course of the challenge. Just visit our homepage at 12pm EDT on these dates:
- 7/23 - Intro to Stellar: Getting started in Rust, setting up your environment, and writing your first smart contract. Watch the recap:
- 7/30: Build a dApp
- 8/1: Intro to Passkeys
- 8/6: Migrating from Web2 to Web3
- 8/8: Stellar Community Fund
Need Inspiration?
Below are a few ideas for both prompts to get your creative juices flowing.
Your smart contract dApp could be related to:
- A game where players interact on-chain to compete against each other
- A public goods application where interactions with the dApp could result in real-world positive impact.
- A DAO or governance-related dApp
- Identity Tooling
- Financial services, like a wallet or payment dApp
Your tutorial could focus on:
- Code examples (i.e.Solidity by Example)
- Fun dApp tutorials (i.e. Pet Shop Tutorial)
- Soroban for X developer (X = another smart contracts platform, such as Ethereum, Near, or Solana)
We can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Additional Resources
For building DeFi protocols:
- Getting Started with Writing Smart Contracts: a comprehensive tutorial that acts as the gateway to the Stellar smart contract developer experience
- Soroban Quest: complete interactive challenges to understand the fundamentals of smart contract development
- Okashi: get started building your own Stellar smart contracts right from your browser
- Liquidity Pool: a complete Liquidity Pool example dApp with smart contracts and UI elements
- Circle Stellar USDC Faucet: get Testnet USDC to use in your development efforts
- Create Soroban dApp Boilerplate: Create your dApp with just one command line.
For building wallets:
- Stellar Wallet SDK: a collection of SDKs enabling you to take advantage of the pre-existing deposit/withdraw capabilities of network anchors
- Stellar Quest: interactively learn and understand the fundamentals of interacting with the Stellar network: transactions, operations, accounts, etc.
- Build Applications Tutorials: a few written tutorials focusing on JavaScript implementations of common wallet functionality
- Stellar Design System: components and styles that can make your frontend development easier
Tools
Explore the Network
- Stellar Laboratory: interacts with the network and queries network activity
- Stellar.Expert: Block Explorer to view ledger entries, accounts, assets, analytics, etc.
- Data Indexers: services and infrastructure available for you to query and monitor network state and activity
Connect to the Network
- Freighter Browser Wallet: a wallet developed and maintained by SDF
- Stellar Wallets Kit: a community-built library that integrates multiple browser wallets into a frontend project
- @soroban-react: connects ReactJS frontends with wallets like Lobstr, Freighter, Xbull. Help you create the messages that users will sign.
- Simple Stellar Signer: a plug-and-play tool to integrate your solution with multiple wallets at once
- Account Viewer: a simple wallet, with available source code, that can be used to interact with a Stellar account on Mainnet or Testnet
Build on the Network
- Developer Tools: an organized list of available tools, services, etc. to jumpstart or enhance your development experience
- SDK Library: Stellar boasts an impressive collection of SDKs you can use to interact with the network in almost any language you could ever want
- Beans POS Merchant SDK: an SDK powered by Beans Wallet to help developers implement Point-of-Sale functionality into their app using Stellar
- Create Soroban dApp Video Workshop: tutorial and walkthrough on how to create a dApp
- Sorochat: Creating a chat dApp on Soroban (tutorial):
- How to Start Developing on Stellar (video workshop)
- Build your first wallet on Stellar (video workshop)
Important Dates
- July 10: Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge begins!
- August 18: Submissions due at 11:59 PM PDT
- August 27: Winners Announced
Questions about the challenge? Ask them below.
Good luck and happy coding!
