Running before walking is something I am often guilty of. It has benefits and downsides. The benefits include a more organic and speedier learning process with one of the downsides being, not fully understanding the fundamentals of what you are learning, which, when the learning curve catches up with you, can be pretty painful and will slow you down considerably!

With that in mind, and in response to the feedback on the first blog……

Here are some of the pieces of information that helped me personally embark on this journey and may help you if you choose to experiment too.

What is the blockchain?

Courtesy of @she256 via Li Jin, a great introduction to blockchain, crypto, consensus, Bitcoin, Ethereum and use cases.:

Smart contracts are critical to be understood too:

NFTs

You will have heard a lot about NFTs or Non-Fungible-Tokens:

Overview of WTF these are, kudos to mamoria.eth:

Deeper dives:

Web 3:

as a reminder from the first blog:

For a brilliantly curated and signposted, deeper dive into Web3 for non-technical folks:

OK, enough with the reading - how do I start to do something here?

Some things you can do to begin the practical learning, that will provide the foundation for going further in the future:

1. Get a Wallet - For ease of use and compatibility, many use MetaMask (it has an extension for the main browsers and allows you to connect your wallet to web3 services and sites. A quick guide here. What ever you do, keep a physical copy of your recovery seed and keep it very secure. If you lose this phrase you will not be able to access your wallet.

2. Buy some crypto currency. Something like Coinbase is pretty user friendly for us that are new in the space. The most utility will be found with the ETH coin which is the token used on the Ethereum blockchain. This is not a recommendation to start crypto currency trading. You will however likely need a small amount of ETH to be able to mint NFTs, buy NFTs, ENS domain names, etc..

3. Play around with NFTs. You can mint one (here is a test I did - I minted a picture I took of a crab at Lisbon Aquarium), buy them, or even sell them…. opensea.io is the leading marketplace here.

   Do all of this at your own discretion / risk

For those getting seriously curious:

has been recommended by experts in the industry to get started in the crypto/web3 sector.

If like me, you like to try to sprint before you can crawl, why not apply to support a crypto startup with your non-technical skills here: