The need for permanent and decentralized frontend deployments
Most frontend devs I know in web3 use Next.js + Vercel for their frontends. Probably for good reason, too. Next.js is fast & feature-packed, and no other platform has a better developer experience than Vercel.
While this stack serves well for most, it is a very centralized solution. Your frontend will be at the mercy of Vercel, who use AWS behind the scenes. Not very web3.
In 2021, I was a 20-year-old kid studying at a shitty college and doing miserable random freelance gigs for pocket money. Traveling the world and exploring the mysteries it had to offer was something I had always dreamed of. But dreaming is where it had to stop. I come from a middle-class Indian family so I could never afford to travel abroad.
In 2022, everything changed. I got a job because people saw me building some cool stuff with this new DAO I joined. I earned a scholarship to an Ethereum conference in Dubai and left home for the first time in my life to meet my 'online' friends. This trip turned out to be a life-changing experience.
Developer DAO made all of this happen for me. This is my story.
With all the hype around, web3 can be overwhelming if you’re looking to get started. Luckily if you are a frontend dev coming from web2, you already have most of the skills you need to get started in web3. I can say this because I come from a web2 frontend background myself and I made the move to web3 last year. I now work full-time in web3.
In this post, I’ll try to give you an overview of the web3 space so that you can make a decision on whether you want to switch to web3 and how you can do it.
What stays the same
The one thing that stays the same between web2 and web3 apps is that all of them are just websites (or mobile apps) to begin with. So if you know how to build UIs with React, you can build UIs for both web2 and web3 apps. Nothing changes. You’re just manipulating the DOM after all. The difference lies in how web2 and web3 apps handle data and authentication. Let’s talk about that next.