This blog post was written by the Secret University team.
Hello Secret community!
Today we’re thrilled to announce the official launch of Secret University, a new educational academy dedicated to helping developers of all backgrounds explore Secret Network and learn how to build privacy-preserving applications! Whether you are a developer just starting to learn about blockchain technology or a seasoned smart contract developer, Secret University can help you find a place in our ecosystem and guide you in your journey to becoming a Secret Network developer.
Why Secret University?
Secret University initially started as an idea raised by our developer community to brainstorm ways to help lower the barrier of entry for building on Secret Network. We understand that it can be an intimidating experience to enter a new ecosystem and learn the nuances of privacy-preserving technology. We also began noticing that new developers would spend valuable time and energy looking for resources to get started and were asking many similar questions as they started their journey on our network.
While we still have a long way to go, Secret University is officially launching its education platform for developers looking to start their journey on Secret Network. This platform serves as a critical resource for new developers to kick start their journey on Secret Network, navigate community resources that have been curated by our developer community, and find projects to start building both for hands-on-learning and as bounties paid in SCRT. This platform also serves as a chalkboard for more advanced developers to share their knowledge and contribute to the growing library of educational content that will be used to grow the future generation of developers on our network.
Key features
With the initial release of the Secret University platform, we are also bringing you exclusive dev-focused content:
- Secret Pathway: Introduction to Secret Network – learn the value proposition of building on Secret Network, technical architecture behind the network, and prerequisites to begin development
- Secret Pathway: Writing your first Secret Contract – explore how to write a smart contract in Rust and CosmWasm and learn the basic components of a smart contract
- Secret Boxes: Secret Counter – build your a secret counter dApp in a guided mini-project that is launches on GitPod
We also curated key resources to help you get started in the right direction:
- Secret Network Documentation (docs.scrt.network) – technical documentation that dives into detail on technical topics with guided instructions
- Ecosystem repositories – key repositories that showcase development standards and examples of other applications built on the network
- Community bounties – list of projects ideas that the community believes deserve financial compensation should a developer take on the challenge
- Knowledge articles (coming soon) – knowledge articles and content from thought leaders around the network that offer key insights on best practices, development challenges and solutions, and suggestions for designing your applications
As Secret University continues to grow and expand to meet the needs of our developer community, you will have the opportunity to learn from some of the best and brightest in the field. We hope that you will find this educational platform useful, and it can help guide you in your journey to launching your own secret applications!
Next Steps
The launch of our educational platform is only the beginning for Secret University! There is still a lot of content that needs to be added to the university platform and we are working with advanced developers across the ecosystem to provide this for you. We are currently focused on expanding the knowledge base to include more intermediate and advanced topics that help developers work with viewing keys and permits, concepts that are critical for developers to understand when building secret applications.
We are focused on working with our developer community to identify more experienced developers who would be willing to contribute their time and energy to becoming “Professors” and mentors for the network to provide a more human-element to education. If this applies to you, please reach out to the Secret University team on the Secret Network Discord, and we would love to get you onboarded.
Finally, Secret University hopes to work closely with SCRT Labs, Secret Foundation, and Secret Agency in delivering content needed to run extended academy courses, workshops and hackathons for new developers across universities and beyond. We believe these experiences will be instrumental for new developers to get face time with experienced developers to ask questions in a live environment to further learning.
Get Involved
So far, Secret University has been a community funded initiative. If you believe developer education to be an important initiative for growing and scaling our network, we would really appreciate your support by delegating to our Secret University validator!
To get started and stay informed on the latest updates for new content, please do the following:
- Complete our developer interest survey – https://forms.monday.com/forms/d1687ce9e74d031fac96c36a405a1fa1?r=use1
- Start your journey as a developer or knowledge contributor at https://scrt.university
- Follow us on twitter at https://twitter.com/SCRT_University
- Share this article with any developers who may be interested in building on Secret Network!
We appreciate all of the enthusiasm and support we have received across the Secret Network community thus far, and we will work diligently to continue our efforts to make developer education a pillar of Secret Network’s thriving ecosystem!
Onwards and upwards!
