Solidity Bootcamp (Advanced)

Our students have gotten jobs as auditors at top companies including Trail of Bits and Layer Zero, so we know our curriculum is truly unique. Although we have had amazing success with career outcomes, career advancement is not our primary focus. If your sole intent is to earn a higher salary, RareSkills is not for you. If you are joining RareSkills for a career change, please read our advice about a career in blockchain before applying.

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• Blockchain job tier list

• Why there is so much more to Ethereum programming than solidity

• The relationship between studying blockchain and salary, and advice for developers living in developing countries

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But the outcome we see for every student who completes the program is this: Ethereum and smart contracts no longer seem like a black box. Being able to have a complete understanding of the execution environment leads to peace of mind when developing contracts, as you know you have eliminated the knowledge gaps that could seriously hurt you.

​Significantly. We have seen significant layoffs and hiring freezes in the industry. Some companies are still hiring, but getting those jobs is a competitive process. We think the bear market is great time to upskill as there is less pressure to push products out the door. However, please bear in mind that if your intent is to switch from web2 to web3, it is possible, but the bar is very high right now. Only a small fraction of engineers new to the field will have the determination, perseverance, and discipline needed to differentiate themselves as a competitive job applicant.

This is for engineers who already know solidity and are looking to cover their knowledge gaps and develop a comprehensive understanding of the EVM and Solidity development.

You should already know how to create fungible and non-fungible tokens (ERC20 and ERC721). You should be able to connect a website to a smart contract with Metamask or Coinbase Wallet, or similar extension. You should be comfortable with Hardhat or Foundry (preferably both). You should have experience with unit testing. You don't have to know solidity thoroughly, but you should be comfortable creating basic contracts with it. 

If you want to keep learning and be even more advanced, we recommend taking the DeFi Bootcamp. That will teach you how the major DeFi protocol architectures evolve and the math that underpins their tokenomics. Some of them use very sophisticated techniques with solidity that this course will prepare you to learn. If you are specifically interested in zero knowledge, then our zero knowledge course can be taken after this one instead of the DeFi one. However, what you learn in the DeFi course will be more widely applicable.

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You can think about our Ethereum blockchain bootcamp as a four part series:
Dapp Bootcamp (8 weeks)

Advanced Solidity (22 weeks)

DeFi (8 weeks)

Zero Knowledge (8 weeks)

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At 46 weeks, that's nearly a year of constantly challenging yourself to improve at a steep rate. You will definitely notice the results!

Yes. For custom tailored solidity training for your company, please fill out the form at the bottom of this page.

Take our Dapp Bootcamp instead.

Rough breakdown is as follows:

• 2 years of solidity experience: 10-15 hours per week

• 1 year of solidity experience: 15-20 hours per week

• 6 months of solidity experience 20-25 hours per week

• Taken a few online courses or took the Dapp Bootcamp: 25+ hours per week

Because working with a top community, industry leading instructors, and a rigorous curriculum will help you learn faster and more thoroughly. Time is money. The faster you gain a skill, the sooner you see the effect in your career. You aren’t just paying for organizing information, but for access to a motivated and skilled community, and time with industry leaders.

1. Our classes are the smallest: 5 students
2. Our curriculum is the longest: over 40 weeks of Ethereum development training across our courses.
3. Our training philosophy is calibrated to be the optimal combination of self-study while leveraging the advantages of an education institution. Many trainers give students too much structured material and they spend more time watching videos and taking quizzes instead of applying their skills.
4. One-on-one mentorship and code reviews. Getting questions answered quickly is a time saver, so is pointing out mistakes you might miss on your own.
5. Unusually high success rate. With only one exception, every student who has completed the program, and wanted to switch careers, has gotten a job as a solidity developer or auditor. The success is largely due to our rigor, but also because we aggressively network on your behalf. This doesn’t mean we network for you, but it means you get more networking done for the same amount of work. The sole exception to our success was a student whose proficiency in English limited their career options. Beware of claims from other training programs that plaster logos of blockchain companies on their website without specifying that their graduates work traditional web2 jobs, or worse, haven’t hired anyone and just have an unofficial “hiring partnership.”

We take student outcomes very seriously. 

Please see an up to date list here: https://www.rareskills.io/instructors

No we do not. We are not a bootcamp that tries to attract students by enticing them with potentially higher salaries. We are a training program for rising experts.

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If you aren’t already making money as a software developer (or at least have in the past), you probably won’t be accepted to the program.

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If you are an experienced developer looking to transition from web2 to web3, we certainly will help you by leveraging our network, preparing you for interviews, and suggesting changes to your CV. All our instructors have extensive experience as engineering hiring managers, and we are quite well connected in the industry. But generally, our target audience is blockchain developers looking to become senior and technical web3 entrepreneurs seeking to be the most capable engineering leaders they can be. These kinds of people don’t gain anything from a job guarantee.

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Read more about why we don't have a job guarantee.

Sometimes. Informal referrals don't result in placement fees for us however.

First reason: 60% of students already have a solidity job, sometimes even as the lead solidity engineer on their team. They are coming to RareSkills not to switch jobs, but to be a better tech lead. We obviously can’t make recruitment fees off of engineers in that situation.

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Second, this creates a mismatch of incentives. Switching jobs is not a decision to take lightly. If our business can’t stay afloat without pressuring you to switch employers, what do you think we are going to do? Charging tuition gives us the freedom to act in your best interest.

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Third, we’ve observed a positive correlation with how much money students pay and how likely it is they will complete the program.

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We believe employers constantly poaching engineers from each other slows down advancement in the ecosystem. RareSkills seeks a win-win solution where we increase the overall talent pool at a fairly low cost and with no negative externalities. If you compare our tuition fee to an industry standard recruitment fee, we believe we are creating a lot of value.

About 20-30% of students find life gets in the way, or the program is too demanding.

Yes, assuming you communicate your decision to us, we will respect it no question asked. If you ghost us and don’t communicate, we won’t offer a refund if you suddenly appear three months later.

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Please note this applies to this students who pay upfront. Students who pay monthly are not eligible for refund, except during the first two weeks of the program. In that case, you only pay for as long as you are in the program.

We believe that student outcomes are a reflection on the quality of our education. We can say our course is amazing, but realistically, we can make any claim we want. External judgement is important for staying objective.

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Part of advancing in a career is not just having skills but also having a polished resume, being prepared for interviews, and having a good network. We actively help you with these things.

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The reason we don’t offer a job guarantee is because ultimately, your future is in your hands, not ours. You are the captain of your ship, not RareSkills. If you can’t take responsibility for that, no-one can.

No it isn’t. We expect you to not fall more than 4 weeks behind. If you do, you will be moved to a later cohort or asked to drop from the program. Part of what makes RareSkills so successful is that students feed off of each other’s energy. If somone isn’t taking the program seriously, it can negatively affect the experiences of other students.

Fill in the application here. You’ll automatically receive a coding test that will test you on basic things about numbers, lists, and strings. You have 4 hours to complete it, but most engineers finish it in 2.5 hours. After that, someone from our team will reach out to you and schedule a 30 minute call to determine if you are a good fit (and the program is a fit for you). 

In a large class, people get too intimidated to ask or answer questions in a group. However, answering and asking questions is an important catalyst for learning quickly. The size limit makes it easier for the instructor to develop a better relationship with the student and keep track of their progress and weaknesses.

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These benefits don't happen in a large class.

We have solidity instructors and solidity professionals sign up for this course. You'll be in good company! If you score 60% or lower on our solidity test, then we are sure the course is a good fit for you.

About 10% of our students are entrepreneurs who own their own business or a founder stake in it.

The curriculum goes through a minor update every month and a major update every four months. You’ll have lifetime access to whatever changes we make (for as long as RareSkills remains in business as an independent company). A minor update involves changing assignments to better reflect the skill we are trying to teach and a major update means topics were added or removed.

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A topic may get removed or reduced if we believe it has become common knowledge in smart contract development. For example, we don’t teach ERC20 tokens in this course anymore because it is reasonable to assume everyone with Solidity experience knows it. Some of our security exercises drill understanding of ERC20 tokens better than explicitly teaching the protocol does anyway.

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We cover more introductory topics in our Dapp Bootcamp.