Coming into Solana, I expected blockchain development to feel abstract and overly complicated. I assumed everything would revolve around tokens, wallets, and buzzwords that sounded impressive but didn’t translate well into actual engineering. Week 2 changed that perspective completely.
The biggest shift happened when I started reading on-chain data directly. Querying a wallet balance through RPC and fetching recent transactions felt surprisingly familiar. It reminded me of calling APIs in traditional development, except the source of truth wasn’t a private backend server; it was a public network anyone could inspect. That was probably the first moment blockchain started to feel real to me.
Another concept that clicked was Solana’s account model. At first, hearing “everything is an account” sounded vague. But comparing it to databases helped a lot. Wallets, programs, and stored state all exist as accounts with owners, permissions, and data. Instead of rows in tables controlled by one company, the data lives on a distributed ledger. Once I looked at it through that lens, it became much easier to understand.
I was also surprised by how developer-friendly some of the tooling felt. Using JavaScript to connect to devnet, fetch balances, and build a small browser dashboard made Solana feel less intimidating. It wasn’t some unreachable ecosystem; it was something I could interact with using tools I already know.
What’s still confusing? Smart contracts/program architecture at scale, Program Derived Addresses, and how advanced apps structure state efficiently. I understand the basics now, but I know there’s another layer of depth ahead.
What I want to learn next is the write side of blockchain development: sending transactions, interacting with programs, and eventually building full dApps.
Two weeks in, my biggest takeaway is this: blockchain stopped feeling like hype and started feeling like infrastructure.
