Developer Spotlight: How Dustin shipped 250 smart contracts in a year

The thirdweb Developer Spotlight series interviews inspiring leaders pushing web3 and blockchain technologies forward around the world. Our goal is to learn more about what developers are working on, how they gained their skills with thirdweb, and what tips they have for us all.

Check out our conversation with Dustin about how he got started in web3, why he's so passionate about the thirdweb community, and how he leveraged thirdweb to develop over 250 smart contracts in a year.

Meet Dustin (aka KronicKatz): community mod by day, web3 developer by night
Joined thirdweb Community: 1/3/2022

Tell us about how you entered the web3 space and how you found out about thirdweb

Turning my daughter's artworks into NFTs: During the peak of COVID, I had more time to spend with my daughter. She loves drawing on her iPad and I love reading interesting news on Twitter in my free time. One day, I stumbled across NFT buzz and the rise of OpenSea and I thought about turning my daughter’s artwork into a fun NFT project.

At first, it was to spend more time with my daughter but while creating my first project, I was introduced to a community of people who opened my eyes to the potential of web3. I started digging into HashLips to learn more about Solidity and used manual libraries to complete my first project.

I started a community from my first drop and a community member referred me to using thirdweb for my next project, stating:

It's much easier and faster to create smart contracts in pre-built or custom ways plus they also have other tools within the framework to be a one-stop shop (i.e. frontend SDKs, templates, and UI components).

It was much easier for me and a huge time saver (as I was doing this in my free time).

Later on, I started returning the favor to community members to teach them about the powers of web3 development in traditional industries like music and films. Then, I started developing projects for other people and created a new business out of it.

Tell us about what you do and what projects you completed with thirdweb

I joined the thirdweb community in early 2022. To date, I have written 250 contracts varying in all types of industries. Some of the projects that I've worked on are:

1st Class Labs - Social Education Platform

• Contract: NFT Drop for ERC-721A NFTs
• Front end: React SDK for building the frontend and thirdweb’s Connect Wallet UI Component for easy wallet connection
• Other Infrastructure: Auth for token gating and Storage for storing assets on IPFS
• Templates Referenced: NFT Gated Website

Flinch - NFT Movie Project

• Contract: custom ERC-721A contract built using thirdweb’s Solidity SDK
• Front end: thirdweb’s React SDK

Aura - Marketplace & Exchange

• Marketplace v3 for marketplace functionality
• Edition Drop for ERC-1155 membership-style NFTs
• ERC-721 staking to provide rewards for staking NFT(s)
• ERC-20 staking to provide rewards for staking Tokens
• Split contract for revenue share
• Front end: React SDK and the Connect Wallet UI Component for easy wallet connection
• Templates referenced: Marketplace v3

thirdweb allows me to unlock these different solutions easily. Whether I want to do an NFT drop or an NFT marketplace, I can create and deploy smart contracts quickly, and build out a front end with ease.

Tell us about why you are involved with helping thirdweb succeed

Came asking questions, now giving answers: I first joined the community because I had a lot of questions as a new developer in the web3 space. I started asking questions directly to the thirdweb developers who were more than willing to help me achieve success on my projects - gave me step-by-step instructions on how to use ContractKit, Auth, UI components, and other features.

thirdweb and my community shared the same ideals so I started spending more time in the thirdweb Discord receiving help and giving back by contributing to support questions and product feedback.

The more time I spent in the community, the more I wanted to join full-time!

thirdweb gave me the opportunity to become a successful developer and to help others experience the power of the software.