The Web3 Path

The goal: not just use blockchains, but understand why each one made the tradeoffs it did — and prove that understanding by building BTC, ETH, and SOL in miniature, in Rust. Two books do it: Bitcoin · First Principles for the concepts, Rust · Project-First for the build. You finish ready to write real Solana/Anchor programs.

Part 1 · Understand it — Bitcoin · First Principles

1. Foundations — the double-spend problem, and why a ledger without a trusted middleman is hard. Start at “what is this even solving?”
2. Transactions & the UTXO model — how Bitcoin tracks ownership with unspent outputs instead of accounts.
3. Consensus & Proof of Work — how untrusting strangers agree on one history, and what “most work wins” really means.
4. Part 12 · Bitcoin in Context — the payoff: UTXO vs the account model, Proof of Stake & the Merge, Solana’s architecture, and why all three chains exist.

Part 2 · Build it — Rust · Project-First

5. New to Rust? Start with the orientation and Phase 1 (CLI → KV store → async API → AI CLI) to get fluent before the chains.
6. Project 5 · Bitcoin mini-chain — build a UTXO + Proof-of-Work chain with real signatures and a P2P node, from scratch.
7. Project 6 · Ethereum mini-chain — the account model + a tiny stack VM + gas, with a deployable contract.
8. Project 7 · Solana mini-chain — Proof of History + parallel execution, ending at the Anchor bridge that maps what you built onto real Solana programs.

Where it leaves you

You’ll have written BTC, ETH, and SOL in miniature — so you feel the tradeoffs instead of memorizing them. That’s the strongest possible foundation for real Solana/Anchor development.