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A public attempt to not be clueless in crypto

I am on a path to understanding blockchain, DeFi, and all its relatives, and I must say — in the voice of Jim Parsons’ character from the movie Home — I am confusion.

I’ve watched more tutorials than I can count, with special props to Anders Brownworth and the Updraft Cyfrin team for their incredible Blockchain Foundations course. And yet, when I try to move forward, I keep hitting the same wall: I don’t actually feel like I understand what the hell is going on — just the words people use to talk about it.

And that’s the problem.

Like most people in crypto, I found myself memorizing fragments of the system without really understanding the system. I was learning terms like wallets, blocks, gas, smart contracts, yield, and so on. I even deployed the infamous SimpleStorage and FundMe contracts, but had no idea where they were going or why they even needed to exist in the first place. When it came to testing, I was just following instructions.

I don’t want that. I want to understand why things break, and how to go about fixing them.

The goal here is to become a DeFi engineer who actually understands what the actual fck is happening under the hood — not someone who copies Solidity from a tutorial and forgets it after the next disappointing Man United match (we’re improving though, in Amorim we trust, lel).

So this blog is me rebuilding everything from first principles, in public. I’ll write what I think I understand, test it, break it, and try again until it actually makes sense. If I can’t explain something simply, I don’t really understand it — and I refuse to move on pretending I do.

Yes, apparently becoming a real DeFi engineer means touching blockchain, finance, cryptography, incentives, and code all at once. That’s messy. I like messy. Messy things are usually the real ones.

If you find anything here that is complete baloney, call it out. I’m not here to look smart — I’m here to stop being confused.

And if you’re as lost as I am, maybe we’ll end up less lost together.

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