Week 3 — Smart contracts, tokens and DApps
About 564 wordsAbout 2 min
Core question — how do blockchains become programmable, and what can a program on a blockchain actually do?
Week 2 ended with Ethereum as a shared state machine and contracts as accounts made of code. This is the week you write one, deploy it, and call it.
| Part | Page | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What a smart contract actually is | 30 min |
| 2 | The minimum Solidity you need | 25 min |
| 3 | Remix lab: deploy your first contract | 60 min hands-on |
| 4 | Tokens, standards and real applications | 20 min |
| 5 | Security, approvals and permissions | 25 min |
Anchor Mission: Week 3 mission · 100 points
The arc
Part 3 is the heaviest page in the Foundation
Budget up to an hour with nowhere to be. You will deploy a real contract to a test network. Nothing costs money, but the first deployment is the point at which the whole programme stops being abstract — give it proper time.
What this week is not
You are not becoming a smart contract developer in five days. You are becoming someone who can read a contract, deploy a simple one, and reason about what it can and cannot do.
AI assistance is explicitly allowed: the goal is to understand what you deploy, not to type every line yourself.
Deliberately out of scope and left to Further Exploration or advanced study beyond the current programme:
| Not covered | Where it belongs |
|---|---|
| AMM maths | Further Exploration |
| Liquidation mechanics | Further Exploration |
| Advanced DeFi strategy | Advanced study beyond the current programme |
| Oracle architecture | Further Exploration |
| Gas optimisation, assembly, proxies | Builder Deep Dive |
| Formal verification, audit methodology | Advanced study beyond the current programme |
Everything required is testnet only
You will deploy to the same test network you used in Week 1 Part 7. No real funds, ever.
Changelog
5a3b0-refactor(academy): finalize two-track curriculum architectureon8fbd1-docs(foundation): bridge core concepts and collaborationona931f-docs(foundation): finalize beginner learning path and handbook UXon80d94-feat(foundation): complete Weeks 3-4 and add the visual layeronaed71-Bootstrap Blockchain@NTU Academy Handbookon