Ship a dApp

What You Probably Got Wrong

You jump to code without a plan. Before writing a single line of Solidity, you need to know: what goes onchain, what stays offchain, which chain, how many contracts, and who calls every function. Skip this and you'll rewrite everything.

You over-engineer. Most dApps need 0-2 contracts. A token launch is 1 contract. An NFT collection is 1 contract. A marketplace that uses existing DEX liquidity needs 0 contracts. Three contracts is the upper bound for an MVP. If you're writing more, you're building too much.

You put too much onchain. Solidity is for ownership, transfers, and commitments. It's not a database. It's not an API. It's not a backend. If it doesn't involve trustless value transfer or a permanent commitment, it doesn't belong in a smart contract.

You skip chain selection. Mainnet is cheaper than you think — an ETH transfer costs ~$0.004, a swap ~$0.04. The "Ethereum is expensive" narrative is outdated. But that doesn't mean everything belongs on mainnet. L2s aren't just "cheaper Ethereum" — each one has a unique superpower (Base has Coinbase distribution + smart wallets, Arbitrum has the deepest DeFi liquidity, Optimism has retroPGF + the Superchain). If your app needs high-frequency interactions or fits what makes an L2 special, build there. If you just need cheap and secure, mainnet works. Choose deliberately. Fetch l2s/SKILL.md and gas/SKILL.md for the full picture. Not sure Ethereum is the right chain at all? Fetch why/SKILL.md.

You forget nothing is automatic. Smart contracts don't run themselves. Every state transition needs a caller who pays gas and a reason to do it. If you can't answer "who calls this and why?" for every function, your contract has dead code. Fetch concepts/SKILL.md for the full mental model.

Phase 0 — Plan the Architecture

Do this BEFORE writing any code. Every hour spent here saves ten hours of rewrites.