Welcome

Thank you for purchasing the MEAP for Peer-to-Peer Web Applications. This book is written for web developers that are familiar with Javascript and want to transition those skills to build applications for the next evolution of the internet we know as Web3. To get the most from this book, readers should have familiarity with writing and deploying Web2 applications to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, as well as basic knowledge of blockchain technology and smart contracts.

When I first started building for Web3 a number of years ago, an overwhelming majority of resources I found, focused on Web3 in the context of blockchains and smart contracts. These resources often placed the blockchain and smart contract first, with programming for the rest of the application being secondary to whichever features the smart contract could support. This book reverses that order and designates blockchain as optional in Web3, explaining Web3 application architecture as peer-to-peer first, with blockchain being used only where it fits. It is my hope that reversing this order will greatly expand the readers' perspective for the types of applications that are possible in Web3, as well as demonstrate, end-to-end, why Web3 represents an evolution for the whole of the internet, not just finance.