Long time no see.
The dinosaur was a bit busy finishing a module on .NET Windows Forms. To be honest, it's not my favourite stack — I'm much more into web development — but it's part of the job.
Now that I'm done with those tasks, I can finally get back to my favourite projects and the whole learn-in-public vibe.
Intro
Day 8 of trying to get into Web3 turned out to be an amazing experience.
It didn't feel like just another step where you "add a feature and move on." It felt more like a point where the system actually starts behaving like a system.
From Reading to Writing
Reading from the blockchain feels almost like calling a regular API. You ask for data, you get data, you render it.
Writing introduces a completely different flow.
Now there's a wallet involved. The user has to confirm the action. The transaction is sent to the network, included in a block, and only then reflected in the UI — and you don't control that timeline anymore.
At that point it became obvious that building a UI for Web3 is not just about displaying data. It's about handling uncertainty, delays, and state that lives somewhere outside of your application.
Weird Environment Reality
It seems I might need a more modern laptop — my MacBook almost gave up because of Turbopack. I used it initially, but it was consuming far more resources than expected.
Nothing critical — I switched back to good old webpack.
But if you're working on an older machine, it's definitely something to be aware of.
Reality of Building UI
The UI is no longer just reactive — it becomes dependent on external events:
- the user confirms the transaction (or not)
- the network processes it
- the block is mined
- the state becomes available And only then can your UI reflect what actually happened.
This introduces a different kind of thinking. You're not just updating state — you're waiting for the system to converge.
Things That Actually Matter
There was a moment where the transaction clearly went through — MetaMask confirmed it — but the UI still showed "No goals yet."
The contract state had changed, but nothing triggered a refetch on the frontend. From the UI perspective, nothing happened.
And then there was the more serious one.
At some point I realised I was sending transactions to the wrong contract address.
Everything looked correct. MetaMask confirmed the transaction. No errors. No warnings.
And that's exactly the problem.
In Web3, if you send a transaction to the wrong address — it doesn't fail in a helpful way. It just… succeeds somewhere else.
There's no backend validation, no "wrong destination" error. The transaction goes through, and from the system's perspective — everything is fine.
But your funds are gone.
In my case it was just a test transaction — nothing critical — but it was a very clear reminder: double-check addresses. Every time.
The Moment
And then it all came together.
First goal created. First donation sent. DreamPower increased.
Balance changed. Progress updated. State reflected in the UI.
End-to-end:
MetaMask → smart contract → Sepolia → frontend
At that point it stopped feeling like a collection of separate parts and started feeling like a real system.
What Clicked
The biggest shift for me was understanding that in this setup, the blockchain is not just another service.
It is the backend.
There's no API layer translating requests. The frontend talks directly to the contract, and that removes an entire layer of abstraction I'm used to in .NET systems.
It also means that things like latency, consistency, and state management behave differently — and you have to design with that in mind.
One More Question
At some point I also started thinking about limits.
How many users can this support? How many goals can a contract realistically store?
Technically — a lot. Practically — every write costs gas, and large reads eventually hit limits. It's not something that matters right now, but it's definitely something that will matter later.
Stage: Dinosaur 🦕 — first full interaction. Not just reading. Not just UI. A system that reads, writes, and reacts.
Repo: github.com/alena-dev-soft/wish-list-chain
Follow the journey on Telegram: t.me/dotnetToWeb3