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Blockchain development company Alchemy today announced the acquisition of ChainShot, an educational platform that helps aspiring Web3 developers find their footing in the crypto space.
For Alchemy, which has oft been dubbed the "AWS for blockchain," this represents the first-ever acquisition that the company describes as “a major step towards free access to high-quality web3 education.”
While Alchemy declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal, ChainShot courses, which cost upwards of $3,000 before, will be free moving forward as part of the acquisition, Elan Halpern, the firm's developer relations lead told Decrypt.
ChainShot began as a winning hackathon project at ETH Denver back in 2018, when the platform’s co-founders Cody McCabe and Dan Nolan felt that the space was really missing an educational aspect.
“We took that opportunity to develop a platform, and what we were trying to focus on is how we can improve that and how we can help onboard Web2 developers into the Web3 space,” McCabe told Decrypt.
Alchemy zeros in on crypto talent
ChainShot offers courses and an Ethereum developer boot camp that cover blockchain fundamentals such as learning the Solidity programming language, using decentralized oracles, cryptographic hashes, and digital signatures—the minimum knowledge base required before developers can move on to more advanced concepts.
The company says that over the last four years, it has experienced “explosive growth,” which accelerated dramatically over the last 12 months, with enrollments almost tripling since January 2022. Graduates often go on to secure positions at leading blockchain companies and projects, including NFT marketplace OpenSea and security firm OpenZeppelin.
“Some people who graduated from our platform went on to build their own companies, such as Arbitrary Execution, which is a security audit firm, as well as non-custodial smart contract-based staking platform Stader Labs,” added McCabe.
As for Alchemy’s future acquisition, the firm's focus is to continue onboarding the wave of "incredible talent" entering the space, said Halpern.
“Our ultimate goal is to make it really easy for developers to build in Web3, and part of that is to help educate people,” he added.