Solidity Curriculum (2025 Edition): From Beginner to DeFi-Ready

This is a comprehensive, modern, production-grade Solidity development curriculum for 2025. It’s designed for beginners who want to go from zero to building and understanding real-world protocols like Uniswap V4, Compound, and Aave - with all the best practices, tools, and standards used by elite teams.

🧱 Phase 1: Ethereum & Solidity Foundations (Week 1-2)

🎯 Objectives

• Understand how Ethereum works
• Learn Solidity syntax and smart contract structure
• Build and deploy simple contracts

📘 Topics

• Ethereum, EVM, accounts, transactions, gas
• Basic Solidity types: uint, address, bool, string
• Functions: view, pure, payable
• Control flow, require, revert, msg.sender

🛠 Tools

• Remix IDE
• MetaMask

🧪 Projects

• Hello World contract
• Counter (increment/decrement)
• Simple ETH Wallet (deposit/withdraw)
• ETH Forwarder (send ETH to recipient)

⚙️ Phase 2: Foundry + Best Practices (Week 3-4)

🎯 Objectives

• Set up a professional dev environment
• Write clean, gas-efficient, testable code

📘 Topics

• Foundry CLI: forge, cast, anvil
• constructor, modifier, event, error
• immutable, constant, storage vs memory vs calldata
• Test-driven development

🧪 Projects

• Rewrite Counter using Foundry
• Add test coverage and gas reporting
• Add custom errors and events
• Automate local testing and deploy to testnet

🔐 Phase 3: Access Control & Security Patterns (Week 5)

📘 Topics

• Ownable and onlyOwner pattern
• Role-based access control (RBAC)
• ReentrancyGuard and nonReentrant
• Circuit breaker and Pausable contracts

🧪 Projects

• Create Ownable contract
• Add access control to Wallet
• Write a Reentrancy-protected Vault
• Build a Circuit Breaker token transfer system

🪙 Phase 4: Tokens (ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-6909) (Week 6-7)

📘 Topics

• ERC-20: balances, transfer, approve
• ERC-721: NFTs, metadata, safe transfers
• ERC-6909: new minimal multi-token standard
• EIP-2612: permit() and gasless approvals

🔍 Libraries

• OpenZeppelin
• Solmate

🧪 Projects

• Implement minimal ERC-20 and compare gas to OpenZeppelin
• Mint your own NFT and interact with MetaMask
• Add permit() functionality using EIP-2612
• Create ERC-6909 multi-token vault

🌊 Phase 5: Real Protocols - Uniswap V3/V4, Compound, Aave (Week 8-9)

📘 Topics

• Uniswap V3: Concentrated liquidity, ticks, oracles
• Uniswap V4: Singleton pattern, Hooks as plugins
• Lending protocols: borrowing, interest, collateral
• Vaults and strategies (e.g., Yearn)

🧪 Projects

• Clone Uniswap V3 Pool and simulate a swap
• Write and deploy a Uniswap V4 Hook (e.g., fee redirect)
• Build a simple lending pool with deposit, borrow, repay
• Create an auto-compounding vault with user deposits

🧪 Phase 6: Testing, Fuzzing, and Auditing (Week 10)

📘 Topics

• Unit & integration testing with Foundry
• Fuzz testing with forge test --fuzz
• Invariant testing
• Static analysis tools: Slither, MythX
• Reading audit reports (Trail of Bits, Code4rena)

🧪 Projects

• Write invariants for your lending pool
• Fuzz test swap logic from Uniswap clone
• Run Slither and fix contract vulnerabilities
• Review and improve based on a real audit

🚀 Capstone Project (Week 11-12)

Pick one:

• ✅ Build a custom Uniswap V4 Hook
• ✅ Create a royalty-enabled NFT auction house
• ✅ Launch a DAO with on-chain voting and treasury
• ✅ Design a token streaming protocol using ERC-6909

Deliverables

• Solidity contracts (fully tested)
• Deployment scripts (Foundry + cast)
• Documentation and architectural diagrams
• Optional: frontend with viem, wagmi, and Next.js

📚 Resources