Blockchain job postings soared a whopping 118 percent in July over the previous 10 months, raising this question: Is a blockchain certification worth it?
According to David Treat, chairman of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) and managing director and co-lead of Accenture’s blockchain business unit, it is in certain circumstances.
“If you’re starting out and don’t have a body of experience, then your default mechanism is to get certified as you build up that base of experience,” he told Built In.
Treat, and likely other hiring managers, tend to look at a candidate’s depth of experience first before giving weight to credentials, he said. However, some can layer on a blockchain credential to further boost the experience they have.
Full-stack developers and full-stack engineers are the strongest candidates for technical blockchain jobs — even without holding a blockchain certificate, Treat said.
Case-in-point, there are times when clients are presented with an architectural diagram of new infrastructure and then say, ‘Hey, I thought this was blockchain.’ But really, blockchain tokenization only represents a small part of the system’s infrastructure.
“Blockchain is a component of an overall infrastructure that drives transformation,” Treat said. “For someone to be truly useful and be best prepared for a career in blockchain, they should have an understanding of the entire architecture end-to-end.”
But not everyone applying for a blockchain job will have that experience so blockchain credentials may help give a candidate an edge in layering blockchain knowledge onto their existing experience.
And Treat believes blockchain certifications and training are likely to continue to grow in the future as the blockchain industry achieves more scale and standardization.
Here’s a look at a range of blockchain certification programs, which range in cost from a mere $11.99 per month to as high as $4,000 to attend a blockchain bootcamp.
Blockchain Basics Certifications
Bitcoin and Basics
Cost: $11.99 per month entitles users to all classes. (Students receive free access)
Online Course Description: This self-paced video course will explore cryptocurrency wallets, private keys, bitcoin mining, nodes, Altcoin and other blockchain basics.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 1 week on average
Offered By: Goodbit through the Blockchain Education Network (BEN). BEN, founded in 2014, is the oldest and largest network of blockchain students, alumni and professors across the globe. It also operates as a non-profit.
Blockchain and Bitcoin Fundamentals
Cost: $14.99
Online Course Description: A video course dives into bitcoin and how it works. You’ll cover a range of topics from an explanation of key blockchain and bitcoin vocabulary words to concepts used in business situations.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 3-hour video
Offered By: George Levy through online learning platform Udemy.
Blockchain Developer
Cost: $1,596
Online Course Description: This course will help you create a private blockchain and snag a digital asset with the help of your blockchain identity. You’ll also have an opportunity to use the Ethereum platform to make smart contracts and develop a decentralized app with Solidity.
Pre-Requirements: Comfortable with object-oriented programming, asynchronous JavaScript code, developing a web application with JavaScript and using a remote API to create and use data.
Course Length: 4 months on average
Offered By: Udacity, an online learning platform company.
HR, Legal and Finance Blockchain Certifications
Certified Blockchain and HR Professional
Cost: $149
Online Course Description: HR professionals will learn how blockchain aids businesses in digitizing and securely storing employee information in a decentralized and unchangeable manner.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 4 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Certified Cryptocurrency Auditor
Cost: $229
Online Course Description: Learn about blockchain and cryptocurrencies through an auditor’s perspective, focusing on tracing cryptocurrency transactions and blockchain forensics.
Pre-Requirements: None, but familiarity with cryptocurrency trading is recommended.
Course Length: 6 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Certified Blockchain & Law Professional
Cost: $149
Online Course Description: Legal eagles can take flight with this self-paced program that teaches users about levering blockchain for tracing digital documents and using smart contracts to automate agreements. An exam is administered at the end of the course.
Pre-Requirements: Basic knowledge of computer science and law, as well as familiarity with cryptocurrencies.
Course Length: 6 hours on average
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Blockchain Certifications for Tech Workers
Ethereum Blockchain Developer Bootcamp with Solidity
Cost: $119.99
Online Course Description: With these step-by-step video tutorials you can gain fluency in programming Ethereum blockchain apps at the end of the course. You’ll also learn about object-oriented programming language Solidity, which is used on blockchain platforms like Ethereum.
Pre-Requirements: A basic understanding of Web technologies is required, and knowledge of a programming language is recommended.
Course Length: 12 hours
Offered By: Ravinder Deol and Thomas Wiesner via Udemy, an online learning platform.
Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator
Cost: $575
Online Course Description: You can deploy and operate a Hyperledger Fabric network via the command line with this course. Another bonus is you’ll be trained to install, configure, operate, manage and fix nodes on a commercial hyperledger fabric network.
Pre-Requirements: None, but the course is recommended for system administrators and developers.
Course Length: N/A
Offered By: Linux Foundation
Professional Blockchain Certification Program
Cost: $2,199 (single course video) to $3,499 (live instructor-led course)
Online Course Description: Delve into the main characteristics and features of distributed ledger technology (DLT), blockchain’s secure, scalable, sustainable (3S) proprietary framework and cryptocurrency mining.
Pre-Requirements: The program is aimed at full-stack developers
Course Length: 3 months on average
Offered By: EC-Council
Certified Blockchain Developer
Cost: $229
Online Course Description: Explore key blockchain concepts, instruction on Ethereum, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol, hyperledger and permission-based peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology platform R3 Corda with this extensive online course.
Pre-Requirements: Programming language knowledge and basic knowledge of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Course Length: 15 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Certified NFT Developer
Cost: $229
Online Course Description: Gain knowledge on building, buying and selling NFTs on any platform, study different types of NFTs, build NFT platforms for businesses with this certification course.
Pre-Requirements: Basic knowledge of NFT’s, Azure and AWS. Also knowledge of a programming language.
Course Length: 9 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Certified Smart Contract Developer
Cost: $229
Online Course Description: Explore smart contracts and how to efficiently program them for any blockchain platform.
Pre-Requirements: Knowledge of object-oriented programming language Solidity.
Course Length: 4 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Certified Hyperledger Developer
Cost: $229
Online Course Description: Learn how to leverage blockchain technology and your hyperledger fabric skills to build blockchain-based applications for companies.
Pre-Requirements: Knowledge of a programming language required and functioning knowledge of hyperledger recommended.
Course Length: 6.5 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Certified Blockchain Security Professional
Cost: $229
Online Course Description: Become a blockchain sleuth with this course, gaining an in-depth knowledge of security risks tied to blockchain and learning how to mitigate those risks.
Pre-Requirements: Knowledge of a programming language required. It’s recommended that certification as a blockchain expert is taken first.
Course Length: 4 hours
Offered By: Blockchain Council, a private organization that advocates for the industry and offers education and training.
Blockchain Certifications Offered by Universities
Blockchain Essentials
Cost: $3,800
Online Course Description: Four courses will cover cryptocurrencies and ledgers, cryptography essentials, blockchain fundamentals, and conclude with applications of blockchain technology with this extensive certificate program. The goal is to provide participants with an understanding of how they can use blockchain to achieve their business goals.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 2 months (each of the four classes lasts two weeks)
Offered By: Cornell University
Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
Cost: $2,600
Online Course Description: Gain an understanding of how blockchain can be used in your organization, create cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and learn how to create a cryptocurrency wallet and add funds to it.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 6 weeks
Offered By: University of California at Berkeley’s BerkeleyExEd
Blockchain Bootcamp
Cost: $4,224
Online Course Description: Explore the building, creating and administering of smart contracts for public and enterprise blockchains, as well as expand your knowledge of Ethereum, hyperledger, multichain and other blockchain-related topics.
Pre-Requirements: Bachelor's degree with an average mark of 50% or higher in basic programming knowledge.
Course Length: 6 months
Offered By: California Institute of Technology (CalTech)
Cryptocurrency
Cost: $2,800
Online Course Description: Study the limitations, capabilities and potential applications of cryptocurrency, as well as compare it to traditional money, technologies and modern finance. The course will also cover the markets for cryptocurrencies and how they operate.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 7 weeks
Offered By: Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Media Lab
Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets
Cost: $3,800
Online Course Description: Glean information on use cases for blockchain and digital assets, such as NFTs and cryptocurrency. Learn about the potential return on your blockchain investments compared to mainstream technologies and analyze the structures and processes of decentralized organizations.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 6 weeks
Offered By: University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Executive Education
Blockchain Applications Certificate
Cost: $3,000
Online Course Description: Learn about blockchain through three courses that comprise the certificate program. The courses include Foundations of Blockchain, Transacting on the Blockchain and Solving Problems with Blockchain.
Pre-Requirements: None
Course Length: 3 to 4 months
Offered By: Duke University via Coursera