Full-Stack Developer (2.5 YOE) Looking to Transition into Solana/Web3 What Skills Am I Missing?

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Your full-stack background is solid and the EVM experience translates conceptually, but Solana development is different enough that you'll need to learn the specifics. The main gaps for Solana work. You listed Solidity and EVM tooling but not Rust or the Anchor framework, which are what Solana programs are built with. The account model is fundamentally different from EVM's contract storage. Solana programs are stateless and data lives in separate accounts that get passed into instructions. This trips up developers coming from Ethereum because the mental model is different. Learning Anchor is the practical path since most Solana projects use it rather than raw Rust. On the frontend side, your React/Next.js skills transfer directly. You'd add u/solana/web3 .js and wallet-adapter libraries instead of ethers/viem. The patterns are similar but the specifics differ. Whether to focus on full-stack versus smart contract work depends on what you enjoy. The full-stack Web3 role is real and in demand. Most projects need people who can build the frontend, integrate with on-chain programs, and handle the infrastructure. Pure Solana program developers are more specialized and fewer positions exist, but they pay well when they do. What actually gets people hired in this space. Shipping something visible matters more than credentials. A working Solana project on mainnet or devnet that shows you understand the account model and can integrate a frontend is more convincing than course certificates. Contributing to existing protocols or tooling gets you known by people who hire. The job boards that are Solana-specific include the Superteam job board and Solana ecosystem Discord servers. Crypto-native job sites like crypto.jobs and web3.career aggregate listings.