What's the best toolset to learn smart contract programming? The main thing is which blockchain you are targeting, but if you don't have a preference there already, Ethereum should be the default choice. Not only it's the oldest (and in my opinion mature as compared to others), there is a lot of traction in the industry around Ethereum. See, for example, the members directory of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance . So, if you are choosing Ethereum, a nice way to start programming for the Ethereum blockchain is learn Solidity. One nice thing about Solidity is the browser based Remix IDE . There are other ways, but Remix is preferred as the first exposure to Solidity and smart contracts. Can you give me a very simply Solidity contract example? Here is a completely impractical decentralized world-population counter in Solidity: Basically, we have created a decentralized storage variable of type unsigned int, which is part of the blockchain. No matter which node you choose ...