I worked on a Layer-2 gaming project. Now I have a Layer-1 Solidity interview and I’m not sure what they’ll expect

Abdil Hamid · 2024-09-23T16:35:22+00:00

I have a Solidity developer interview coming up for a Layer-1 blockchain, and I’m honestly confused about how to prepare.I finished a 6-month internship where I mostly worked with Solidity on a Layer-2 gaming project. I wrote gameplay contracts, handled wallet interactions, did some upgrades, and wrote tests. I’m comfortable writing contracts and fixing basic issues, but my work was very application-level.What’s stressing me out is the Layer-1 part.When I search online, people say Layer-1 interviews involve protocol design, consensus, gas mechanics, security assumptions, and things that I’ve never worked on directly. I didn’t touch consensus or core protocol code during my internship.So now I’m unsure what they’ll actually expect from someone at my level.Will they go deep into consensus and validators?Or will they mostly test Solidity, EVM basics, and security thinking?Is a Layer-1 interview very different from a Layer-2 one if your experience is mostly on the app side?I’m trying to figure out if my internship experience is enough, or if I’m missing something important before the interview.Would really appreciate advice from anyone who’s been through Layer-1 Solidity interviews.

I worked on a Layer-2 gaming project. Now I have a Layer-1 Solidity interview and I’m not sure what they’ll expect

Abdil Hamid
@ForensicBlockSmith

Updated: Dec 14, 2025

Views: 1.4K

I have a Solidity developer interview coming up for a Layer-1 blockchain, and I’m honestly confused about how to prepare.
I finished a 6-month internship where I mostly worked with Solidity on a Layer-2 gaming project. I wrote gameplay contracts, handled wallet interactions, did some upgrades, and wrote tests. I’m comfortable writing contracts and fixing basic issues, but my work was very application-level.
What’s stressing me out is the Layer-1 part.
When I search online, people say Layer-1 interviews involve protocol design, consensus, gas mechanics, security assumptions, and things that I’ve never worked on directly. I didn’t touch consensus or core protocol code during my internship.
So now I’m unsure what they’ll actually expect from someone at my level.
Will they go deep into consensus and validators?
Or will they mostly test Solidity, EVM basics, and security thinking?
Is a Layer-1 interview very different from a Layer-2 one if your experience is mostly on the app side?
I’m trying to figure out if my internship experience is enough, or if I’m missing something important before the interview.
Would really appreciate advice from anyone who’s been through Layer-1 Solidity interviews.

8

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AlexDeveloper

@Alexdeveloper • 1yr

I’ve interviewed a few junior Solidity devs for Ethereum-based Layer-1 teams, and I’ll say this clearly — they don’t expect juniors to design consensus or touch protocol internals.

What they usually want to see is whether you understand what your contract is running inside.

A lot of candidates can write Solidity, but when you ask simple things like “what happens after a transaction is sent” or “why did you structure the contract this way”, they struggle.

If you come from a Layer-2 gaming project, that’s completely fine. Just be honest about what you worked on. Explain how transactions behaved in your setup, how gas mattered (or didn’t), and what assumptions you were making.

They care more about how you think than whether you know every low-level detail.

If you can explain why you wrote code a certain way, what risks you were aware of, and what you would change if this was running on mainnet, you’re already doing better than most juniors.

Sayali Bhandari

@SayaliB • 1yr

From what I’ve seen, the main difference between Layer-1 and Layer-2 interviews isn’t difficulty — it’s mindset.

In Layer-2 projects, a lot of things are abstracted. Finality, ordering, even gas sometimes feels less real. In Layer-1 interviews, they often push you to think about edge cases.

They might ask things like:
“What if two users call this at the same time?”
“What if someone tries to front-run this?”
“Why is this function expensive?”

They’re not checking if you can build a validator or explain consensus from scratch. They want to see if you’re aware that Layer-1 is a hostile environment and your contract has to survive that.

If you connect your L2 experience to those risks and explain how you’d think differently on L1, that usually lands well.

Abdil Hamid

@ForensicBlockSmith • 1yr

Thanks guys for helping me

Web3WandererAva

@Web3Wanderer • 2mos

One thing that helped me was preparing to explain one contract I wrote in detail.

Not what it does — but why I wrote it that way.

Most interviews end up going there anyway.

Shubhada Pande

@ShubhadaJP • 2w

This question comes up a lot here, especially from people who’ve worked on Layer-2 apps and suddenly face a Layer-1 interview.

Most candidates assume Layer-1 means they need to know consensus or protocol internals in depth. In reality, interviews usually reveal something else — whether you understand how your contracts behave once they hit a hostile, real network.

If you’re preparing, focus less on memorising theory and more on explaining why you made certain choices — storage, gas, call patterns, failure cases.

This also connects closely with how teams evaluate real ability during interviews:
https://artofblockchain.club/article/how-to-interview-smart-contract-engineers-without-guessing-their-real-ability

Slow thinking, honest boundaries, and clear reasoning matter far more than sounding “advanced”.