Step 0 — Understand what you are connecting to
RED.json: chain id 2026, SS58 prefix 2026, 18 decimals, two RPC hosts, genesis hash, spec version, mainnet does not exist. Ten minutes. Everything else assumes it.
Step 1 — Read state and send a transfer (1 hour)
Hello, World on this blog, or GETTING_STARTED.md: Polkadot.js against wss://rpc.testnet.empooriochain.org, read system.account, estimate a fee, send balances.transferKeepAlive, watch submitted → included → finalized. Learn the rate limit the hard way once.
Step 2 — Understand the envelope (30 minutes)
FORMATO_DE_EXTRINSECOS.md: the two custom signed extensions, byte by byte, and why omitting them produces a Codec error. If you ever use a library other than Polkadot.js or the ecosystem's SDKs, this is the document that saves your week.
Step 3 — Pick a door
EVM: the migration guide — Hardhat on chain id 2026, the eth_getCode quirk, the precompiles, and the table of contracts you should not write because a pallet already does it.
Native: PALLET_REFERENCE.md for the map; EIP_COVERAGE.md for what each pallet corresponds to; the cookbook's transaction and asset examples (being fixed — several declare variables they never define).
Step 4 — Run a node (1 hour)
VALIDATOR_IN_30_MINUTES.md, skipping the validator parts: build (after the vendored-SDK script), use chainspec.raw.json, confirm the genesis hash and peers. Now your indexer, CI and load tests have somewhere to go.
Step 5 — Change the chain (days)
DEVELOPER_GUIDE.md: the ten-step path to a pallet, the testing standard, stable indexes, bounded storage, try-runtime. From Rust to a Pallet on this blog summarises it.
What was removed from the path
The official site's quick-start installed another chain's toolchain (release.anza.xyz), sent developers to another chain's playground, and taught lamports. Its glossary was another chain's. Those pages were deleted in September 2026 rather than edited, because a learner cannot tell a renamed tutorial from a real one until it fails.
What does not exist
A course, a certification, an educator programme, a bootcamp, university partnerships. The page this replaces announced one for another ecosystem. What exists is the sequence above, each document dated with its last verification against a running node — and a documentation sidebar that, at the time of writing, still reaches only 19 of the 168 pages, which is the next thing being fixed.
Based on the September 2026 documentation audit and the EmpoorioChain repository's developer documents.