Blockchain as a development category covers smart contracts, decentralized applications, and the underlying consensus protocols. The dominant platforms are Ethereum (and EVM-compatible L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon), Solana for high-throughput trading apps, and Bitcoin for the original chain. The Web3 frontend ecosystem (wagmi, viem, ethers.js, RainbowKit) handles wallet connection and contract interaction from React apps.
The skills that survived the 2022 crash are real engineering skills: Solidity / Vyper for contract authoring, foundry / hardhat for testing, formal verification for high-value contracts, and an understanding of MEV, oracle attacks, and reentrancy bugs that have collectively cost the industry billions.