Cohort 3, Week 10 with Josh Davis and Mario

Transcript

Hello everyone. This is week 10 of Women Ethereum Protocol Cohort 3 and today our special guests are Josh and Mario from Ethereum Foundation. Welcome guys. Thank you. Happy to be here. Happy to see you here. So, and before we start, I would like to tell you a little bit about what we're doing here on these cohorts. We're trying to on board fellows uh female developers and uh to learn more about the protocol to guide them through their good first issues and yeah to learn as much as possible about the protocol and uh what about you guys could you please introduce yourself your

way to Ethereum protocol when did you start and what's your roles sure uh my name is Josh I've been working with BF for about threeish years maybe more now. I came to Ethereum through event production. So my first foray into working with the EF was the first dev connect in Amsterdam. I helped to put that event on and and then uh once finished with that, the protocol support team was reaching out for some assistance with this program that was being dropped by Piper called Cedap uh which was the precursor to the protocol fellowship. So, I jumped in to help

produce that program with Mario and here we are in our fourth iteration of the EPF as it is with cohort 6 here. Yeah. What about you? Um yeah I I joined EF like five more than five years ago um after I met some people from EF in the hacker space of track and uh I've been first helping with like some external research and uh actually operations within the organization before in 2021 we formed the protocol support team that we are part of and team BO and Trent joined EF and uh after that I started to focus more on the core protocol helping with at a time with some testing thing

with some like uh research around the protocol it was needed and after Piper started the CEP after the two cohorts we took it over with Josh as you mentioned so that's our primarily focus now helping to on board new core developers helping to spread a word about the work in the core protocol and yeah that's what we are doing here today as well so yeah yeah that's great you do amazing job helping on board people and um some of us also participated and that was great time and we really enjoyed it and I'm happy to have you here today. Uh so the stage is yours. Tell us please about what you have. Um yeah I guess let me share my screen. Okay awesome. Yeah

awesome. So yeah we have a little presentation about the protocol fellowship and the activities that we do and most importantly like uh some recent news and updates and opportunities for you all. So, so yeah about a protocol fellowship as I mentioned our goal is to help people to become core developers to uh motivate and make it easier for people to and to work on core development. But um yeah before we talk about the core we need to know what the the the core is or like what context of this uh the bur call is. So I would like to maybe if we have the the audience here uh if you guys can speak up or write in the chat I I have this general question that I like to ask like what is

Ethereum because there is no single answer to that and uh I'm just curious like how you perceive what Ethereum means uh in single word how would you describe Ethereum feel free to turn your mics uh yeah yeah feel free to speak session just be very relaxed so just don't worry Yeah, I would like to hear from you and also activate you a bit like I hope that it's not it's not just passive listening but uh people especially if you participate in the the core protocol you got to be active self-directed so uh give me some yeah world computer is a great answer we got in a chat feel free to speak up as well a single word or something simple to describe Ethereum I

heard bunch of things Ethereum is protocol it's a blockchain but I I I like this like Ethereum is love Ethereum is future Right. Yeah, you get this often. So yeah, I also wonder how do you feel about that after some lessons after some classes of our cohort. So probably you know more about Ethereum now. So what are your thoughts on it? Really like nothing serious here just like one word that comes to your mind when you think of Ethereum. For me it's love definitely love and passion.

That's great. That's lovely. Yeah. Cool. Um, infrastructure that's great. Uh, that's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So, we get some more technical one like world computer infrastructure and some EVM. Yeah, that's a great one. So, yeah, like from different perspective, people can understand Ethereum from the userfacing or from like the philosophical point of view. But here we tend to be more technical. We aim to really describe and touch what Ethereum really is, how it manifests itself in its mo most physical form and that's the core development or the core protocol which is somehow uh somehow specified and implemented. So the core developers are people who work

on the actual Ethereum itself, the clients that run the network, the specification that defines how it works, the tests that make sure that it's all secure. So this is all that the core developers do and if you've been part of the women in protocol study group I'm sure that you are aware of most of this but in Ethereum we have many execution consensus clients which are what the protocol is what Ethereum is right that's the physical or like the tech the most physical part you can touch so I would I would answer that like Ethereum is these clients but maybe you could say that Ethereum is specification right because that's where it's specified or maybe you could say that Ethereum is the EIPs and uh this is all worked on by the core developers that tend to research

the future upgrades, implement them, test them and generally improve improve Ethereum and without them Ethereum wouldn't exist. That's they are the people who move the the whole platform forward and and uh maintain it keep it running. So to get some idea how many people like this there are there in Perl Guild alone is 188 people right now I would say there's at least over 200 contributors across many different teams. So there's like 12 client teams, research team, testing. So it's very decentralized, very distributed across different teams, different organizations, different countries. Uh so but it's still relatively small. I mean, it's pretty big if you think about it in context maybe other blockchains,

but it's still relatively small if you think about the impact of the whole Ethereum, right? like it's a network with uh so many users and and infrastructure and just uh the volume that it's used for and and the our goal is to make this base of a core developers bigger invite more people to understand the protocol and be able to maintain it. So again what we are focusing on here is this the actual specification of the Ethereum the execution and consensus clients which run the chain where the the execution happens the transactions and the the consensus clients that maintain the fork choice and the tip of the chain and their tests of course again something fundamental for the security and the research that that cares about the future. This is the platform that

everybody builds on. So the things that you interact with like some DeFi applications, NFTTS and tooling around this layer 2 that are built on top of this right we are talking about strictly the core core the the the nucleum the the kernel of the of the pro of the Ethereum and everything else is u built around this. So it's sort of a dependency of everything that's happening. That's why it's so interesting and important. And uh in terms of core development that means that we are talking about like low-level development. We are talking about low-level languages uh today we would call them lowlevel but uh I mean things like uh go rust java right the implementations that the client software

is implemented in. And I've seen that in protocol study group uh you've been tackling some EIPs you understand this already but people that work on these different EIPs the the research ideas and they are prototyping and their implementations in the actual actual uh core of Ethereum but and yeah and the goal to somehow finish the road map. So maybe you saw the road of Ethereum there are many interesting parts to it many things that need to be improved on finished uh in the coming years. So, so a lot of exciting things that people can not just use in the future or just benefit from but directly help to contribute to and um that's exciting not just because you contribute to this big thing but in this like free and open source nature of Ethereum it's a very

interesting place to work in because it's very different from like some corporate experience. It's very cooperative and cooperative and ethosdriven like I mentioned all of these different client teams they implement basically the same thing. Their goal is not to compete but to cooperate to work together to improve the infrastructure even though they are in sort of like you know not really competitive state but in a traditional market they would be basically competing but here they are collaborating learning from each other so that's uh that makes it very special and I think a great place to work in so yeah I mentioned the road map you might know this picture from Vitalic you can find maybe more updated version on ethereum or roadmap and this was around um after the merge I

when he said like uh in context of the road map that it's only about 55% finished now it's maybe like 60 or something but you see there are many different parts to it many different these boxes and I believe that like maybe every box you can dedicate years or or months of your work towards to yeah a lot of interesting exciting things to come that are not just on one hand like there are very interesting features that bring some more functionality to Ethereum more scaling can enable whether to onboard new users make it more secure and so on. But from the computer science perspective, I would consider many of these being very cool technologies that are just interesting to explore. Like if you are if you're technical mind, these are many cool rabbit holes to dive into. Yeah.

And of course the and the outcome is pretty cool like the the idea like of all of this being done and uh the Ethereum checking uh in the future like uh it's a it's a it's a beautiful idea and yeah, we hope to make this happen by bringing more people in. We have these two programs that we work on and uh maybe I would hand over to Josh here to talk about the study group and the fellowship. These are two things that we work on together. So we also split the presentation together to have a work in concert here. Yeah. Yeah. This is how uh Ethereum works collaborate. I you have a question right? Oh yeah. If there are any questions maybe for this part like this is just an intro about like give a context what we are talking about in

terms of core development and the core protocol. So if there are any questions for this part before we dive into the specific programs like please go ahead and ask. Yes. So there's a slide you shared where you said um what Ethereum isn't and you explaining but I was trying to read the slide but it's got kind of confusing. Yes. So I understand this part where you said um what the protocol is specification execution clients and all this but like if you can just explain the second slide. Yeah. Oh yeah right. Yeah, sorry I went a bit fast about this, but so the Ethereum itself that I when I asked like what is Ethereum that would be this thing on the

left like what we consider strictly like the core protocol of Ethereum it's where it's specified how exactly it's supposed to behave implementation of this behavior tests for this behavior and research for the future improvements of all of this and now the userfacing part again when you're using DI or layer 2 and at all even like languages they depend depend on the protocol but they don't affect it uh in a way that uh you can imagine this as a platform like the core protocol is a road and these applications are cars on that road right so we are talking about building we're the road builders doing the he the the the dirty work here and then other people have fancy cars driving on this road so in this context Ethereum is this

platform uh that everything else is built on so we are not talking here about application development for example like solidity the if you're a solid developer that's on the application side. So this is like the core and the application side of Ethereum and yeah whether it's just some examples like uh the applications like whether it's D5 ENS or some tooling like wallets for example uh because you can use Ethereum with any wallet you can build any layer 2 you can build there are many different languages that compile to EVM right but the specification of the EVM is a single one that is defined in the C protocol but what wallet or application you use to interact with this core protocol with

this uh EVM it uh and it's really up to you. So there's like more more freedom to build and Ethereum has this development tenant this this principle where the core protocol should be sort of minimalistic sort of uh like don't provide the end user functionalities and features just create the platform just create the the basic uh building blocks that people can use to then build anything they want. So like there is no defined ways how some applications should behave but anybody's there is just the base logic for anybody to be able to build any applications they want right but we don't define how the application should look like so this way it's neutral and and open for everyone yeah hold maybe I'm going too far on

that but yeah hope that answers the question yeah yeah but it's just last one where you said um layer 2s are not part of the protocol but I know that there are a few proposed that are meant for specifically for L2s. So I was just like you know wondering why yeah actually that's a very good point of view to explain this. Uh there are EIPs ERC's and RIPs. Well, maybe it's not as clear now, but from this perspective, I would describe it like EIPs are those that care about the cur protocol and the networking and the upgrades. And um ERC's are those that care about the application layer and rips are standards for the layer 2s. And now layer 2s are basically they're

building directly on the Ethereum core. They are copying it in many ways, right? like these optimistic layer 2 are basically copy of the Ethereum clients with some extra features built on top of it. So there is certain overlap but Ethereum as the core as it is will run without layer 2 like it's been working without layer 2 for most of its existence. So it's not necessarily core. It's very similar like if you are working on the core development like many people who been through these programs that we talk about like the fellowship they ended up working on the layer 2s because the infrastructure they use is very similar. It's like direct copy of Ethereum but it's not but it's dependent on the protocol. The protocol doesn't depend on the layer 2s. Uh hope

that makes sense. Yes. Yes sense. Thank you. And this is how some of our fellows a little bit confused about because they expect from our group from our cohort to learn about smart contracts for example but this is not about it protocol. Yeah, that's why I want to make it clear that like and I mean smart contract development is very exciting like definitely go for it like I would say that there's a big difference one of the things that I then mentioned there like it's big responsibility to be a smart contract developer like if you for example if you work with real money if you implement the smart contract for some D5 applications people send some of their savings into it it's a big responsibility to handle a security of an application that lives on Ethereum

and it's exposed to everyone to hack on it but now from the core development perspective uh in core you are securing not just a single application but a whole platform and all the applications running right so that makes it maybe a bit more challenging but also a bit more exciting so it's also a difference there that I would mention yeah I think we can move on if there are no more questions on for this part yeah sure all right so I'm going to talk a little bit about the two different programs that we run to help onboard more people to work on the core protocol The two programs are the protocol study group and then the EPF which is the Ethereum protocol fellowship. So we'll start with the study group. The study

group just finished up its second iteration and it's designed to bridge the knowledge gap for people who are interested in learning about the core protocol. So, Ethereum's knowledge base is notoriously widespread across many different blogs and platforms and forums and and all sorts of different places. And so, our intention with the study group is to bring a lot of that knowledge into one place so that it's easier for people who are interested in learning about how Ethereum works to be able to find those resources a little bit easier. So the program this time around was in 24 different sessions. We do it in 90inute classes and each of

these uh online classes has their its own sort of pre-ereading to get you up to speed with some of the terminology and understandings about a particular topic and then some postclass activities and and further research for you to kind of continue to expand your knowledge. We focus these classes on all different aspects of of Ethereum. So the execution layer, the consensus layer, the different research topics, how testing works, how the specification works, all these different sorts of things. And then through the study group, we create a collaborative resource that is at epf.wiki. And it is, you know, this knowledge base that I spoke about a

little bit earlier that is constantly growing and evolving and and being updated to reflect the current state of Ethereum. The study group like EPF is an open and permissionless program. So anybody who is interested in learning about the protocol is welcome to you know come join us for this program and and learn more about the program and to contribute to the wiki both to enhance its scope of knowledge as well as to solidify the knowledge that you have or that you've learned about protocol.

Generally, we are probably over the course of the next eight months or so going to work to make this course a little bit more courselike so that anybody at any time can come to EPF.Wiki wiki and go through this um study group course like it is just an online class and then we will still also hold a a synchronous study group in the spring or in the winter I guess it is before EPF. Yeah. So let's see that's that some of the topics that we've covered. So in our first iteration of the study group we focused in three different areas. the

you know we provide a overview of all the different areas of the protocol. So an overview of the execution layer, an overview of the consensus layer, overview of testing and the road map and and these sorts of things. And then after those first five weeks or so, we broke the two course lessons into two different tracks. So one is like a development track and one was a research track. So we did some deep dives into what you know the different client architectures both on the execution side and the consensus side and then also some deep dives into the different areas of research that being worked on at that time. And then so for the second study

group we utilized those first courses to create like a fasttracking. So an intensive two weeks or three weeks where you know once a week you would watch one of these videos and then we would hold an office hours for people to be able to ask questions and and discuss about the different topics and then added some further content. I believe eight other videos maybe 10 I can't remember for the newer topics. So we're constantly expanding the scope of what the study group can offer while utilizing the tools that and the resources that are already there. And so yeah, maybe I'll pause for a question. If anybody has any questions about the study group, I'm happy to answer those. Otherwise, we can

move on to the fellowship. I've seen some faces from our group during the study group. So raise your hand who was on the study group. Yeah, I see you're great. That's great. When it normally starts, I think it's February or something like this. Yes. Yeah, usually starts uh in February and it lasts for around two two to two and a half months depending on how much new content we're offering. Uh do you need to apply for this study group or you can just join or how it works? Nope. You can just join the the study group just uh hop into the meeting to watch the videos and engage uh in the discord server that we have

which I'll show a QR code for a little bit later. Yeah, I guess study group number 10 will have a lot of materials to learn and that's I believe that at some point you know there won't be quite as much content to continue to add because we will have exhausted the majority of of the content that you know exists out there and mostly what we'll be doing is probably talking about the future fork or very recent upgrades that have happened but still be able to go through the material that we've collected and you know still be able yeah have a similar impact. Yeah. Lada has a question. Lada would you like to

ask yourself? Yeah. So I I can just read the question as well. You're asking about So what I said is the study group is is a somewhat of a preparation for joining the EPF which is the protocol fellowship. So we'll talk a little bit more about what the protocol fellowship is after I answer your question, but basically you people who come to the fellowship need to have some basic understanding of how the Ethereum protocol works. And so this study group is an opportunity for people who are interested in participating in the fellowship maybe that have some you know existing software engineering skill but don't necessarily have much knowledge

about Ethereum protocol itself to get to know some more about the protocol learn about its different parts and different focuses and so that that when they come to the protocol fellowship they're able to kind of jump in a little bit quicker or to maybe bolster their application, make it look more appealing for for us when we're reviewing applications. And you also have the recordings, right, of all these sessions where Yeah, absolutely. On be on YouTube. Yep. They're all on epf.wiki. They're also all on YouTube. And as I mentioned before, we are going to be creating more of a succinct and somewhat guided online course with the material that we've um

collected. Great. Great. Because I used this recordings all the year last year. So yeah, they're super helpful. Nice. Cool. So the Ethereum protocol fellowship or as we call it EPF we have Piper and uh Danny used to say that you know Ethereum contributions are a wide open door and all you've got to do is take a step through the door. EPF is here to sort of hold your hand or maybe gently or maybe not so gently push you through that door. So what EPF is is a program that essentially makes the process of becoming a core developer, researcher or contributor easier. It can

be very daunting and maybe scary for people who are interested in making contributions to make their initial their first contribution or you know maybe start having discussions with people who are developing the core protocol. So, we've created this program to help people take their first steps in that in that process. And so, the program is basically designed to mimic the experience of what it's like to be a core developer, meaning it's a very self-directed program. You know, you get to choose what you work on. You need to communicate what you're working on to the greater public. You kind of have to

like do your own research for the most part. However, there are mentors and others that can help you along the way. You know, maybe unblock some of the roadblocks you might be coming across. But in general, it's a very self-driven process. We do most of the coordination through for the program through GitHub, the GitHub repository, ETH-protocol-fellows. You can see all the previous cohorts there, including the upcoming one. And then um we also have a channel in the Ethereum R&D discord server where we do a lot of conversations so that you know it's easy for people who are mentoring you or for you to ask questions. It's all in that

same place where core developers are already having conversations. And then we do two weekly standups. One is a, you know, sort of a what you've been working on over the past week. And then the other is an AMA, which has a variety of different things, but it's usually an hourlong interview or AMA with the core developer. Either them shilling a project that they would like worked on or maybe it's just a an open conversation with what it's like to be a core developer or yeah, bunch of different things. program is permissionless. So again, anyone can participate and we uh do our best to facilitate people to to join us even if

they're not selected through the application process. So some of the benefits that come along with the EPF, the biggest one that people tend to say when we ask them at the end of the cohort is that that they've been introduced to the developer community that they've been they've met their their mentor or they've gotten to get to know a client team or this and and they feel more confident in reaching out to different developers when they have a question or they have something that they feel like should be implemented. or this sort of thing. We offer a semistructured process. So, while you are kind of doing a lot of this stuff on your own, we have some uh guide rails in

place for you to kind of be able to have some structure to to how you start doing your first contributions. Generally, you're able to work about what you're excited about in the core protocol. That may change. This year we are going to be trying to match up fellows a little bit closer with some specific tasks that client devs would like to see happen. But in general you are able to choose what you want to work on. We offer the mentorship for those who are selected through the application process. There's a financial stipen associated with it in order to enable you to focus on this work and not have to, you know, take some side gigs or

other hustle to make your ends meet. Uh and then generally we, you know, it provides some experience on what it's like to make contributions to Ethereum. Here's a quick, you know, little rundown of some of the different statistics from the fifth cohort. I'm not going to go over all of those, but you can, you know, take a screenshot or, you know, take a quick look at it there. I think the big stat here is in our 30 person cohort, we had seven people at this point hired to client teams. So that's our best number yet for for a cohort and we hope to continue that to continue to rise. And again, I'm not going to go over all of these projects, but we these

were the projects that were worked on during the fifth cohort of the EPF. We also just released a last week a blog post on blog.ethereum.org or that kind of lists this and links to all these different projects and gives a little bit of an explanation of what these projects were about. And this is that blog post. All right. So, how does the EPF work? I'm going to try to go over this pretty quickly, but basically we have it into three phases, four actually. So once we go through the application process and a person has been selected or you are electing to join permissionlessly, you'll go through phase zero, which is kind of the study

group phase. So we'll encourage you to look at a bunch of that study group content to brush up your knowledge on Ethereum protocol so that once the cohort starts, you can dive right in to to phase one, which is selecting a project and creating your project proposal. The project proposal is basically a scope and a specification of what you'd like to work on over the five-month process of the EPF. And then we will have an in-person meeting at ETCC in Ken to have an EPF day where all of the fellows will present the projects that they have proposed. Once that's over, phase two, which is the bulk of the cohort, is basically working on your

project, writing these weekly development updates, which allows us to get some insight into your working process and what that's like for you, but also for you to get more experience in what it's like to write technical writing. It's a very important part of working in open source projects, especially with such a distributed and decentralized developer base. It's important for these updates to inform people, inform the public, inform other developers in what you're working on.

So, it's a skill that and a muscle that we'd like to build with you. And then you'll also be working with your mentor, getting feedback from them, having, you know, somewhat regular conversation with them around uh where you're at and and any sort of roadblocks you might be coming across. In addition, we also do the weekly standup and office hours like I was mentioning before. And then in phase three, we do the it's the presentation phase. So, you'll start to wrap up your project or at least get it to a place where you feel good about ending the cohort with it. Not all projects need to be like fully complete.

oftentimes we overestimate the amount of work we're going to be able to do in that amount of time or underestimate the scope of the project itself or the different things that you might run into. And then you'll create a final project presentation which you will present at uh Defcon in Argentina and Buenosiris and write a final development update which will kind of outline your process through this program. So, if you would like to join EPF, we just released applications today about two hours ago, and I think Mario will put a link to that in the chat there. But generally, successful candidates will have some

technical foundation and are able to write code and have some software develop experience. It's something we're going to focus on a little bit more this cohort. Having a a stronger software development background. Yeah. And then also having strong written and verbal communications. Obviously being self-directed as this program is very self-driven, be interested in Ethereum's core and low-level architecture, low-level languages that Mario was talking about earlier, and then generally having a passion for Ethereum and blockchain, having some open source contributions, maybe two different Ethereum repos or maybe just other uh open source projects are all great

signals for us as you can see here. So yeah, if you are interested in joining us in EPF6, we suggest that you prepare by taking a look at epf.wiki if you have not already. Please take some time to submit your application. The applications are really the only insight we have into who you are unless you've joined us for the study group or have some other kind of contact with us or other core developers. So, you know, the application is really important for us to get to know who you are and what your development skill is like and what your background is. And then, yeah, prepare to take the five months from June to mid

November to work with us at EPF. These are some QR codes that we'll go through. This is the application, but you can also find it at the link that both Mario and Minakshi, I'm sorry, I'm butchering that name. We have up here in the top left the protocol studies GitHub. Top middle is a Google group, which is basically a mailing list that we send one to two emails out per year, basically announcing these applications and study group stuff. top right is the study group discord. Please join that if you're interested in learning more about the protocol or contributing to epf.wiki which is the QR code at the

bottom center there. So yeah, thank you for taking some time to listen to us about the protocol fellowship. We're really excited about what women in Ethereum protocol is doing and would like to see as many of you apply as are interested. So that I will stop the sharing and if you guys have any questions happy to answer them. Uh yeah thank you so much Josh. Uh this is what we've done during the cohort and if you had this question why do we have this homework? Why why do we have this table?

So this is how we would like to prepare you for the EPF if some of you want to join. So feel free to raise your hands. I'm sure you have questions you're interested. Hello, please. I have a question. Sorry, I can't raise up my hand. My phone. Yeah, thank you Marian Josh for the breakdown. My question as an SF fellow is um for this uh upcoming court, assuming there's an idea in the idea list for projects requested from clients and all of that that I am probably interested in, am I free to work on it even though I'm not a fellow in the fellowship?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the projects are all, you know, there and open. Anyone is welcome to to work on them. Additionally, we've also uh put together a website at gfi.bordell.wtf. And this basically scrapes all of the interesting good first issues from different Ethereum repos around the core protocol. So, this is also a great place to look for different projects to work on or at least to start to dip your toes into making contributions.

Thank you, Glory. Vicish, next question from you. Right. All right. So, um during the the training, is it going to be like are we going to be working in a team or like working alone? Both of those options are open. Usually, it will be defined based on the scope of the project, right? So there are some projects that are pretty extensive and would take a couple two three sometimes more than that people to complete it within the scope of the cohort and then some of the projects are a little smaller and aren't necessarily need that many people to work on it. So it kind of depends both on the scope and how many people are interested in that project.

We don't really force either option on on you. M okay makes sense just in general I would add that you want to prepare for working alone like most of the projects are based on a single person but even if you if you're in a team like you have to be able to do your own research to work self-directed like it's more about yeah being able to work by yourself on your thing and that comes together with other people like you know you're working on different parts so uh yeah just be ready to work uh by yourself most of the time. Yeah, that's true. Uh, you need to learn a lot and you need to do it on your own because everyone's busy. So, yeah, you have a lot to learn. Louisa, go ahead. Okay. My

question is also still on the project side. So, he say that well they were looking at the application. They're looking for people who at least have contributed open source to some sort of like Ethereum. And I was wondering do like if I've contributed open source to maybe companies that are built on Ethereum in a different maybe whether it's on the application layer or maybe like loadster does it count? Yeah, certainly making open source contributions to Ethereum is not a requirement. Obviously not everyone has done that before especially if you know you're coming maybe from a different uh background. um that to us is just maybe it's just one signal that um it is you

know that you've taken some time to make a contribution or that you're excited about Ethereum but it's not a requirement at all and other contributions to other open source projects are also as valid of a signal as contributing to Ethereum. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions? I J on. So um my question is um when you said that when you apply you should say what you want to work on during the the program but then you said it will be different for this cohort cuz this cohort you'll give people um like to work on like on what the clients need to be done to be worked on. Yeah. So I'm wondering when we applying so how do we

choose because you're saying it's a bit different you'll assign people to the clients. Yeah, I'm just a bit confused on that. Sure, this is going to be kind of a new thing for us, trying to match a little bit more people with projects that are coming from client teams. That said, it doesn't mean that you will be working on that project and we likely aren't going to necessarily assign you a project. So if you have something there you're interested in working on, you can put that in the application and you know it's just something that we will be taking consideration. If you're interested in working on something that a client team has proposed, that's

great. If you have something that you think needs to be done, that's also great. If it's, you know, Yeah. So, we're not going to be assigning projects necessarily, and people are still free to work on what they're interested in, but we are probably going to be selecting candidates through the application process more based on their ability to potentially work on things that client teams have requested. Mario, do you have anything to add to that? I don't know how eloquent that was. Yeah, I think you explained well. Again like also to the question before like generally we are looking for some demonstration of your technical skills of your development skills right like the ideal candidate is somebody who is

eager to work on Ethereum core but also has experience that makes him ready to dive into it which means some of these general study group experience with Ethereum itself but mainly the computer science background that gives you the ability to understand the codebase to be able to work on some issues and and on get on boarded with new colleagues with the with the teams. And um this also means that we have the client teams proposing the projects and uh like the the idea is to make it for them as frictionless as possible because these core devs, these mentors, they are very busy. They work on their you know full-time core development tasks and generally their reason for not hiring

new colleagues is that they are just too busy to onboard someone. So we are hoping to get them people like to give people more time with the stipend with our help to to learn about Ethereum and the project. So then they can get on boarded much more easily more in more self-directed way and the the client team suggests projects which would be ideal to help them to beneficial for them but also should be a good scope that you can work on. So this creates like more tight relationship with the the plan teams with the mentors and I would say that's the easiest path to to take but again like the fellows have a lot of freedom in what they want to work on how they want to approach it.

Basically really just up to you to to see what is a good approach to your own skills and yeah how much time you need for that. Yeah the where can you see these client projects you can find it in the repo. So right now the client teams need some time to propose them. There are not many of them. So I would suggest checking it in the previous core. So all the cohorts can be found in the GitHub organization. Uh right here you can see the cohort six which is the next one but you see chord five chord four and in the projects directory in each repository can find the list of project and there is the project ideas. So send you an example. So here are project ideas from the cohort five for example. These are

proposed by the mentor. So you can see this as an inspiration and to get an idea like what they will want you to work on. But again like for the chord six you will have the same uh the same thing for the chord six but we are still waiting for you know it's still early and uh they need to take some time to submit all those projects. So and I can add for myself that this push in some point makes things easier because when you just join the program uh you can be lost a little. Yeah, it's not easy to choose the project. Mikkesh, your question. Okay, so I'm just trying to understand better how the structure of the program is cuz you know Katia during our program we had like issues that we pick from then like we work on them. If

we have any questions we ask like on the Discord server for the project. So is it the same way for this? cuz while he was speaking like he was talking about like the steps and different aspects of the program. So I'm just trying to understand like is it going to be the same like the way we did ours? Well this is more maybe question on Katya because I'm not exactly sure how the program works but yeah from it will be more complicated because in the in our program you work on the good first issue and during the EPF you will work on some more complicated project. So, but the structure is the same. Yeah, actually you can ask questions in the discord and

uh yeah, you will have sessions with Josh and Mario as well and they will guide you. If you have any questions, they will help you with it. I mean, from what I've seen from the women in protocol program like uh you have also like weekly assignments, you have these meetups and and it's varied in cohorts. But in the fellowship, as Josh described, there are these different phases. In the first phase, you choose the project and it's like a research time. So first month is spent on learning and research and then it's all it's like four months of just working on a project. So the scope of the project is like a four month work. It's like I would compare it to like some you know thesis or something like a master thesis in in university or something like this.

So you take like a whole semester or like four or five months to to work on the whole thing. And uh we we check in weekly. We have a weekly meetings with the other follows and with the with the mentors to get some feedback to talk to to each other but generally like during this time and you post weekly updates. You report on your work every week so other people can learn about it and give you feedback. Yeah. Uh as it was described but it's more of a marathon uh than a sprint, right? like it's really like a a long more long-term effort in shaping some some bigger project and uh we have these regular check-ins to keep you going to give you the resources that you need. All right, that's beautiful.

Thank you. Any other questions? That's a great chance to ask. Yeah, I you also mentioned that the the people have been picked. They'll be able to pitch their proposal on FCC. Is this done like physically or virtually? It'll be in person. So, we'll invite everybody who is a selected through the application process to join us at ECC. And this is a uh sponsored trip. So, but unfortunately it will only be for those who are selected through the application process. Um we do have a you know permissionless portion of the program and people who are joining in that way who do good work constant contributions

and are providing value can be invited to dev connect in in Argentina and potentially offered a stipen and and other things. But ECC is will be only for those selected through the application process or if you happen to be going anyways and uh you know we would invite you to EPF day to come present. Yeah, everyone is welcome there. We are just paying the stipen the hotel and the trip for the people who are initially selected and then they spend the first three four weeks choosing the project uh writing a proposal which is like a concrete specification. is what I'm going to work on next four months and um they present this in front of other people to uh you

know share it and to get feedback. So yeah that's uh and again like you can meet us you can meet other developers you can meet EPF people at different conferences throughout the five months there's going to be ton of events happening around the world so you know if there is something in your area you can also have like a small EPF uh get together uh but uh it's more decentralized way but we have these in etc and then def connect yeah and you also have some cases when even people join permissionlessly and They are really dedicated to their projects and the projects uh are helpful for client teams. They can also participate right.

Yeah, of course. Like people who again like there is the small selection of candidates in the initial phase where we choose like um couple of people I don't know 10 15 20 out of like hundreds of applications. Uh but we are not the best at choosing you know who is the best developer. We we it really depends how you presented yourself. What was what was our understanding of your skills and we might be wrong. We are not you know expert on this. So we cannot really see the future. So you can just come and demonstrate your skills. You can just come and as a permissionlessly uh you think that we are wrong that you deserve the statement. So you come and you do the the great job. You start working on some project and as you open PRs we see that you do a really good job and after

a couple of weeks or months you can receive the site for the fellowship and then come to def connect in in Istanbul. So there will be more people in the end and also the def connect will have very good visa policy. Many people cannot travel to France to Europe. So it will be much easier to get together there and uh meet everyone. But the main point is your true interest to the protocol. That's important. Yes. Argentina, not Istanbul. Oh yeah. Sorry. I just like Yeah. Uh still still live in the past. Yeah. And Yeah. And anyone Yeah. who is really dedicated to working on the protocol and uh but you know is in the right place to do it like demonstrates the skill and the the dedication like that's um that's open floor for anyone

to come. We have a question in the chat. Uh what's the most challenging aspect of making changes to Ethereum protocol? But unfortunately I have another meeting I have to jump off. But I will suggest if you do have any further questions or comments we are holding a town hall on Monday at uh 1400 UTC and there is links to that that meeting in the blog post announcement if you're interested and have further questions. But just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to us and we hope to see some of your applications in the uh in for EPF6.

All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Josh. Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much, Josh. Yeah. Bye-bye. Um yeah, and uh yeah, by the way, regarding the visa, yeah, the Argentina will have even better policies than visa because they have like a special visa policy for the connect itself. So it should be very easy to to get there for literally anyone. But yeah about the most challenging aspect about it's a hard question because I think the whole thing is pretty challenging. I don't even know where to start. Like there there are many parts to it. Like first is the technical side, right? Like the first challenge is to do the research to do to identify something that's important to do. Yeah. And on one hand it's a challenge like you to understand the

protocol and to identify like what's a good uh what's a good upgrade. uh but it's not really such a big deal if you understand the protocol if you are between these core developers if you ask any of them they will tell you like 10 things that should be done right now right the the main challenge here is to actually get it done to actually get it through so there is a whole process of the EIP then the ACD right so it goes through some drafts and proposal it's discussed in research in eat magicians and then eventually it get brings up on the awkward deaths And there it needs some champions, somebody who really to really push this idea to uh figure out the bugs to solve them and to make sure that this gets eventually into the

protocol. But this is something that's can be a long process like we talk about like this big topic of today's protocol development effort going to take another year or so to get it done or maybe hopefully less but still it's a big thing. So, so really like this whole process you get through the priorities. So, the protocol work needs to prioritize what is the most important and most effective way how to implement the change right. So, again like eof there is many dependencies there is many things that needs to be changed. So really to figure out how these priorities fit together and discuss it with all these like 15 different 20 different teams that have something to say about it. So this whole

coordination and a prioritization game which is getting improved these days actually with the new some changes in the ACD process but it's still it's uh I think that's that's the uh the tough part. So making changes to the Ting protocol. Yeah. on one hand the technical side on one hand like just the whole coordination and uh and this ACD game that you need to play but again like this is something that's more about the some big EIP some changes to the protocol as you ask but not necessarily changes in the clients like you can come you come to EPF and you work on something that's you know that's going to be done in the five months and the challenge there is that you are working on something that's like some part of the client that is maybe not critical or

it's part of some future future hard work or you're prototyping something and the challenge there is being able to deliver good quality code and be able to communicate what you are doing and uh get the reviews. So it's more about like yeah uh it's not a challenge of like pushing the whole AP or anything but yeah there is a uh Koko is asking about the the visa policy. I'm not sure how much of this info is public to be honest actually. Maybe it's maybe it's going to take a while till uh the Devcon connect team publishes it. Let me check the website. It will be all public on the Devcon connect website. Once the tickets are available, they will provide the guidance for visa. So that's uh that's uh mentioned in the website. So uh if if

you know if it's not like very much Russia, I think you can wait for the tickets to be available. That's great to hear that def connect will be even more available for people from many countries. the last time I heard it should be uh available for the people from Africa especially and and so on like they have some uh they have some good process for this but um that's what I was told you know between uh Devcon connect team working on this I fully trust them they are amazing uh but like give them time to publish this and publish the tickets it might take some time but I hope that they consider that people need need some time for the process and they will will put it out in time yeah I would like to also add to the challenges that you need to be

disciplined. You will have a weekly reports and GitHub updates. So, uh kind of what we did in our cohort but more complicated I would say. So, get ready to this as well. Yeah, totally. like the as I mentioned like being so directed being able to like work work on your thing without u handh holding without like direct guidance and so on like you really need to be able to do your thing and and uh stay motivated like uh yeah I think like the big thing especially like with people who don't step but even with some that does that do the issue is that they uh they just drop out right like they they face some issues they lose the uh lose the motivation Then after a

couple of weeks they don't really uh contribute anymore. So yeah just uh we provide this community where we have the weekly meetups and the weekly updates and for some people this works but uh still you need to have the internal motivation that keeps you going that really makes it happen for you. Yeah. And maybe even people with titans drop out. I'm not sure but depends on their motivation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean with as I said like also people with stipend or people who are permissionless but it depends on the situation like there are people who have you know some personal trouble they cannot they can't work on this anymore of course but generally like for many people it's just having the right motivation and and also

the right goals to be able to keep them going. Yeah this is definitely the hard work but it worth it believe me. Any other questions? Tomorrow we are wrapping up but if you have the last question feel free to raise your hand. Please do ask. Don't be shy. Uh EPF is not for that's what I was always saying at these calls like this EPF call where I we have like 40 people in the room and we have some great core developer there and they please like ask some questions don't be shy. So it became kind of a meme in the third cohort when I kept repeating like don't be shy.

Yeah, we are teaching you here not to be shy ask questions. All right, thank you. Thank you so much Mario. This was really helpful and I hope our participants are interested and we also can provide you more info maybe share our experience for for the next call if you're interested. Um yeah, we can do it as well and um it's a big pleasure for me personally to have you here or yeah it's yeah it's pleasure to be here Katya and honestly like it's it's also a pleasure to have you to see you doing these the study group for women doing this this whole effort like I mean you did you did a great job in the in the EPF and then it's amazing

that you stick here on the protocol and you continue with all of this and I really appreciate you inviting me having me here it's been a pleasure and thank Thank you so much for all of your attention. I hope to have bunch of you come into the EPF as Josh said. I hope some of you can uh follow the study group or even join the EPF. But generally, you know, we need more feminine energy. We need more diversity or we need more different backgrounds in the core protocol. So, please don't hesitate to to join us. We definitely would love to have you there. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for joining us today and we'll see you on the next session. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye everyone. Thanks again and and please feel free to reach out to me if you have anything. I'm in the

Discord channel of yours, but also in the EPS Discord or email mario.havl at ethereum.org. So always feel free to reach out if you have any any concerns and