Ethereum Protocol Fellowship: Path of a Core Developer / Mário Havel

Transcript

um oh the clicker right hello everyone and thank you so much for coming once again to one of my talks this is the very last one of my talks at eat Prague but also the I believe the very last talk in the studio one at eat Prague today it's my honor to close this conference with I believe a very important topic um uh especially to uh these days the the core protocol Fellowship ethereum political Fellowship it's a program which can help you to start contribute to ethereum itself what do I mean by that and again I get to my question here which I've been asking uh on my previous talk as well what is ethereum

give me some inputs folks ah Community nice what else cbdc I don't do it don't give me that oh ethereum is love hope protocol some ideas right okay so to talk about what is ethereum uh we can imagine the network right the the technology behind it and that would be specifically speaking the specification or uh starts with idea right vitalik's white paper of ethereum just the concept of an idea of a technology such as ethereum and then to actually make it happen we need to specify it we need to write exactly how it has to work so the protocol uh can um

can actually work and based on this specification which is the yellow paper and the eips we create implementations the actual clients the ethereum is currently implemented in five different languages in consensus and execution layer so um uh with this we can move to the question who is the core developer I talk about core development in the beginning um and also also in past few days so if you saw my previous talks it's an easy answer what is it called core developer to have some inputs I should maybe sit or something like I feel too it's just few people in the crowd anyway um yeah what is a core developer folks do you have some ideas it's very easy right it's uh yeah

lives with this okay it's true because these people are really motivated to uh make ethereum happen to really live uh what is it division of ethereum but a core developer in general it's the person who builds ethereum itself ah Chris you wanted to say something oh yeah it's a central point that's that's a great point so like who are the people creating the ethereum that we talk about we hear about the merge about the search about the Chapala two months ago uh who are the people behind it uh people creating what I mentioned the specification the clients the testing infrastructure um and um they help to maintain and

upgrade the ethereum make it uh make it uh well more up to date uh fix the the issues that may occur but most importantly uh finish it and and bring it to the next level so uh yeah the specification and ethereum after the merge is two parts right it's execution and consensus clients I have it here I should and uh but these clients need to be tested properly so then there is also testing team and the research about everything uh that might happen in the future and we won't find the best way how to do it um when I say ethereum developer most people imagine uh solidity right they are writing the smart contracts the application layer maybe some whatever nfts uh creating the languages as solid

to your viper or some Layer Two developers so um these are the web 3 devs right the people who are live in the web 3 doing all the crazy applications which uh Rock pull us and whatnot there is a bunch of them there is six tens of thousands of them I guess and um it's uh it's it's a big thing right in past few years we see that many people are very excited to become the victory Dev um and uh in ethereum specifically we see that uh there is there is a lot of uh people building on ethereum itself that's everything we you see around you here many many of our sponsors many

hackers the hackathon building on ethereum right um but uh to put it in the contrast these are people building on it and now the core developers the people building the actual ethereum the number would be something around this uh the 128 is a is a statistic from protocol Guild I talk about the protocol guilt on Friday here and the vertical guilt is uh really not a doesn't doesn't include all the contributors just those who opted in um but uh so we can say it's more there is another aggregator which uh pulls from the repositories uh checks all the core repositories and figures out that there is around 2-300 active core

developers of ethereum across the various repos again I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's uh it's that precise because well it's more complicated there is many little projects many libraries everybody everybody is important in the end uh and yeah we see the ethereum developers On The Rise yeah um so just to sum it up the app developers are those building uh the the apps the top tops of the ethereum stack they are using languages like solidity Viper or maybe these days some fee or maybe Cairo if doing some ZK stuff uh building the default applications and the idea here is that the app developer is responsible for security of people who are using his app

on the other hand um it's uh it's also more more it's very competitive it's Market driven right these are dowels or companies which are actually trying to get the liquidity in trying to uh get the user the funds fundraise whatnot so it's it's very Market driven and mostly for profit and what I what I say here that it's like building a fancy car I just pull random Lamborghini picture and it has a check check plate I I it was it was actually my colleague did it yeah uh this is the lambo but because what we do is that we build the road right so the core developers are building the actual road where all these beautiful cars that the operatives do uh can um uh can uh uh drive because we are building the

infrastructure the actual platform of ethereum that mean that means that for this we use the low-level languages uh meaning uh well go rest maybe Java maybe c um so the the actual architecture software languages um and uh uh this is what you might heard about uh the course of cell execution clients about the eips and all the research around it these are people who are working to create ethereum secure for not just user of single app but all all of the users right they all the ethereum is dependent on this development and as we mentioned in the beginning somebody somebody said that

like they I wanted to narrated in a way that these people really are more Vision driven it's less it's many many uh of the of the entities working on the core development are non-profits which are uh which are much less competitive than any of the any of the uh uh Market big dials and um uh also uh it results in a amazing cooperation because these people are building open software which is which has to work together and they are actually working together they meet and they discuss the specification the uh how to solve these and these issues they don't they don't they hide from themselves they don't they don't uh uh compete directly so yeah we build the rows that allow those

nice cars and now maybe you are a depth developer maybe you are a web 2 or like normal person developer not develop31 yet and you might be interested in the core development because it's very important role to take so um uh yeah already okay so yeah these people I'm gonna talk about the vision I like talking about The Cypher punks right uh about the the uh the movement which started everything we see around us um on the on the on the idea of building the software which is distributed uncensorable and free so the hackers unite because we have a lot of work to do vitalik said before or after the merge I'm not sure that only

ethereum is only finished on like 55 so there is a lot of flood of uh blocks here to fill and to work on and uh if you would be interested uh um so this is this is uh the result of the of the the limitation of the blockchain itself which are theoretically unsolvable but we can we can really try to do our best to to create Solutions which circumvent the trade-offs and and create a better technology so there is a lot of work happening and a lot of interesting research in improving the the ethereum and the blockchain itself is the cutting-edge staff which gave us things like the merge a few months ago uh of

what had just happened okay okay all the way okay I have a lot of things to talk about and yeah this is where it's happening if you know all core Dev calls they are happening every two weeks it's ethereum PM where it's like all the calls and all the all the public development is happening here because the ethereum development is collaborative open and public everybody who is interested uh can look what what is being discussed what is happening and uh can contribute um this is this is the meeting of uh like interrupt of most of the record apps around 100 people in Austria a few months ago so nice group of people mostly white men right not good uh anyway uh let's make it well let's make

it grow like right let's make it let's make this group of people more diverse bigger more uh uh have more manpower to create the ethereum itself and this is what a fellowship is about the political Fellowship that we are running within the protocol support and ethereum Foundation um this is it's trying to make the process of becoming a core contributor easier because I talked about the core development when people think about it they imagine like a huge wall right it's complicated it's weird I don't want to touch that like that's like the Super Genius is doing that I'm not one of those uh but it's not true it's something which is big and complex and person needs to dedicate some time to it but it's what we are trying to help you

with to show you that it's all doable through the the fellowship a brief history started by Piper Miriam I hope you know Piper he's OG uh he started it as a cdap two years ago uh the two cohorts and then we took over and we are trying to funnel all of these people who are interested in Cordova open not to ethereum Foundation but to all of the teams in the core infrastructure which is around 15 20 different teams from various organizations um the program the fellowship itself is trying to mimic the experience of the actual core Dev it's a very unique kind of work which is very self-directed you don't have a boss telling you

micromanaging you're telling you what to do you need to have some maybe desire some some interest in something which you want to solve and you have to be self-directed to uh just wake up and work on this problem until you solve it right so we can completely but it gives you Freedom you can completely choose what you want to work on how much time you want to spend how you want to do it uh you just need to share what you do help us understand so uh every uh two weeks the fellows should or weekly or however they feel actually but they should update a very technical updates uh also the practice some technical writing skills and we are connecting the fellows in the fellowship with the current core devs with people building uh the ethereum and

um folks who can provide the feedback for your PRS for your thoughts they can guide you a little um all of the coordination again is public it's out of the open it's a part of this whole open research of ethereum and you can find it here uh eat protocol fellows is the is the the GitHub organization there are all the all the past cohorts all the work reported by every fellow is there so you can see everything what was happening you can learn a lot just from reading that and the idea of this being just on the GitHub completely open anybody can just open PR and contribute and come there right um but this means that the program is completely permissionless actually you can just join by coming to the repo

opening the pr adding your notes adding your development updates starting to work on some project uh we you don't need to ask anybody for permission um yeah you can you get introduced to uh many of many many uh wonderful people who are working in the core development you can actually meet them it's uh and you become part of this community of your peers of people who are uh another 20 30 people who are just like you uh just have some previous skills but want to learn more and want to dive into the core um and yeah you want to you get a mentorship and for the people who actually apply who are not there just as permissionless participant but I want to uh commit to work on this uh

seriously we offer all the financial stipend and uh you can get yeah you can get a amazing experience uh from the core 3 which finished in March in February uh we get over 600 applications there uh out of those 40 reviews 24 accepted people and 12 more joined along the way just completely permissionlessly started to contribute um and they made 20 products in the end somebody worked uh alone somebody worked with other other fellows small teams we get a bunch of calls we organize office hours calls with the mentors with the current current um the core developments who are giving their

experience of not just like working in some technology also more technical but also just about what is it like to actually be a core developer because sometimes it's pretty tough many people end up with burnout many people are really working hard to well deliver things on the merge uh 40 of those people who participated he got actually hired or got Grant from some of these core organizations uh here are some examples of projects from the last court uh so uh yeah implementing API for the light client uh uh Vector commitment Mercury research which is the the new Patricia medical three thing monitoring uh ethereum nodes

uh this was interesting implementing uh like crypto economics of Mev on the in open games engine um yeah work on the clients work on the light client uh adding the peer-to-peer layer to a light client implementation uh there was one Inc worked on um uh like this it was like a it was like a paper for uh not really bad potential attack on DDOS attack on the main pool in get and she started to work on it she fixed it and like a few days after the fellowship somebody triggered it on girly so I mean good we have to fix right um yeah so these were the projects from

the last chord you can find everything ethereum.org you can read about the the passcode all the details that happened we met in Denver uh with all of the wonderful people uh with we met we had like an EPF day with Denny Ryan Ansgar met is actually here right now um and yeah other other great folks to just you know meet and chat and talk about how um how um uh we can we can work on this together um then he had a wonderful story Reno Denny Ryan this guy sitting in the front he's the guy who designed like the whole proof of stake thing right and he was telling the story how he just finished the school started some material meetups

didn't know really what to do did some Python and ended up doing EIP with uh with Vlad and vitalik for the proof of stake and he didn't even believe that it can work he liked the proof of work uh but then he got fever get a dream get a fever dream and he saw the blogs he realized how it all works it fit together and today he's one of the most famous theorem core deaths just like he's he's a young boy like most of us and uh yeah it was it was real nice so Denny uh then you join us and the next time we'll be a meeting in Istanbul in Dev connect so we can come to join us there so how does it work again how to apply how to how to get into it um uh yeah the whole the whole project is

formed uh it's four months of working uh first there is a learning phase you want to dive into various topics and then um then to uh just report your work and uh and uh work hard okay if you want to contribute uh you want to be you have to already have some technical background know how to communicate and uh just just come and do the thing um I'm gonna just yeah uh in the application you should share your GitHub account uh write some answers and yeah we'll see whether you're active whether it's some open source contributions it's very important for us and uh what I'm talking about this here and now because

it's happening right now the applications opened more than a week ago and they are finishing in six days uh or in five days uh on Friday June 16 on this Friday till then you have time to apply and if you are not not sure what is happening here maybe you missed the first half of my talk like most of this room uh you can join us for a call tomorrow tomorrow Monday June 12th on 4 30 PM UTC which is like local time it's uh what is it 6 30 local time tomorrow uh we will have we'll have a town hall to answer all of your question about the EPF program the program will start in mid-july you can

actually like start to contribute now but officially it starts in July runs through November when we meet in devconnect and now we get like the hundreds of applications to 300 right now and there is like two percent of women implying and I I wonder I just don't have the right channels because I believe there is many talented women with us today and in the whole ethereum community so if like if you are interested if you know talented uh people in general uh the special girls who are just maybe uh not confident enough to apply to to work on this uh please share it with them it's very inclusive everybody is welcomed uh and I believe if you meet these people it's

very welcoming community and uh yeah we would love to have you an EPF whoever you are uh please don't be scared to apply and you can find it in this or the applications open all the info there again it's blog.etherium.org right yeah here very simple or just step me on the shoulder here I will be around the hall the whole night so here you can find this blog post about application is opened and uh yeah you can join the Google group check out the repo uh the cohort for again all the information the details about how the the cohort will go and how can you contribute how to use your GitHub account there uh it's it's here eat protocol follows cohort 4 right now um I invite you for a party in borrel

that's my anchorspace downstairs we can chat about that later I'm already out of time today 5 30 we have beers with Bitcoin e devs because we try to build Bridges also join us if you want to meet some thank you so much for for being here for being at eat Prague especially because it's it's again my pleasure to close this conference with the speech uh but yeah uh I'm I'm really happy that so many of you uh I guess are coming to the closing time but it's my it's my it's my time here right so yeah please support the core development contribute because only this is the only thing you can do to really help ethereum flourish thank you so much guys [Applause] [Music] thank you