Ethereum Protocol Fellowship Cohort #4 Town Hall

and these days we also have executable specs which are specified in Python so the core developers are working on first of all this specification if you can go for Droids it's also all there so first of all the specification then the implementation is the implementations of ethereum are on two layers and the Consciousness layer uh handling the proof of stake actually the valuator said they um uh the the courses with the network and the execution layer which is uh which includes executing the transaction having all the state all the ethereum data all the contracts and of course uh we need to be able to test this uh there is a heavy testing infrastructure of various uh various uh uh various domains uh which make sure that these implementations not just work and work together but uh also follow the specification um and uh all of this is uh kind of led by uh many many researchers from also various organizations who are trying to um we're trying to uh find the best Solutions of The Cutting Edge issues in the blockchain interior on the other hand like when when you say ethereum developer people mostly imagine people writing in solitary building on ethereum itself right so there would be something by apps some you know nft projects maybe or uh even layer twos or the infrastructure uh like maybe some block explorers or stuff like this which is um which is built on top of the ethereum so to give you the idea of what numbers we are working with here um the the core Developers of ethereum are in uh we would be here um in low hundreds like under 200 people uh in the protocol Guild which is an organization it's an entrepreneur uh medicalist which is uh including all uh like uh it's opt-in list for core contributors to um uh to uh be able to have some Pearl certain funding there is 128 people but again it's obtained so there is not all of them most of the people are from Brooklyn Guild or from the core Community uh so in this picture we met in Austria uh on on January so you can see that it's it's a wonderful group of people um yeah um but uh it's all of them of course uh the the projects in uh the the core ecosystem are very wide there are many different domains there are not just the clients but you know there's always some library or some piece of tooling which which somebody maintains somewhere um uh this aggregator is uh pulling various repositories and identifies over 200 sometimes up to 300 uh contributors to these these various posteries again they don't list specifically which ones so I would guess that it might be even more however if we compare this number to actual webto developers we see a big difference so the webatory devs are p people building on ethereum right using ethereum technology but not contributing to ethereum itself and um ethereum is leading in the number of of reset 3 devs uh the you know the DAP developers uh there is well uh let's say at least 10 20 20 times more than the core contributors so uh so it's it's a big difference and um yeah to the the main difference here is that the app developers are working on the high uh layer basically it's uh it's um the Smart Control player using something like silky or Viper or fee or maybe some uh these days whatever compiles to to evm like some Cairo um building your different applications the things that the users actually use and uh building these the developers are responsible for how the app behaves and uh the security of the user's funds or the the security of the user data uh is uh their responsibility the responsibility of the app they are using um it's also competitive environment many uh ethereum uh many protocols and ethereum are maybe some public use but a lot of them are businesses or even Dallas which have some profit incentives so they they tend to be rather Market driven and uh yeah they're building they're building kind of a fancy cars uh or build is the road it's the actual platform that they are going on right so to build the actual platform to build ethereum itself we need lower level languages we need the the languages which allow us some software architecture which is uh mostly go or rust or C plus plus Java uh even typescript um uh or maybe Nim um and so so there are so these languages which allow us to build efficient and secure software and um uh this is this is the uh how the um uh the consistency execution clients are implemented um the work done there is still maintaining them upgrading them optimizing them and most importantly upgrading upgrading them to before the newest eaps um and uh if you think about it this way um the core developers or the uh the people working on the clients themselves are responsible for security of all of the users of ethereum not just the single app so it uh it Bears certain uh commitments that there is possibility I would say uh but uh that's where we have all the robust testing and corporate Community for it so what I said it's Cooperative it's very unique because compared to the market-driven economy of companies building something else or recordable the core developers are directly collaborating so people from different teams different companies come together to build the things together to make sure that it works and it's and uh and it's all properly specified in uh um yeah it's so it's more ethos driven and uh yeah um so why is it important um uh yeah why is it important why maybe some regulatory devs here or other kind of developers or technical people might be interested into the court of open and it was mostly mentioned here um it's the development of the clients themselves so the Implement dishes from ethereum the actual nodes running the network right if you ask what is ethereum I like you can that does the thing with the blockchain right you can't send tank to a bank because bank is the building ethereum will never have that because thousands of computers running this very software all over the world and each little computer is running the code that you can contribute to and um yeah so the contributions by directly contributing or testing upgrades maybe benchmarking and um generally improving ethereum by researching uh some complex problems um so I would I would uh I would say that uh without record of ethereum uh wouldn't be here I mean uh it's kind of obvious like if we wanted we need to build it kind of a democracy approach but all the work uh done on launching the ethereum on the frontier the homestead all the upgrades still now tilde merch it's all uh was done by Discord contributors and of course there are different people before the now and but uh they some come and go some stay uh they're all working towards the same vision uh it's so we say that ethereum is a sort of an infinite Garden um it's a game that we don't play for winning but for playing it's it's a garden that we will uh uh where we will have to uh you know improve and uh trim here and there and uh I see it as a as a uh it really comes from the uh comes from the free software movement and the cyberpunk culture of the people who are trying to build this distributed and free software which uh allows us the coordination and uh it's the vision that that people uh that people follow here rather than just some Market incentives that's what that's what makes the color open unique to me um and what I talk about the complex and interesting problems that's another reason uh why I see people around me working on the core development because it's not just some shared Vision but it's very interesting problems it's uh if you like to solve problems there is a lot of them to do um so this was around the merge I'm sure if it was before or after emerging colleagues saying uh ethereum is still only about 55 percent finished there is a lot of boxes to fill as you can see in the roadmap um uh each in different domains of ethereum different parts of the computer science typical here and to um to work on so uh it's it can be also very open and creative like basically whatever problematics you get interested in and you want to get into it's your opportunity to just come and learn and contribute yeah um and uh yeah so it's all uh all this research because of uh uh various issues that need to be solved in ethereum but generally what you know about is the the scalability thrill I'm at the blockchain triloma and um uh uh all of these people have been putting very hard work to researching uh potential Solutions which can uh keep the network as decentralized as secure as possible while uh achieving some scalability that's these are these are really cutting-edge solutions to the to the uh uh blockchain technology that we have and like the probably the biggest example of a huge collaboration of people completely open collaboration of people disabilities all around the world which which um was successfully done as as this lovely transition to the merge right so the emerge happened in September 15 last year and it was it was just incredible to watch how people each everybody doing their own thing but contribute towards to higher goal right and uh yeah this is this is what uh what these people are doing and I think that's I think this is the last slide uh before a judge takes over because Josh will actually explain you how can you um uh become one of these contributors and work on all the all the interesting stuff they mentioned awesome thank you Mario uh yeah so the ethereum protocol Fellowship as Tim mentioned earlier uh is is a program that's designed to make the process of becoming a core developer a researcher or contributor easier uh clearing the path forward so that um there are the least amount of roadblocks and you can spend some dedicated time learning and applying any of the things that you learned towards becoming a contributor to the ethereum core protocols a little brief history of the EPF it was originally a program started by an early core developer Piper Miriam it was called the core developer Apprentice program and and his idea was to find uh developers that were going to be able to help him work on a project that he started called the portal Network he hosted two cohorts originally to do that and then passed the program off to the foundation protocol support team to to host the program in sort of a wider wider sort of manner so it is coordinated and funded by the ethereum foundation uh the design of the program is is is meant to mimic the core developer experience so it's a largely self-directed program you're able to choose what you get to work on um it's you know the main mode of communication to the greater world is through different technical updates um and and it's really meant to uh allow you to figure out how to find your way in this ecosystem through you know your own research but also through accessing and the developer Community asking help and Gathering guidance from uh mentors and and the ethereum core developer community uh it has coordinated majorly through a GitHub repository and as well as a Discord um Channel within the eth r d Discord um and then we do host a couple of weekly meetings each week to to have some you know face-to-face time uh it is a permissionless program which means that anybody is welcome to join the program and will have more or less the same uh resources that somebody who has officially accepted into the program so we do encourage people to uh participate permissionlessly our application review processes by no means uh perfected and and you know we're human and we make mistakes when it comes to Applications so we invite people who maybe don't get selected uh to be a part of the program to uh you know prove us wrong and and show us why um you should uh maybe be a part of the official cohort receive funding that sort of thing so some of the benefits of the protocol Fellowship as I mentioned uh you get to work closely with the existing core developer Community um it is a semi-structured process so we do you know have some structure in place to uh keep people accountable and allow uh you to have some some feeling about you know what what it is that you're you should be doing through this four month program to you know help you uh along in your path there um you get to work on what you're passionate about so the problems that you're interested in the areas of the of the core protocol or of computer science generally that you like to work on and you like to research and that you feel passionate about are the things that you get to work on um there's also the mentorship aspect which allows you to have access to the people who are already working on the core protocols the people who might have uh answers to your questions or able to point you in the direction that you need to be going to solve a problem that you're not really sure uh how to solve there is a financial stipend that is associated with the uh people who are officially accepted into the program and we do keep aside a portion of that stipend budget for those people who participate in a permissionless manner that are doing good work throughout the throughout the program and then you also yeah you get the experience of what it's like to to contribute to an open source software project like ethereum uh we finished up the third cohort in February of 2023 it's a four month program we had over 600 applications for that program we conducted 40 interviews uh there were 24 official uh accepted applications we ended up having about 36 people uh participate in the program so 12 people permit participating permissionlessly and then I believe five of them ended up becoming you know sort of official fellows through the permissionless track of that program they worked on 20 different projects uh with 27 different mentors uh and yeah they uh the fellows created 300 different development updates um as of I believe two months ago 40 percent of the fellows that were in cohort three have some sort of placement within a client team within a research team have been granted in some way to work on a project that they uh they were excited about working on uh I'm not going to go over each of these different projects but these are some of the projects that uh that fellows worked on um in cohort three uh and I did highlight one that um after the cohort was over uh one of our fellows that was working on um the deter attack defense their their um the guest client had had that sort of Dos attack happen very very shortly after the program was over and and the work that that fellow had done on this attack defense came in uh very handy during that portion of time so how does the program work well here is a brief timeline of of the of the process so there are three different phases of the program the first phase is what we call an onboarding phase and it lasts for a couple of weeks um this this will be time for you to meet the different fellows in the cohort get to know more about the program and the expectations that are set for the program and for you to take some time to get a brief overview of the current landscape of the ethereum protocol and the current set of problems that are being worked on um we do have a list uh that is kind of ongoing of different projects that are mentors and other people from the uh developer Community are hoping to see work done or would like somebody to work on potentially if that's if you're maybe struggling to find a project to work on um and then so yeah once you've done that sort of uh cursory overview of the problems Escape uh you will go into phase two which is the learning and project selection phase this is where you'll do a deep dive into that particular issue that you're looking into or the project that you'd like to work on really getting to know the different nuances of of that project um then you'll start to create a project proposal this would be probably similar to what it's like to create an EIP or or some other kind of um you know proposal for for upgrading or creating something within the uh core protocols and then you'll get feedback on that project proposal and the project in general and iterate on it and then we do a a I think it's over two weeks we do uh project proposal presentations where uh you will you know spend five to ten minutes giving a presentation on your project why you think it's important and how you're going to tackle it and then the majority of the of the time in the uh in the fellowship is the project execution phase where you're actually working on your project getting feedback and assistance from your mentors and fellow um fellows in the cohort and you will host these weekly stand-up meetings where you uh you know will give sort of a a brief overview of your progress through the week be able to ask questions of the fellows um and and maybe have um you know Mario and I point you in directions of people to talk to if you're struggling with a certain roadblock of some kind and then uh towards the end of the of that third phase you'll do a project report where you you know uh it's a written report where you you know sort of give an overview of your time in the in the uh project as well as like you know the different things that you struggled with the different avenues that you took in order to solve the problems that you were having and just generally how the project turned out where it is currently if it's complete or not that sort of thing uh and then this cohort will end with an in-person um meeting at uh deafconnect in Istanbul um so this will be a time where fellows will get to meet face to face have some time to chat about their time and the fellowship and and also give some in-person project presentations so what it might be like to uh you know speak at a conference on what you're working on or you know just generally give you some more sort of uh public speaking opportunity um so that you can verbalize your thoughts to to others that are working on similar things foreign so if you are interested in joining the ethereum protocol Fellowship the fourth cohort we encourage you to apply uh um successful candidates will have uh strong written and verbal communication skills uh the majority of this program is is you know done remotely so it's important that you're able to speak about the the projects that you're working on and just about the technical aspects in general uh you'll also be writing weekly or bi-weekly updates about what you're working on so being able to to write about what you're working on as well is definitely a handy skill to have um it's important that you're self-directed and self-motivated again this program is not designed to to hold your hand but it's designed to uh you know mimic what it's like to actually be a core developer somebody who's you know typically working remotely um and you know needs to have some some aspect of self-motivation it is important to have somewhat of a technical Foundation to be able to write some code uh be interested in low-level architecture and also having a passion for ethereum and for decentralized technology in general is also a very important aspect of this program so when writing your application it's very good to uh have well-written answers in your application we encourage you to put some thought and some effort into the application uh answers um and would discourage you from using chat GPT or other AI tools to to write those uh responses within the application it's important to have an active GitHub account of some kind we definitely understand that not everybody has the opportunity to you know work on open source projects all of the time or or maybe you know the work that they do is not able to be shared so it's certainly understandable if you don't have a super active GitHub account but when you are submitting your application it would be important for you to to sort of explain um what sorts of projects you have worked on in the past and why you why they aren't necessarily able to be shared um making open source contributions to either uh issues and and things that within the ethereum ecosystem or generally other open source um software platforms it's great um having some low level language proficiency things like uh rust and C plus plus and and Java and all these sorts of things it's great to to um mention that in your application and if you've done any kind of uh you know protocol work peer-to-peer work things like that so uh the application period is open until June 16th the program will begin in mid-july and it will run through mid-november and as I mentioned before it will culminate in EPF day at devconnect in Istanbul um yeah so these are a couple of QR codes for you to scan if you so desire one is to the Google group where we do some very high level uh Communications talking about um ways to participate permissionlessly or just announcements about different cohorts and the other is the third uh the the GitHub repo for the third cohort we do have another repo for the fourth cohort which should be open at this point and uh we'll throw a link to that in the chat if it is still legible so thank you for listening to this presentation and for joining us on this uh town hall meeting uh I we're gonna open it up for questions and we'll see how this process goes with uh you know the issues that we were having earlier and hopefully it will be great so if you have questions feel free to post them oh my god there are some things there's already yeah maybe I can I can run through what's already been shared in the chat um cool that's yeah um so first of all yeah people are asking for the slides we can post those there as well um first question was out of the 36 participants last time how many became core devs yeah so uh as of I believe a month and a half ago about 40 percent of them uh have been placed in some way shape or form so that that could mean that they received a grant through the um ethereum Support Program uh that they were hired by a client team that they were hired by the ethereum foundation the research wing of the yeah um so there's a lot of uh different sorts of ways that you can become a core Dev so um but 40 of them currently are working full-time on on uh core development projects just a note that like um the 20 projects which has been delivered like all of them were meaningful contributions so like uh one thing is being um being uh actually employed somewhere we're getting a grant but like even the work within the EPA was the actual contribution that people did and uh to me I would say that they already became a Concordia Court contributions um and the placement rate uh or like what we talked about here uh about 40 also important to know that some of those people are just uh uh decided to uh to work on something else or maybe finish the school before before joining uh some teams so um I would say that it's really up to you like it's these projects uh can easily prove your skill and then it's uh it's pretty it's relatively easy to to get hired uh wherever the help is needed awesome um okay so second question is the fellowship only for coders it is mainly uh geared towards people who uh you know can write code um it doesn't necessarily mean you need to be able to write like production ready code although that is definitely helpful um we do have a lot of uh people who from the last cohort who are more on the research side of things and so interested in researching the different things but you know it is handy to be able to be able to express your thoughts in code I don't know or Tim yeah I was just gonna say so like yeah it's important I think they keep the program focused on actual core you know protocol development and client development and the EF does a bunch of other grants rounds you know for like different research areas everything from like you know social science to like math or you know more like abstract uh technical research so I think for this program like being comfortable with the ethereum network and its implementations like as a live thing is probably the main thing and you know a lot of this is obviously software engineering but like we mentioned like the the example from the presentation you know around the guest mempool dos uh protection um that's something that started much more on the research side and then they work with the get team on like implementing a fix so like there's probably some branches of research where it's like very applied you know to things like uh whether it's like networking you know dos uh and things like that um but if if you're completely outside of those domains then there's probably other grants rounds from the EF that are a better fits than EPF uh Mary I don't know if there's anything else you want to add um I just wanted to mention that I would really recommend to check the past project so uh we have the lovely Recap blog that was mentioned on the bloggers ethereum org next to the applications open you can find also there is a link in the blog post to the the blog uh which is uh explaining the previous cohort and all of the projects are linked there also in the repo from the last chord you can see all the work which has been done uh by defaults and the projects you can get an overview that like most of them is some development work some of them are also just like you know data analytics or building tools which enable some some more clear uh data or actually there was uh there was also to work on the Meb uh some sort of crypto economics [Music] implemented in the open games engines I'm sure interesting game theory there is also um logic to apply in the research there but um that's this different the most of the projects yeah awesome uh okay next next question was what's the monthly uh stipend if you're acceptable so we do uh stipends based on me basically so we ask you to uh calculate your your monthly burn rate the amount of money that it takes for you to to live basically for a month things like food rent uh and and basic you know life necessities and then um that's sort of the number that we uh would would ask for in terms of what you would receive for a stipend so the program isn't meant to give you like a developer's salary per se but it is meant to allow you to spend the four months focusing on the project and not have to worry about the things that you would need to to survive um okay next up I'll try to run through those because it's more and more on what basis are the applications of accepted um and how much are you expected to know about core development so the second question you sort of touched on a bit but maybe the first part of the question like what's what are the things we look at for good applications and and that you know help us make a decision yeah so things that we look at we definitely look at GitHub profiles a lot we'll look at the repositories that you've contributed to the different things that that you've been working on with in the GitHub uh we definitely read all of your answers to the different questions um this particular cohort we've added a new question into the application which is asking uh applicants to describe some kind of technical concept either in a video or in a um like an essay format so you know giving some idea to us to as to where your technical knowledge is at um Additionally you know just describing different projects that you've worked on giving us some kind of you know brief resume like idea of your skills and you know the like the languages you work with and and the things that you're interested in um as well as just having an interest in ethereum itself we you know definitely highly rate the the passion that people have for for working on um these kinds of projects but I don't think that there's any like hard and fast like boxes that we have to check in order to to say that somebody is is worthy of you know having an interview or whatever so um yeah there's not there's not like Ace a thing that I can say that this will definitely get you into the program okay just yeah everything that Josh said like um um uh we're looking to see that you know technical Insight incident ethereum but then uh we invite people for the interviews so um uh um we have we'll have uh interview with the subset of people that we that we decided and we'll get to know you were there and the thing is that if uh we have this application is here and you can apply even but um the thing is that the program still stays open and permissionless uh so the idea is that even if you don't get accepted or even if you don't apply you can still just come and contribute and uh from the past support we learned that there have been people that we did not accept or maybe didn't reply just show up did the work and after a month or two we see that they're doing a great job and uh they deserve this stipend so we offered it uh also respectively so like uh if you don't get accepted you can prove us wrong just by coming and and and uh showing the skill yeah um yeah like I said okay um sorry I'm going back and forth in the chat here um okay so this there's a question around the good I was gonna say the next one is like do mentors ever become overwhelmed by having so many people in the program uh we didn't necessarily experience that per se um you know we do ask fellows to really make an effort to try to solve the problems on their own before they reach out to mentors doing doing a lot of their own research and and if they do have to reach out to mentors for something that they can't figure out to really have a directed question or or ask of of the mentor so that um you know there isn't a ton of time spent on the back and forth communication around what it is that you're actually trying to figure out um so we didn't yeah I don't I wouldn't say that mentors got overwhelmed and I think that a lot of the mentors are understanding that you know this is helping to bring in the next crop of developers so that their plates are generally not as full though um yeah I think they're the majority of them are happy to to help awesome um quickly that there is uh you can actually find the list of potentially available mentors like they're available just you know uh their things may change but you can uh you can see that there are people covering almost all the core teams so also uh would be encouraging protocol is to enable Fellowship is to um identify the project which you're trying to work on but also check with the peers to prove the others maybe you can collaborate with somebody on the the same project with one team and it helps not to get the mentors overhelmed like uh to actually distribute the projects or the various teams and uh yeah so we don't end up with many followers working with one Mentor because it won't be it won't be possible okay next up what's the required time commitment for eps we don't have a specific time requirement uh you know in the application we do ask the amount of time that you would be able to dedicate to the EPF during the four months um we do think that if you're able to you know spend only 20 hours or less on the program per week that it it might not be the right fit um you know that's certainly again not a a rule by any means it's more of a of a guideline to go by so if you already have a full-time job and you know a family and you have a lot of other sorts of obligations that you have to take care of in your life it may not be the right fit for you but also you know if you're somebody who also likes to stay up all night working on passion projects then you know certainly feel free to apply uh it's not something that we it's sort of uh much lower on the list of things that we take into consideration and I would say maybe I'll add something to that there's like the reason why time commitments is so hard is because at the end of the day quality is what matters more than quantity and people have like very different like outputs based on time so if we said like oh it has to be 20 hours and then I don't know somebody who can actually do great things in 10 hours a week feels like they can't join that's bad um but like you should expect during the program to make like a meaningful contribution to something like one of the projects that's listed there so if you like read through the list and you know you think that's the type of thing you can tackle in like four months then um yeah that's that's pretty much the bar we're going for um and related to that next question is it okay to express expressed an interest in more than one project in the applications yeah certainly that is certainly a possibility um you know we want to hear about all the different things that you're excited about within uh the protocol development world and um yeah you can express interest in all those different things and and you know in phase one of the program the idea is that you're you know able to do a a very high level overview of the different uh sort of things that are happening in those different spaces but then you know once you kind of hit phase two where you have to choose a project you know we will ask that you choose a project to focus your time on that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't spend time working on other things but we would want you to focus mainly on one project I mean if you feel like uh maybe doing too small a project if you feel like you're a Superman and you can do two things in four months I mean I believe like the program is opened and like it's completely um uh Parachute by you and what you do so uh for free if you feel like it I wouldn't recommend it in general like but there's one thing and perfect right but um uh we also saw people people think uh after a month of the researching one topic they decided they have to work on something else so um uh the um the actual uh Deep dive in the first two weeks of the program should be the the real time of the um when you when you decide on which one to finally work on awesome um the question by Amor about uh can we say more about participating in a research capacity what's the example of a topic that a participant might research um yeah yeah go ahead Mario um so um there is a lot of research going on in Imperium ecosystem um so I would I would check out the project ideas there are also some research you know less development things mentioned uh one of the things I mentioned before is more of the crypto economics topic uh topics handled by the Rick robotic Google research which has uh it's a link in the project ideas it's the rake open problems open questions uh you can you can find uh some of the research they're interested in there um it might be like The Cutting Edge the current uh stuff happening so right now there is the developer nerd for 844 which still might require uh some um maybe some benchmarking uh some uh you know more of a applied research uh and then more theoretical topics which are still far far ahead but uh are very interesting and need to figure out uh such as singles and finality maybe uh maybe data available to something one of the one of the one of the followers from the previous cohort was working on the data available to sampling research and um so the research being uh also uh if you if you're not aware of the each research website it's a great way where to uh for for an overview of uh what's happening in Vegas experience search or maybe add to that one type of research that like I feel we never get enough great people working on is things like simulations and like um basically yeah almost more like experiment like very Hands-On research and like one example I can give this is not EPS but like I was they're now called about this right before is like uh for Bank sharding you know figuring out how many blobs are we gonna have and thanks for having right like and then running things like Network simulations or and and this is a mix of like you know you can take a more theoretical approach you can take a more like sort of simulation and and like uh like software approach but things around that like changing the some properties of the network or like you know um changing the topology of the network things like that then like understanding that a bit better is something where like we could have way more like smart researchers who aren't necessarily like engineers in that like they're writing code for core devs uh for for like core clients but like are able to use code and like a bit more like a research and experiment the mindset to like figure out what the right limits for a bunch of parameters on ethereum are um and you know are there are there like things we can improve that's like a huge I think area um that almost Falls like between research and Engineering so like not a lot of people end up there but um I think there's a ton of valuable work to do out there um okay so there's another question can people who already work on client teams apply um I guess you can apply I think in terms so in terms of prioritizing who we give a stipend to you know we probably prioritized by default someone who's not already on a client team to try and get them possibly on a client team that said you know if there's an exception why like it would make sense for you to get a slide in even though you already find team we can definitely consider it um yeah so there's no like there's no there's no kind of rule against it but I would just if you're if you're if you're especially looking for this type end I would try to explain why you know you being on a client team already does not like isn't like working or or what not um if you want to apply to permissionless participant you know imagine you're on Netherland and you want to spend a couple months hacking on Lighthouse and you don't need a slightly to do it with my shirt there is no blocker to do that um yeah um okay next question is it expected to work alone or can multiple people work together uh definitely multiple people can work together we had uh two different projects that had multiple people that were working on them in the last cohort and it worked out really well um so you know they were definitely bigger projects so it was you know it was helpful to have a few different people working on them and collaborating together yeah again it's totally up to you folks like uh whether whether you feel uh like the clinic alone or working in a team if you're able to find some peers here who are interested in the same topic it'll be great um uh what do we what we notice is that it actually works pretty pretty well when people are just a two-person team but it still works nice in a weird people it's easier for to brainstorm for them it's easier easier to save solve some issues in a way that they can just you know talk to each other first before going to the mentor and have somebody to um to discuss directly with so um so I would I would uh encourage to also um uh check on these calls more and and find people to work with um how many uh permission as fellows ended up receiving funding during the program and maybe there was another question about like when permissionless fellows would like be selected to get funding so can you maybe just talk a bit more of like how we approach giving money to permissionless participants yeah um so generally uh last cover I believe five people ended up receiving uh funding uh after the fact as a permissionless participant um what we look for in permissionless participation is you know consistency like um really being consistent with your development updates and and showing that you are working towards a goal uh and that you you know are actively making progress on that particular goal uh showing up to the office hours meetings and and participating in that way is also um a high signal for uh you know potentially gaining funding as a permissionless participant there's now again hard and fast kind of rule around what you what you have to do it's more about you know if you're making meaningful contributions if it looks like you're you know actively participating in in a way that is going to um benefit the protocol at the end of the day then that's that's kind of what we're looking for awesome um uh okay so there's a question what if found you know high level languages like typescript and salinity do I need to wait until I understand girl before I apply um I don't yeah I don't think you need to wait to necessarily apply we did have you know multiple fellows in the past cohort that were you know did need to learn new languages and did learn new languages during their time in the fellowship um I think it's more important that you feel comfortable you know with your ability to learn new languages quickly and and being able to implement those things pretty quickly so um it's not important that you do need that you do know those things but that you're able to to learn them quickly Mario um yeah just I wanted to mention it again it's totally up to you in a way that depends on what you want to contribute to uh so like for kind of a front-end web 3 devs um uh that uh there might be some grocer based tooling or or this kind of stuff which is needed uh one of the purposed projects you can see are like in the devops wish list from party uh you know certain monitoring nodes or the network um is difficult needed and it's supposedly like a fronted work which is which is uh uh important uh but as being said there is also a lot sorry which which is a whole uh customers client implementation written in typescript so so if you are if you are skeleton typescript whichever script and interested more into like um uh [Music] evolving your skills towards more software architecture uh towards the clients you can it's a great way to to learn and uh yeah what Josh said uh it's it's a great approach to opportunity to maybe learn a new language that you're willing to learn uh there was even there was even a guy who was like a North coder like light python skills and it ended up uh contributing to rust projects within a few months so uh if you are educated I believe anything is possible and no there is one client in JavaScript so there is a theorem JS so if it's like actually the programming language and you know typescript is not exactly JavaScript but like pretty close um yeah if that's like the the main blocker you know uh you can probably still do some protocol work uh through ethereum.js um uh okay so there's a question about the interview so what's the interview format like for applications that stood out uh yeah so Mario and I will uh hop on his uh jitsi or Google meet or some other sort of uh video conferencing and you know we'll spend a half an hour chatting about what your what your goals are for participating in the program what your greater goals are for development in general uh get to know your skills a little bit more get to know some of the projects that you've worked on in the past and you know just kind of get to know you a little bit better um you know we can only gather so much information from from written applications so it would just be uh yeah some time to to chat and get to know you better and see if it's it seems like an appropriate fit awesome uh there's a quick question is the application form editable once you send a submission it is not editable um so if you do feel like you need to send some kind of uh addendum to your application you can you can uh send me an email or or a message through the Discord uh protocol Fellowship Channel and the eth r d Discord um also my email is josh.davis ethereum.org We'll add it in the chat here if you do have already submitted an application and would like to make an addendum awesome okay so there's like three questions that are all related that I think I can take so uh just search ask can we put an existing technical write-up uh where we ask to write it about technical topic Rory asked me a question between two different things that I answered in the chat and then manav just asked whether it's best to speak about like a generic topic like uh ethereum Miracle Patricia tree or something that you worked on in general um so I'd say that the reason for this question like like why is there in the application is to understand like whether someone can like coherently speak about the technical topic that's like you know if not directly related to the ethereum protocol like of the same you know complexity or like you know same types of domains um rather than just you know saying a bunch of buzzwords and like not being able to like actually explain the thing that they do so if you have like a really strong technical write-up that you've done on something previous that's like you know even if if it's not like a blockchain or an ethereum thing but it's like some I don't know like API design or you know like networking specification or like something like that like I think I'd say that that's great I would just say if the thing is just very far away from ethereum like I I don't know like um I'm trying to think of an example of something um like say imagine like ux right like uh which like doing like ux for like a consumer app which is very different than like client work um then that's probably less good but if it's like some other like code project that you've done um that has like a really high quality write-up that like that's great you can share that um and I think in general it's probably better to speak uh yeah I'd say if it's an application it's I would if uh if it's an application and the writer focuses on what's like technically novel about it then that's really good so like an example would be like an example of something bad would be like imagine you just go to like I don't know ethereum.org you take the first tutorial I don't even know what it is but imagine it's like deploying your own nft contract and just like copy pasting like the instructions to deploy your own nft contract um I think that's like less valuable than say you actually wrote the contract or wrote the architecture like for a full application and there's something technically novel or interesting there and the writer that focuses on that that say that's super relevant right um um and like one actually one good example so on east.

org there's like a breakdown of like how uniswap V2 the contract Works um and they that would be the type of thing that like it doesn't have to be as polished as that that's obviously like meant for like a super broad audience but like that sort of goes over to univ 2 contract and explains like what this thing actually does why it's set up this way what's like the uh the sort of Supply demand curve and all of that um I saw that stuff is super relevant and in general I think if you can talk about something you've done like actually then that's a better signal for us than talking about like something you want to do or just something that you know so like if you have say you know a project you've done that's not quite about ethereum protocol stuff but it is you know technically interesting in novel I would focus on that and like as like I don't know number one thing I'd say if if you don't have that then like just talking about either a project that you're interested in or like that you know like some topic like uh Merkel Patricia trees like if you want to do a short write-up on that I'd say that's that's good because it feels like you can't understand a list of projects there and a list of like uh you know topics that we discuss um yeah and and then there's the last question can you do more than one write-up I'd say if you submit more than one thing the amount of time people will spend reviewing it probably won't go up so like you know if you think that's like skimming two things is more valuable than like reading one fully um like the form won't stop you but if you submit 10 different things people are not gonna spend 10 times more uh effort on your application yeah I don't know Josh smiro anything bad on that yeah I think that's definitely accurate um you know we do get a a high number of uh applications so um the time that we can spend on each one is somewhat limited so I would I would suggest choosing the one that you feel like is most appropriate and and submitting that one but again the form will not stop you from submitting multiple um and just to kind of piggyback on the the last things that you were saying Tim um we have had like a number of people submitting applications that are basically giving like a walk through of their you know uh dap that they've developed in a much more kind of like product pitch kind of manner and you know that's really not what we're looking for we're really looking for you to like get into the nitty-gritty of of like how you made the thing and what the novel pieces are of it and and so yeah like uh your elevator pitch for your for your dap is is not really what we're looking for in the yeah and I guess related yeah that's a really good point that Lorenzo has a similar question do you actually have to go into the code I don't think you necessarily have to but I'd say maybe the if if like pitching this to an investor is like the wrong approach um the better approach would be imagine you have a new co-worker or colleague that's coming to work on your thing right and you're like explaining them it's like their first day and like you have like 15 minutes with them to explain to them the thing so like it does you don't necessarily have to go into like here's what every line of code does but like you know help them make sense of like the technical thing you're describing that's like the level that we're at so that's and and again like the use case for this is like imagine you get on a call with someone you know with a client team like you know can you like show them the thing you've been working on during EPF and like explain to them what it does in like your coherent way um so I'd say this is like the audience you should like aim this for and if if the best way for you to do this is to like walk through line by line here's like 100 lines of code you know first function does this first second function does this that's fine if the way that's best for you to do it is to like actually have like diagrams and like a high level you know architecture overview that's fine as well um if it's really just like writing words and like there's no code in it that's fine too um but I'd say this is like the framework or like the mindset you should be in is like you're explaining this to like a a smart new collaborator on your project um and you're not trying to like sell it to them but you're trying like to get them to understand how it works um hopefully this answers your question as well Lorenzo um there's a question uh is there a specific set of eip's the application focuses on there's not necessarily a specific set of eips as Mario mentioned in the repo there is a list of uh projects that mentors have suggested that that you know people can choose to work on or not uh again the program is designed to allow you to work on what you feel passionate about and what the areas of the protocol that you're excited about um so we don't necessarily pigeonhole it to any sort of list of eips but if you are sort of struggling to to come up with a particular area of Interest or or something to work on this uh link that Mario just put in the chat is a good place to start in the terms of sort of the immediate things that that people are hoping to see done in the near future um okay there's another question about permissionless versus permission participants um so do any unaccepted or permissionless participants still get access to mentors and other tools that uh accept participants get yeah so permissionless participants do get the same access to all of those resources that that somebody who is officially accepted into the program the main difference between a permissionless participant and an officially accepted participant is that uh you know you don't have the stipends right off the bat that you kind of have to to prove to us that the the work that you're doing is is worth funding and and that you're dedicated to to participating in the program um just to say a little more about the mentorship it works in a way that it's not like their guidance hand-holding kind of thing but uh more of a uh more of a asynchronous uh feedback provided by the mentors so um again it's up to you to reach out to the mentor uh they're available in the communication channels that we use and you can reach out with uh more of a specific question with a pitch to you should demonstrate it you have the insight to do your research and then uh when you get stuck somewhere there is a method to help you most importantly it it um it's the collaborative work when you are opening some pull requests and uh get you get a review of to discuss the the problems there right so it gets over time it gets more into the PRS into like the the review kind of code review kind of uh work but uh generally like the mentorship should be approached with um again some self-directed uh responsible to bearing um a way where you do your uh you try to find the answer to your question first before going to the mentor and uh if the end the mentors uh might get overwhelmed uh and in case there are too many permissions participants uh uh it's again it's not the power policy or anything but the mentors uh uh and that uh prioritizing uh the uh the people who stipend um or at least we saw that uh we saw it before because for some of the mentors it was like two big big interest to to work with them uh even though they try to respond to everyone and one thing I'll emphasize that you both uh mentioned is like the idea of like reaching out to the specific question so like in general like even outside of EPF right um all of these people who work on ethereum like tend to be pretty responsive if you actually like have a question that's like not just the highest level like I don't know what's thing sharding or how can I help with things chardine um but like if you like are reading the spec and you're like I don't understand why there's this thing on line 68 or that type of thing like generally just posting that in the r d Discord people will respond to it because like there's there's a lot of like noise at the like what's deck sharding level of the conversation and and sometimes you know people have to like manage the inbound messages they get like however works for them but there's not a ton of like noise or competition at the level of like I've read this thing and I don't understand like this subset of it and how it works in relation to all of that um so like if you're able to do that and just sort of get you know past like the first level of like actually trying to read through the thing understand how it works like highlight the parts that are unclear like count unintuitive to you and then you know potentially just like I would search the R D Discord to see if someone has had the same question as you or like search each research if you've done like that level of diligence and you still have a question then the odds are you've probably hit something that actually is unclear or under specified or like an area of like discussion or research um and then people are usually pretty excited to engage because like that's literally what we're looking for it's like contributors who can help with all of these things um yeah so there's a ton of value in doing that and if you've done like a a relative amount of work and you still feel confused then the odds are it's like the thing that's confusing and not you that stupid um yeah um yeah people usually uh be quite responsive to that um okay I think we had most questions let me see if there's anything left uh yeah I think those were all the questions any final questions or things that we missed in the chat uh feel free to repost in the zoom chat and we can get it where we wrap up okay well thanks everyone for coming apologies again for the uh disruption at the start um and yeah I hope to see see you all on the r d Discord