Information on the internet is increasingly abundant, but this does not translate into more learning. On the contrary, a sea of disconnected information makes it harder to discern what is most relevant at each stage of learning. A sea of information is a treasure trove for those who have already built a conceptual framework on a given subject, but it can serve as a factor of cognitive overload for beginners.
Because of this, content curation and mentoring are considered the gold standard of education. A structured curriculum helps the learner to focus on the fundamental aspects of the subject while a mentor helps to identify and smooth out the points of friction in understanding.
The problem is the cost of this scheme. It is not easy to find dedicated mentors, they have limited time to dedicate to this activity and good mentoring requires individual attention. Furthermore, not every potential learner is at the right time to successfully benefit from the combination of a good curriculum and dedicated mentors.
That is why the Bitcoin Dev Launchpad is structured in 3 phases, as a commitment funnel in which each phase selects the best participants from the previous phase. This way, we can increasingly commit resources to those participants who demonstrate greater proof of work.
A 4-week Socratic Seminar discussing the book Mastering Bitcoin, by Antonopolous and Harding (https://github.com/vinteumorg/mastering-bitcoin-seminar), along with a coding challenge (https://github.com/vinteumorg/task-test-the-test). With the seminar, we hope to provide enough Bitcoin context to broaden the impact of the following phases, while also identifying those programmers who seem genuinely interested in the possibility of developing a career in open source software. Even those that are not selected to the next phase will benefit from participating in the cohort by deepening their understanding about the Bitcoin protocol.
A 12-week curriculum built around developing three dimensions: technical/programming skills, Bitcoin context, and open source development culture. Self-study and socratic discussions continue in this phase, now combined with a structured curriculum described next. The Bitcoin context and technical skills are exercised through lectures and programming challenges involving foundational problems the Bitcoin protocol tries to solve. Open source culture is fostered with guided PR reviews and discussions with experienced open source contributors.
Discuss why Bitcoin and why open source.
Programming challenge: explore mainnet blockchain to get acquainted with bitcoin-core (https://github.com/vinteumorg/task-rpc-scavenger-hunt).
Understand transactions, basic scripts, and segwit.
Programming challenge: given a private key and a signet blockchain, build a wallet that scans the blockchain and retrieves your UTXOs (https://github.com/vinteumorg/task-signet-wallet).
Discuss open vs. closed source development models, open protocols, and meaningful contributions (code review, issues, bug fixes, new features).
Understand transaction signing and verification.
Programming challenge: given a private key and a signet blockchain, spend some UTXOs the wallet found in week 2 challenge (https://github.com/vinteumorg/task-signet-wallet).
Understand how to meaningfully review PRs guided by an experienced contributor.
Understand the basics of networking and the Bitcoin protocol messages.
Programming challenge: Establish a connection with a public Bitcoin node (handshake) and get block headers ([WIP] https://github.com/vinteumorg/devel-task-networking)
Learn about the Bitcoin ecosystem of open source projects by interacting with the maintainers or frequent contributors.
Understand the blockchain role in the protocol, block headers, merkle roots and the proof of work mechanism.
Programming challenge: given some transactions, build and mine a valid block ([WIP] https://github.com/vinteumorg/devel-task-mining)
Start working on open source contributions with support of the program's mentors and instructors.
At this point, participants should have get a comprehensive understanding of the Bitcoin base protocol. Now, we introduce the many layers built upon it like the Lightning Network, Cashu, Fedimint, Ark, etc.
Build something or make meaningful contributions to an open source project.
Show your work and evaluate the program.
It would be naive to believe that a 12-week curriculum will be enough to train an accomplished open source contributor. After all, frequent contributors are exactly that, people that keep contributing and develop authority and project ownership over an extended time framea. Inspired by the Summer of Bitcoin initiative, we provide a six-month scholarship to incentivize the top performers to keep working on an open source project.
Each grantee will be assigned a mentor whose job is to motivate meaningful contributions, keep the mentee accountable, and assess their performance to assist Vinteum's board in recommending a regular full time grant or seek an international grant. In this way, we aim to alleviate the financial burden and the solitude reported by open source developers during their transition from traditional careers.