첫 시작

I’m excited to annouce the public lanuch of the East Asia Bitcoin Apprenticeship, a program that focuses on fostering FOSS Bitcoin developers from the East Asia region.

For Bitcoin to be a global money for all, Bitcoin must be developed by all. The East Asia region has been particularly lacking open source Bitcoin contributors compared to other regions in the world.

I pinpoint this problem to two factors:

• the language barrier
• perceived lack of stability

The English speaking proficiency in both East Asia is not high. This has led to individuals interested in getting started in Bitcoin development being scared off from programs like Summer of Bitcoin since the website and interview process was in English.

This is frustrating as from my personal experience, individuals in Korea are generally capable of communicating in English by text. Because of this, they would be able to participate in Bitcoin open source development but wouldn’t be able to participate in programs that help them get introduced to Bitcoin open source development.

In Korea, stability is valued over anything else. When getting started in open source development, there are no mentors and it’s unfunded. The biggest pain points that I’ve noticed from individuals wanting to get started in Bitcoin development was that they don’t know where to start and are lost figuring out how to contribute to the ecosystem. The other is the perceived risk of working on a project that may not be funded.

I believe that the solution to this is a highly localized program just for East Asia.

A localized apprenticeship program in East Asia would avoid the aforementioned language barrier and lack of stability problems and would help in fostering open source Bitcoin development in a new region of the world, further helping Bitcoin be money for all.

With 1 on 1 mentorship by mentors speaking the local language of the mentee, the program aims to foster a new Bitcoin open source contributor that will go on to mentor other new Bitcoin contributors. I intend to keep furthering the program by requiring the mentee to mentor a mentee of their own after the program is completed. This will allow the program to grow as the next round of mentees can potentially be doubled.

The first mentee for the program is Specter and he’s working on making a binary that validates the current chain tip. His project can be found here and the project idea can be found here.

I believe this project is going to grow into a foundational pillar for developers in this region. I’m excited for what the future holds in this region and for what the future holds for Bitcoin!