Ethereum is on the rise, and diversity of human participation creates resilience across ecosystems. DevConnect Scholars Program It is one small effort aimed at creating resilience through community diversity. A better representation of human geography and demographics overall leads to diverse experiences and new perspectives that help the coordination needs of all humans, not the lucky few, with the Ethereum protocol. We believe that better representations will not only lead to improved geographical distribution of Ethereum nodes, for example, but also to support network security, but also to enrich the community and make the Ethereum story concrete for more people.
The Scholars program has filed a builder for Istanbul 22 in a community currently underrepresented in Ethereum with DevConnect. This post highlights only a few of the scholars and their stories.
Meet scholars
Meet Ovia, a blockchain researcher who studied the proving blockchain as part of her doctoral research. She is an active contributor to the Indian Web3 community, particularly by offering technical workshops and empowering women and non-binary individuals at Phoenix Guild. Ovia said she left DevConnect with ideas and potential collaborations that could contribute to her ongoing work, in addition to having a “fangirl” moment in which she meets some of her tech heroes in real life. You can read her takeaway here: “Introduction to ZKVMS and the types of ZKVMS” And here: “The simplified moonmoonmouth behind Zksnarks.”
Elnaz, an Iranian Java backend developer, has become a smart contract developer. After her central exchange banned her and people in certain countries, Elnas read a white paper on Bitcoin and Ethereum and found the decentralisation innovation as “mindblowing.” Speaking about her community with limited access to banks and high inflation, she said that educating people about the disadvantages of centralized networks and onboarding distributed networks still requires work. Here you can find her reflection: “Enable Ethereum's low-cost distributed micropayments via Layer 2 rollup.”
Meet Alphonce, a Kenya software engineer. He was initially drawn to cryptography due to speculation, but his perspective changed when he began taking part in open source projects at Ethereum and realized it was a “strong platform for promoting financial inclusion and innovation.” He said he would like to contribute to the African blockchain ecosystem by regaining a joint spirit and knowledge exchange from DevConnect. Continue reading his findings here: “Reflections from DevConnect: Identifying opportunities for financial inclusiveness with Ethereum.”
You can find stories, insights and learning from more scholars here.
What's next?
With the efforts already made in our community for better representation, we DevCon and DevConnect Scholars Help expand and enrich Ethereum's infinite gardens. Follow us for future academic programs and other stories @efnextbillion.
