Bitshala: Bitcoin Education Initiative in India

Description

Bitshala is a new education initiative (or a Pathshala) whose mission is to generate and produce technical materials for existing and emerging bitcoin developers, as well as to sustain a vibrant developer community ecosystem in India. All its materials will be open source and publicly available.

Pathshala is a word which has now become the Hindi word for school. However, in ancient India, it referred to a centre for learning in a village where subjects like grammar, logic and philosophy were taught.

Programs

Bitshala offers the following programs:

• Video Tutorials. The organization creates and maintains a repository of YouTube video tutorials and technical presentations from various bitcoin developers across the community.
• Group Study Cohorts. Study cohorts where participants can learn together, share ideas, discuss questions and network among each other. Apply here.
• Bitcoin PR Reviews. Review existing open Bitcoin Core PRs via weekly PR Review club.
• Community. Nurture a vibrant bitcoin developer network in India where developers can ask questions, share ideas and connect with others.

While a lot of Blockchain courses exist out there to provide surface-level capability on EVM like “smart contracts”, the requirement and understanding for bitcoin technology is very much different. Bitcoin is a multidisciplinary subject covering Basic Software Development, Systems Engineering, Networking Protocols, Game Theory, Cryptography, Economics, and Social Dynamics of complex systems. Thus, creating a comprehensive bitcoin course is probably impossible in its entirety, and nothing in the existing academia and programming bootcamps provide any process for it. As a result, new people trying to enter the bitcoin developer world have to scour through a vast set of related study topics, not well organized and spread across the internet.

The motivation behind this initiative is our own journey of learning bitcoin development from scratch and realizing an immediate need for a structured program.

Bitshala Team

• Raj Maitra (Technical Content Lead): Raj is a Rust based Bitcoin FOSS developer and Bitcoin Core contributor. He has been passionate about building both tech and community in bitcoin since 2017.
• Adi Shankara (Business and Outreach Lead): Adi is a Product Manager at Blockstream, founder of Summer of Bitcoin and an avid bitcoiner focused on bringing Bitcoin education to the masses.
• Jodobear (Philosophical Content Lead): Jodo is an experienced software developer and is building cypherpunk Bitcoin products. He is a staunch proponent of understanding the Austrian Economics principles and applying them to every aspect of life.
• Setu Saurabh (Operations Lead): Setu is an experienced product manager committed to building the Indian bitcoin ecosystem. His unparalleled enthusiasm to facilitate bitcoin education greases the gear of this initiative.
• Adam Jonas (Adviser): Jonas is the Head of Special Projects at Chaincode Labs, and is a strong proponent of Open Source education and career. He spearheaded many open-source dev programs in the bitcoin field and was one of the key inspirations behind Bitshala.