TL;DR: EPF has concluded the fourth cohort and is preparing to welcome a fifth. Applications will open soon. In the meantime, discover the new EPF Wiki And register to be notified when they open.
The Ethereum Protocol Fellowship recently successfully completed its fourth cohort, which concluded with the EPF Day at Devconnect in Istanbul. Its completion marked 4 months of immersive learning, research, and contribution to the core Ethereum ecosystem by a talented and dedicated group of fellows. To learn more about the EPF, take a look at some of the Previous articles And deposits.
EPF4 Statistics
Applications for the fourth cohort opened on June 2, 2023. After reviewing over 400 applications, 35 participants were awarded fellowships. Additionally, 5 retroactive fellowships were awarded to participants without permission. Over the 4-month period, fellows had the opportunity to work with 27 senior developer mentors from various customer and research teams across the ecosystem. Their work was regularly reported in nearly 600 weekly updates.
EPF4 Projects
In total, the fellows proposed and contributed to 35 projects, some of which are still active. These projects represent not only a valuable learning experience, but also significant contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem.
All program resources can be found in the EPF4 deposit. There you can follow all the activities of the cohort, view project resources, development updates and fellows’ notes. The projects are not only FOSS contributions, but all the work done within the cohort is completely open, an integral part of Ethereum’s open research and resources.
But it’s not just about work and contributions. One of the crucial aspects of EPF is the opportunity to meet many inspiring people who are involved in core development. During Devconnect in Istanbul, more than half of the cohort came together to participate in EPF Day, a full day of programming with project presentationsround tables and moments of conviviality.
Ethereum Protocol Study Group
We gathered important insights at the end of cohort 4. Despite the emphasis on protocol development training during EPF, the learning curve for aspiring core developers is still very steep. Based on these insights, we launched a precursor program to EPF called EPF Study Groupa 10-week deep dive into the various aspects of the protocol as well as a collaborative knowledge base for developers of EPF Wiki. EPF.wiki has become the place where aspiring core developers can learn about the technical aspects of Ethereum and contribute to the wiki to strengthen their knowledge.
Next cohort coming soon™️
As the study group comes to a close, we are preparing to welcome the fifth cohort of the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship. For anyone interested in diving into Ethereum core development, stay tuned for the application announcement in early May. To stay informed, join the EPF mailing list.
In the meantime, you can prepare your application by ensuring a fundamental understanding of the Ethereum protocol (the EPF study group is a great place to start), contributing to open source projects through your GitHub account, especially contributing to existing projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, and thinking about what kind of project you would like to work on.
