EPF Cohort 6 Introduction

produce a a quick presentation going to talk a little bit about what uh what this program is going to be like, what we expect from you, what the scaffolding is going to be uh for for the program, and just some basic information for y'all to uh get the most out of this program as best as we can. Uh and then we'll have a time for questions at the end. So, uh, without further ado, let's go ahead and say welcome to EPF6. Um, I don't know if you can see my screen. There is like a little uh icon there for you to click.

Uh, so you can see the slides in a big way. Um, but yeah. Uh, so yeah, like I said, welcome to EPF6. Uh this is the sixth cohort of the protocol fellowship. Some great success in the with this program.

Uh as I think some of the people here could attest to. Um and so I just want to start out by talking a little bit about some of the like highlevel uh things that might help you to get through this program uh in a healthy and and successful way. Uh and the first one of those is that this program is a it's a marathon. It's not a sprint, right? Like this is a fivemonlong program.

Uh there are going to be times where you're going to feel like it's very challenging and then there's going to be times where you're going to feel like everything's going super smoothly. A lot of times at the beginning of this program, we feel super excited and and really ambitious and really excited to just get going and get get uh get working and you know begin trying to connect with allers and and ask everybody all the questions and all this sort of stuff. And I just want to give you a reminder that this is a it's a long program although once we get to the end it may not have felt that way. Uh but but you know, let's keep uh let's start off at a nice pace, but also just keep in mind that um you got five months to do to do what we're here to do. Uh in that in saying that, one of the things that you can do for yourself during this program is to con to maintain some amount of consistency.

um being able to do a little bit of work every day, check off a few of the tasks that you need to get done on a on a pretty regular basis. Uh contributing to your development updates, which we'll talk more about later. uh in a daily on a daily basis so that you you know aren't stuck at the end of the week or two weeks or whatever your cadence is. Uh you know trying to remember what you've done over the past two weeks. It's really helpful to just maintain some consistency.

Block out some time each day to to do do a little bit of work and to record uh what it is that you've done for that day. Uh the program is also it's a very community-based program. Ethereum itself is a very community-based uh open-source culture. Um, so I want you guys to both lean on your on the community, lean on each other, uh, when you're coming up into roadblocks or finding things that you're but also do your best to try to maintain this individuality to keep up your motivation and is necessary for you to to maintain that motivation. So we'll just get down to a little bit more about the schedule here.

Uh so we do uh two meetings uh per week that are associated with EPF. One is going to be a Monday standup. Uh this meeting is going to consist of uh a breakout room at the beginning where we'll get to know each other a little bit better and then we'll go through uh each person giving an update and working on over the week, any sorts of roadblocks they might be coming across, any questions they might have. Uh and then we'll we'll discuss those things as a as a community. Uh the other meeting that we have is going to be a Wednesday office hours meeting.

Uh there will be a weekly GitHub issue for this meeting that will sort of describe uh the the gist of what this meeting is going to be about. Uh we have a few different varieties of and flavors of this kind of meeting. Uh usually for the most part it's an AMA uh where we will bring in a core dev from around the community from a different client team, different kind of developer uh and and host an AMA with them. So uh we will encourage you to come with some questions prepared uh things that you find interesting uh about that particular section of core development or or also like on a more personal level like what it's like to be a core developer have around like how it is on a more personal uh level to to work on Ethereum. Uh and then we'll also encourage you guys to uh keep in tune with the ACD process while we're doing uh this cohort.

So um there are two ACD meetings uh per week. Uh there's an ACD testing meeting that happens on Mondays and then either an ACD consensus or execution layer meeting which happens on Thursdays. Uh all of those meetings happen uh uh on ETH o'clock which I believe is it's uh 1500 UTC is that right or 1400 one of those two 14400 UTC and 1400 UTC has been sort of uh globally designated as the the time where the majority of people who work on Ethereum are available to to meet uh in a synchronous manner. Cool. Uh so let's talk about the different phases of this program.

Uh the first phase will is uh well first off we'll talk about what we call phase zero. Uh that like has officially ended today. Uh phase zero is the time between the end of the application process to now where you hopefully have been uh checking out epf.wiki uh learning about different bits of the protocol, finding various resources online and and getting a better sense of what direction you might want to take uh during this cohort. Uh now we begin phase one of the pro program.

Uh this is the learning the deep dive and proposal phase. Uh it come it lasts from now until the end of ETHCC which is in a couple of weeks. uh and this is your opportunity to uh deep dive into the into the area of the protocol that you find really interesting or that related to a potential project that you are interested in uh and to yeah really kind of get to know that specific area of the protocol. Um, this would also be the time where we will have you all signal what you're interested in work in working on. Uh, we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

Uh, and then dive into that topic. Uh, we'll host a couple introductory office hours, uh, where, uh, a couple of client teams will present projects that they have proposed and and, uh, try to convince you maybe to work on them. Uh, get you excited about those. Um and then over this couple of weeks we'll start preparing your project proposal uh which will then be presented at ETHC or if you're unable to make it to ECC uh will be presented at the office hours that will happen after ETHC. Uh the project proposal will be due on the fifth week cohort so in mid July.

So, what we would hope that you'll prepare for ECC can be a draft. Uh, you know, it's it's obviously coming up pretty quickly. Um, so we don't expect you to have a finalized proposal here, but uh a draft that you can get some feedback on uh from both the people in the cohort as well as some of the mentors and other devs that you might meet over your time at ETCC. uh and then like flush it out um by the midweek uh mid the fifth week of the cohort in middle of July where you'll have something that's finalized. Uh phase two is what we consider the project execution phase.

This is the majority of the program. It will go from mid July until the end of October. This is where you'll be actively working on your project, collaborating with your mentor and the client team maybe that you're working with. Obviously, you still be working fairly independently, but this will be the time where you'll feel like, you know, you're you're getting some good work done. You're really uh locking in with with your mentor and and uh making progress.

uh through the course of this phase, we'll have regular AMAs with core devs uh and we'll you will continue with the uh standup so that the rest of the cohort can uh get a good idea about what you've been working on and where you're getting roadblocked or maybe even get pilled into the uh little area that you've been working on. And then phase three is the presentation phase, the end of the cohort. And this will be uh starting at the end of or the beginning of November and go until dev connect. There's a nice typo there. Uh this is the where you'll be wrapping up your project, getting it to a place where you can call it more or less complete.

Um, we don't necessarily expect that all of your projects will be 100% finished by the time the cohort ends. A lot of times we bite off a little more than we do or we underestimate the amount of effort that it will take to get the project done. So, uh, you know, this this time will be getting it to a place where you can call it complete, but by no means do you have to stop working on it. Uh, additionally, you'll create a final project presentation where you'll uh create some slides and a presentation that you'll then present at Defconnect uh to your fellow uh cohort members as well as your mentor and the rest of the Ethereum community uh talking about what you've done and why you've done it and steps that you've taken to get to where you are at. Uh and then we'll also ask you to write a final development update.

And this will be uh not only a an outline and an overview of sort of your time during the cohort, but also kind of what the status of your project is, where you've left it, what still needs to be done, how it might have been rescoped, this kind of thing. And then uh at the end of the cohort uh after you've presented your project uh publicly uh we'll go through an exit interview and talk to you about what your desires are for moving forward with uh working in Ethereum core development. uh give you guys some ideas of who might be hiring uh and potentially look towards uh follow-on grants and and other sorts of opportunities for independent contributions or employment and this sort of thing. Uh cool. I think that's all from me for the moment.

I'll go ahead and let Mario take it over. So let's talk about the dev updates. Dev updates are the integral part of protocol fellowship. It's the core of the experience. Um because this is the main place where you share all your work, all your learnings, uh everything that you're doing in the fellowship basically uh your main way of communication outside of the world.

And uh it's also part of the learning experience of the um EPF because uh you're learning to communicate, you're learning your technical writing skills. These are very important. Uh this is something that um uh is again integral core uh to the Ethereum development where it's open source is very collaborative. You need to be able to communicate clearly and well. So please um don't use artificial intelligence to generate these.

Uh this should not be generated at all in a sense. You really need to use your own uh skills to practice uh what is it like to communicate an information, communicate the a technical uh problem and solution in a way that it's um uh understandable and um applyable to a specific problem you're working on a specific area like uh it's uh using the right uh language format right any AI generated dev updates won't be accepted uh um so please um do these every at least two weeks. This is what we recommend minimum every other week. Um it's also a requirement for those who receive a stipent to do it at least twice a month or every two weeks. Um so yeah uh do this to share your learnings and progress to communicate outside uh what you have been up to.

Um we're going to look in uh at some details what should be included later but um from um some organizational stuff please uh share this at uh Discord and GitHub. So the the GitHub repository many of you already submitted. I'm getting through the uh the updates. I'm uh reading those and slowly merging them. Um and this is something where I come uh um I come to learn them uh to sorry to uh read them and uh to provide some feedback maybe to see what you are up to and uh it's main uh part for us me and Josh to uh monitor what you were working on uh and archive it have it all in one place.

However, to communicate with the community, use Discord. Uh for um fellows, for mentors, for the other developers, uh it's best to see all in one place a weekly what's happening right now in these weekly threads. So, we already opened a a thread in for the week zero, week one. You can submit your update for this week right there and do it in a way that you share the link directly to the PR, I'm sorry, directly to the directly to the update to the hemd file, not the link to the PR. So some people posting PRs there.

Those are for me and you know you don't want to look in the changed files which link is yours. You want to just click on it and go straight there. So please do that. Um use uh when you are submitting it to the uh uh uh GitHub repo though uh use proper formatting. Don't break your table.

Um the uh it might be necessary to like rebase sometimes when changed after uh some other people submitted because it needs to be in alphabetical order. I saw some people already uh breaking this rule, but it's all right. I'm going to fix the table. But um yeah, please use the correct order and uh just yeah, there are bunch of tools you can use. Uh I have some link in the uh in the repo guide in the uh actually the development updates file itself.

Uh and for more details, consult repo guide for like how to use the repo locally. So you don't need to um uh uh spend too much time on this and learn al also learn some git process as well like this our little collaborative project that we do this repo that we are uh managing together and again um uh it's important to to have it in the repo it's the main source of truth but make sure to uh share it also in discord threads where everybody can just easily read uh there is some summary about which we're working on two sentences and the link straight to all the details where there are all the resources and and where is let me show you uh a good dev update. So what do you want to see from you? Yeah, some week number of course uh show us what you're working on. Explain uh clearly needs to be uh communicated what is the main thing what are you actually focusing on and then dive into the details of uh what you're facing what problems you are solving and how you are solving what are the potential solutions what uh is the rationale for uh your approach uh explain why you're doing this uh you don't need to provide a context in a sense that uh it would u it would introduce somebody who doesn't really understand Ethereum uh but just not the domain specific or the problem specific details uh from your other updates or links of course to resources.

Uh you can treat it as a collection of resources everything that you stumbled upon that you need uh to learn this to understand to to build on uh please uh link all the resources. You can also uh uh add them to EPF wiki if you are been using EPF wiki and you see some stuff that you are missing. If you have some questions answered, uh you can uh put it there. Uh and uh your PRs, your actual work. So please, when you're talking about what you are working on, also link it.

It's easiest for me to review your work uh and just for anybody to go straight to your contributions if you link them. So if you open a PR, link that. If you open a new repository for the project, uh put it put it there. If you opened um uh just if you have just some comments or something feel free to please uh uh do share it directly and uh you can check all of the previous histories. You can uh check the chord five, chord four uh of what people have been working on in the very same format you are submitting it.

Uh there are some slight tweaks. We did some improvements over time from previous core there. Uh, for example, Rahul, Danielle have some great updates, but many of them are great and especially look for those that are focused on your sort of um problematics, your sort of sort of uh uh area of focus. So, you can uh you can also learn from them. Uh use them as a resource.

People have been going through similar projects for uh many years now. So, use that to your advantage. And um yeah uh you want to communicate it in a way that you are writing this for some sort of colleague some some collaborator to introduce him to your work to collaborate on a on a project on a PR something where uh they are maybe familiar with the project with Ethereum. you want to onboard them to this specific solution, right? You want to talk to somebody who is like on your level.

And uh this brings me to uh the mentorship because this is sort of how mentorship work. Like mentors are going to be your colleagues, people to work with. But um huge disclaimer is and the most important thing right now is that uh right now it's not the time to reach out to mentors just yet. Um uh mentors are here again to work with you, not to guide you. It's not their job to define your mission.

uh they can uh provide some feedback and guidance and steer you the right way or help you to solve a PR uh or some some some issues you stumble upon um uh provide a uh review but this comes in couple of weeks after you've already did your research after you um after this discovery phase we talked about before uh first uh during this initial phase uh use me please uh feel free to reach out to me for technical feedback back for any sorts of questions you want and eventually also connecting to mentor. So if you feel that you uh have done enough uh work and research and maybe already created some contributions and you want to talk to the mentor then uh please reach out to me and I will make the connection. Maybe you already make it yourself. Some people here I know already talk to mentors there uh the PRs there's inerson events there are many places where you can already meet them. I'm not like uh trying to like gatekeep them.

Uh but the idea here is that we don't want to overwhelm them and we want uh the core developers to focus on their strategy uh on their on their work uh on the priorities and um have you there to actually create value provide contributions uh because there is many fellows and only that many mentors. So we need to be mindful about their time and again you can uh consult me, you can consult the community. Um just ask in the EPF discord. There are many fellows here who are very knowledgeable and can provide answers. I can provide answers.

And uh then there is one more thing I wanted to share with you guys. This ethereum. It's um it's a this little website that we are working on and it's very much in alpha. It's uh uh just an experiment we have uh but it might be useful for certain things. So there is a like this AI workshop tool that you can use to um ask questions or like generally so so this forum aggregates eat magicians and eat research which are the two big Ethereum forums magicians focused on specific EIP specific working clients ACD process and ET research is more like about research ideas and um uh papers and so on.

So if you want to find like the state of the discussion on some specific topic you can uh find it more easily in this place but you can ask some LLM to show you can use it as a sort of like search okay and again I don't want you to uh try to use some uh uh clever autocomplete tool uh that's what it is right uh to to solve some problems it's not really possible you need to think about this yourself you need to come up with implementation yourself but what you can do is uh use it as a sort of intelligence search where when you ask about a problem it gives you the eat magicians and eat research posts uh which are focused on this specific topic or mention the topic. So yeah, don't don't um use it for some something complicated where it will hallucinate. Uh just use it as a part of your research where you could again not promising does this work and especially like uh you don't trust any model that you use there. Just uh go to the source and uh use it to find this resources and go to the source of the knowledge and verify it for yourself. So that's uh something that might be useful for you guys.

Uh and uh yeah a couple of random things that we need to mention uh here. So um uh there is uh there's this thing where uh fellows often like go ahead and put it into their resume into their LinkedIn and twitterers and all kinds of stuff. Uh but please don't present yourself that you are working for Ethereum Foundation. So uh EF employees or contractors are just like some uh um community of people. Uh but you are a grantee.

uh if you are uh part of the fellowship you are a grantee so like it makes sense to say like you're an EPF fellow you're receiving a grant but you know don't put like EF directly to your uh uh to your public uh uh public profile because it it can uh uh cause a red flag even like you know then people ask us so the problem we encountered is that there are people with this sort of bios and then they come to us and like oh this is somebody who've been in a fellowship for a couple of weeks then they give up but they still kept it whatever So this makes you look even worse but uh there anybody can say this right it's permissionless so it doesn't really have value to say you are a fellow so what I would recommend is focus on the actual work so we can say I've been working on I don't know fossil implementation in loud lighthouse with sigma prime uh so this is something more specific because you actually work with them right you don't work with EF or with fellowship like fellowship is like a abstract term so uh yeah you uh you can focus on the actual work being done. Yeah. Uh and uh again for your questions uh for technical sort of questions about the uh projects road map client teams uh protocol uh I'm here and um Josh is here for mainly the organizational administrative tasks uh for your trip to cons uh stipens uh any organizational sort of things. Um but many of these questions you can just also uh ask either of us. It doesn't really matter whoever is more available.

Uh I'm based in Europe. Uh Josh is based in US. So for uh whatever time zone works better for you. Um yeah. Uh and uh again be patient with us.

Same as with mentors. Uh it might take me a couple of hours or maybe sometimes days to answer. uh don't ping me right away if I don't answer unless it's something very urgent which I don't believe uh uh will happen uh unless we are in live person or anything but uh yeah uh if uh there is anything feel free to reach out uh just give us some time to answer because we have many things we are working on we have uh many of these questions coming in so uh it can take us a day or couple of hours or or so uh so take some time before you start uh pinging us but Again, don't be worried to do that as well. Uh just remind me if I forget to answer. It can happen with many uh many messages that I get just some lost in in the pile uh when there is uh many of them come in.

Um and uh right again uh uh don't use AI to create your contributions or your writings. Use it intelligently to I don't know fix your grammar or uh find some resources. Maybe uh doing some sort of research might be uh very useful with these tools. But uh don't uh rely on them. Don't become dependent on these sort of things when they're there to make something easier.

It's just another tool. Uh the fellowship is not for LLMs but for people, right? So yeah and uh project signaling. So we will open a thread soon uh in discord where you can uh directly share what projects we are working on. So this is again something why we have uh the dev updates uh before uh because uh uh that's where you can see who works on what uh however uh to also like figure out exactly what projects you are focused on and have an overview also for mentors to have it all in one place where we keep it updated.

So feel free to send a message there but then delete the old one, post a new one if you change your scope or so. Uh this is where we will keep the most recent overview who is interested in what and uh for you you can see who is interested in what kind of projects you can uh uh reach out to them try to collaborate. Uh by the way here generally we have recommend we don't recommend more than uh two people per project. Um but um uh again you can reach out to us. We can create a group with uh you with mentors uh discuss like what is the best approach when uh uh you want to divide roles uh to work in a project u and so on.

Um about etc uh coming in two weeks already uh everyone is welcome to join here. If you're coming K to K to E etc on your own vision you don't need ETC ticket you don't need anything you can join uh EPF day you just need to get there basically and arrive and you are welcome to be there uh we'll be uh doing uh presentations there yeah if you are uh if you're coming please book your travel as soon as possible of course uh use the travel perk if you have the stipend and uh uh prepare a presentation so yeah it's a only few minute presentation five minute um tops uh to uh make make it it will be something uh simple and uh uh summary of your current research and your current plans. Some people will already have more figured out projects. Somebody will be earlier in their journey. So you know don't feel uh uh don't feel obliged to do anything uh uh anything too advanced.

Uh it's uh it's not a problem if you take your time. Uh uh but uh have something to present to discuss at Defcon. So I'm sorry at CCC etcc because um there will be people to uh discuss this with you uh to give you feedback uh we will have mentors and all the fellows at the EPF day so uh it will be great opportunity to meet them and just chat and I think it's really great to connect with people before you work with them or as you work with them because that's uh uh make it makes it makes it much more easier and approachable um in the end and uh yeah uh even if you can't make it to ECC there are dozens thous of events or maybe hundreds of events every year uh uh around the globe on focused on Ethereum. So uh just find your local community. There might be local meetups.

There might be a a conference in a city nearby. So go there and uh um see the presentations, talk to people maybe present yourself if you have some uh already a contributions, right? Uh connect with the Ethereum community because everywhere there might be somebody working on core or core related stuff. Uh so you can find this on ethereum.org.

Um there are all the community events listed and go for it meet some meet some cool people. Uh and yeah I with the community and in this part we are taking questions. So let's see what uh questions we have. Let me just get back to start. Um I think we covered all of this.

Uh one more thing here. So Wednesday office hours you can already uh find uh the uh office hours for this this week in GitHub issues. So the only issue there right now uh is the content of the Wednesday's office hours which will be the same time as this different link though and uh we will host um we will host uh uh three previous previous fellows who are now working uh in client teams who were successful fellows did a great job and uh sooner or later after the fellowship get hired to different roles uh so uh it's an I think nice and diverse example of uh what uh fellow post can work on or where they end up working and uh please prepare some questions for them. Uh they are I think the best people they're from the most recent cohort from the EPF5. Uh they started here where you're starting right now a year ago.

Uh they uh it's been it's been just one year but they managed to do a lot. So I think uh they will have some interesting retrospective and you can ask them interesting questions about um about how to succeed in the fellowship. So um uh yeah prepare some of those look into maybe their work that they did uh to uh to see whether there are some technical questions you can ask them and this will be our next meeting on Wednesday. Uh so I wanted to announce that or wanted to highlight that before we start taking the questions and meanwhile you can raise your hands guys. Uh feel free to feel free to uh ask us anything.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh I guess some some general advice here uh now uh in the uh first uh phase uh when you're uh when you are uh diving into the uh uh when you're diving into the fellowship uh uh I understand there are many interesting things uh but what you want to do uh is really make sure to focus only on a single project afterwards like the project proposal needs to be uh uh the right scope that you can execute done in four months and don't try to tackle. So we had there are people who did it. You have freedom to do whatever you want.

So we had some people last year uh doing multiple projects at the same time and uh we can't recommend it. It's uh it's not good for attention. Uh if you start with this make sure that this is something that you really want to finish in the four or five months. uh because again uh you will put uh uh you will put so much uh work on the mentors who uh then will have unfinished PRs and just like wasted uh wasted potential there. So uh if you decide to work with a mentor, if you decide to work on a project, please that's something that you need to stick with.

Yeah. Um did you say there is an model trained? Yeah. you don't really train a model on Ethereum but uh there is this uh Ethereum forum that has u a context of uh the uh of the uh Ethereum forums. So magician standard research that's it that's literally like it's don't treat it as any any special knowledgeable uh model just uh intelligent search uh between like the current discussion in uh in the Ethereum uh development it uh and it's still going to miss a bunch of stuff because the discussion about the core core of Ethereum is in many places it's all over the place there are uh many resources so it has still some very limited view uh but I believe It's it's great to get get to some resources.

However, um uh again uh to reiterate follow uh along ACD. You can uh uh watch ACD uh uh it's Thursday and Monday. Uh the Thursday calls are more like how high level uh discussions about uh how how the protocol should look like. On Mondays are more uh uh um technical more uh in a sense like closer to the actual testing the code the current implementations uh the current technical challenges. So um you can follow either by joining live but I don't recommend that unless you already work on something in with the client and you have something so opinion to give you a join but otherwise you can just watch recording which is great because you can put it faster you can skip the boring parts and you will save so much time.

So uh just watch the recording on YouTube uh or you can read the notes if you don't feel like even watching the whole thing you can read a bunch of summaries that are posted. Um yes uh do so that's the uh so you don't need to join all ACD calls for both CL and EL uh I recommend again following uh following it uh uh from recordings from summaries and if you are focusing on CL after these two weeks just uh follow those it's really up to you and you can always check so in the Ethereum/PM repository you find the agenda uh if there is something that is uh that you're interested or something that you uh that touches your project like you want to uh you want to follow uh the call and it's just a great source of knowledge like it's great to catch up on what's actually happening in development. You are now part of the Ethereum development so you should see what the ACD uh uh does. Yeah. Uh uh armor project is going to be proposed uh should be considered the fin this finalist.

Uh it's 90% final. I don't know. There might be some people doing it late. Uh we tried to get the uh uh the uh uh uh yeah maybe for Easter egg we'll try to do this like weeks ago and uh as you can see as long as uh as late as yesterday some people submitted the projects. So there might be maybe one more or something but don't wait for that.

Don't uh definitely like uh use what's available. dive into the the project list and uh uh yeah uh you don't need to wait for anything there. Uh yeah, Shane, go ahead. Uh just quick question about the presentation for ECC. Uh I saw that we have a list of like a video from I think last year where you can watch everyone else's presentations.

Very helpful. I'm just curious if there's any best practices for the content like some required not required but like best uh bullet points such as like why you picked this project what kind of benefit it has for Ethereum what are potential bottlenecks that you uh foresee uh maybe just if you could say what you really look for in the presentation uh right so um we'll we will also provide some more guidance of the presentations later because that's u uh for the for the ECC times and And uh it's also a bit different because last year the ETC was later it was like couple week or two later in the fellowship. So people had their projects also more refined. So um don't worry about you know uh have have very precise refined idea. Uh it's more about presenting your current idea and your current state of research and then work uh getting some feedback and then working on the specification the project proposal from there.

So um consider it as sort of like eight research post maybe for like um we will show the detail structure but uh yeah again you want to have some clear communication and it needs to be like five 10 minutes it's short just to explain uh you can you should in presentation you should assume that people understand the protocol general understanding of uh you are working on um some constants for EIP something uh you don't need to uh provide extra context just talk about specifically what you researched and uh uh what's your proposed solution uh what solutions are you considering uh so yeah that's uh uh that's pretty much it uh we share the presentations video in uh in discord uh some days ago and again for before we uh send a call for presentations at etc we will uh show you the uh uh uh the rough structure that we as you uh expect but um again it's um it's really uh indiv individual like what you are working on and you don't need to explain the uh uh the uh motivation. You don't need to explain like what the what the um the context is but focus on the problem and explain your solution uh and some expected road map if you already are that far. Uh but yeah, it all depends on how far are you with your research and what is your project. Yeah, thank you for Oh, cool. Thanks.

Welcome. Awesome. And again thanks thanks Shane for using your voice. Anyone else can uh speak up and use your voice. We would love to hear you.

And uh again this is great part of meeting in person because it gives you more sense of community not just being strangers on on the internet. So uh please don't um uh don't be shy to use your camera or speak up. Of course it's not necessarily guys. Uh can you hear me? Yeah.

Uh I just wanted to ask like um for since like there's uh like few number of projects like which we have and since like most of the people uh will be uh selecting uh the same projects uh like are we eventually meant to uh collaborate uh with them or just uh yeah yeah so uh some projects might require collaboration. uh some don't really make sense to collaborate on and this depends on the scope of course it depends whether a project is big enough that it can accommodate multiple people but generally we we I would recommend generally two people per project at maximum maybe three at maximum but not even that like you know what they say like two is a couple threes crowd so like three people it's uh uh it's doable we had that before but also from our experience from the EPF projects we don't really recommend that um but again depends on the scope of the project and there are some sort of collaborations where people work on like the same thing but in different clients for example so there it's again very individual depends on the projects depends also on you on what kind of fellows you are because some people are dedicated full-time some people are part-time and uh the more people there is there might be more uh over it might be more overwhelming for the mentors so again uh being mindful about the mentors we are trying to uh um have some some small uh group of people they work with. So uh we don't we don't want like many many people on the same project. U however yeah some might require it and if there are multiple people interested in the same project it's something for you to discuss. It's something uh so as as we mentioned before there are the signup sheets or the signup sorry uh there is the signup sort of a signaling uh uh uh uh signaling sort of uh thread we will open uh after a week or so when you zoomed into some area of projects that you interested in because many people still are uh uh just doing the initial discovery and research.

uh after that we will open this for you to uh tell explicitly because right now you need to read all the updates and again this is why we have this week uh weekly thread. So in the thread you can scroll and see who is working on on the similar things as you as you and you can meet them discuss them you can use the voice chat and discord to do ad hoc meetings uh in or uh make a group and so on and um uh somehow it's figure out your roles within the projects and I would say that uh you need to have a lot of self-reflection you need to figure out okay I find this interesting but I don't have maybe the right skill to work on this uh so you need to find your uh the right role uh right project which is not only fitting your uh your interest but also your skills your experience uh so uh I would I would generally say like if something is exciting because it's uh more learning something you're more confident in I would go for the for the uh the later one yeah uh yeah uh Chandra Praash has a question uh yes Mario I have question like I have chosen one research project and discuss with the uh pods from prismatic lab and uh so for this EPF cohort like would you consider the research project to be uh counted or only consideration of client projects as contribution I mean EPF uh EPF can uh include all kinds of code related work it can be research development tooling around Uh so of course research projects um from what you're talking about it's like prototyping in a client. There are many projects that are asking for some sort of prototyping in clients and uh just to give you maybe uh more wider overview like what the EPF is uh where it's fitting the core development process because the client teams right now are focusing on the next hard fork on Fusaka. The priority of everybody right now is to uh improve performance of clients to be able to scale uh uh L1 implementing fusaka to be able to scale blobs the podas. So this is uh the current devets that's the max priority and in this uh uh in this um uh intense uh development process uh there is no time for uh uh some nice to have tasks which would be nice to integrate in the clients but they are not scope of the fork.

So the clients cannot consider it a priority uh maintenance tasks prototyping some research ideas uh in the clients right so prototyping sort of work or some uh some some features which uh uh might benefit from the the hard work but are not uh not necessarily the the first priority. So these are the mostly this kind of projects are that you find in EPF. These are mostly kind of projects that uh the um uh the core core developers and the the client teams uh need help with uh and is for you as EPFOs it's the best fit to help with. So uh yeah there is some sort of research and prototyping uh there is some sort of um uh research which is theoretical but it has it needs to has some practical application of course some sort of uh technical output because I mean every research test. So, uh it's also up to you how you scope it, how you uh what what goals are you trying to achieve.

Yeah. Uh yeah, like my most research related to the theoretical research and uh it mostly related to the transitioning from EPBS to APS and I discuss with the boards and other mentors also. So that's why I'm asking like is it considered in the EPF or not? It's not because it take time to for the prototyping because it itself is a big problem to solve. So but uh they have like advis us to we require only the research.

So you can focus on that. Yeah. So like there is not really purely theoretical research, right? We are not theoretical physicists. So all of the all of the sort of research on Ethereum is some sort of uh uh uh merit based technically based discussion which uh comes from uh comes from different research teams and uh mostly again like these research teams there they have some interest in the fellowship.

There are a couple of them uh but it's minority of it. So uh if you are specifically looking for a research project like you might uh need to settle down for much more engineering than you expect. Um uh but uh and if you're curious about specifically your project and how it fits EPF or need advice for that, you can reach out to me of course. Uh so please feel free to reach out. Yeah.

Yeah. Um thank you. And uh yeah, feel free to we still have some time I think. Uh okay, now we are over time a bit but I think if there are any last questions we can still take some. Uh, feel free to raise your hands.

Feel free to write in the chat. Demetric. Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes, of course. Nice to see you all. Um, I have like half a question, let's say. Um first of all nice to meet you everyone and then uh so you answered the question already but I found very interesting like formal methods like formal verification methods that there is a team in Ethereum like verify ZKVM um I know the library because of my like I met it during my PhD and I was wondering if it's like any priority at all for the Fuzaka having formal methods on EV on ZKVMs Uh well uh so it's not really because there is no ZK EVM right now as any part of the protocol. It's all layer 2 and it's all theoretical research for like future form of Ethereum which is all uh zade um uh but still like there are some form of verification teams or they used to be part of formal verification team in Ethereum foundation.

I wonder if it still is I don't think so. Uh there is random verification as well. Uh so there are teams working on this. It's mostly tooling for like solidity formal verification. It's mostly uh some specific parts of the protocol that are verifiable like the beacon chain for example was formally verified.

Uh the zkm formal verification I believe can only benefit the specific uh zkm implementation because also the different implementations uh uh differ. So uh I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about uh but I believe like it might be something which is uh um not really uh focused right now but uh I would I would look into the risk 5 and like the research topics that are more focused on uh the ZK future of Ethereum which is again far far ahead there are some like beam chain there's not even a specification for that but yeah if you if you want to look into some wild research and see how it could benefit there like look into the ification of Ethereum and uh uh the the future of the execution environment. Yeah. Yeah. It's lean generally lean like like that.

Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Welcome. Um okay. One maybe we can wrap up but if there is no more questions I think we are good here.

See no hands up. So I think we can wrap up here uh with once again I will reiterate uh what's next uh right now doing your research, doing your discovery, doing uh updates. Uh please give us uh give me give us couple of uh couple of days to get through your updates throughout the week and we will see you on Wednesday on office hours uh where you should prepare some questions for the previous fellows and successful cordiffs. Um and you should uh uh look forward to meeting us again exactly in one week on Monday we will have these sort of standups. So yeah this this is the very first call where we do introduction but starting next Monday it's a weekly standup where uh you will share uh your updates.

So nothing to really prepare for just show up there and it will be an opportunity to meet uh your fellow fellows and to share your uh your work and chat about it. So see you on Wednesday and then we will more chat on Monday in a week. Thanks for being here everybody. We'll see you uh couple days on Wednesday. See you soon.

Thank you guys. Thank you guys. See you guys. See you guys. Looking forward to the cohort couple of months.

Bye. Bye everyone. Ready.