Summer Of Bitcoin 2022: Blog (1/3)
About the Program
Summer of Bitcoin is a global online summer internship program that introduces university students to bitcoin open-source programming and design. The whole program is divided into many phases for which information is given on the Summer Of Bitcoin Website. There were two tracks: a) Developers and b) Designers. I applied for the second track this time.
The process of being selected
I learned about this program in January 2022 and applied along with a few design case studies. I was chosen for the second round after the first phase, where we had to provide a thorough proposal for our idea. During this time, there were also a limited number of learning workshops about the Bitcoin Ecosystem. In April, I was concurrently working on proposals for Outreachy and the Summer of Bitcoin. I went with the Hexawallet organization for Summer of Bitcoin.
Here are the two proposals I put forth on April 18, 2022:
- Bitcoin and Friends — Secure chat-like interface for the interaction between wallets
- Bitcoin and Learning — A wallet that teaches bitcoin as you use them
After submitting my proposals, I was given an assignment that required me to finish a few tasks and turn them in to my mentor. Since there were multiple viable project proposals, it was an elimination round. After passing, I received a call for a one-on-one interview. I had my first interview for a position in product design. It was a success! Throughout the entire interview process, my mentor was incredibly nice and supportive.
The selection notice finally arrived in the mail for me on May 3, 2022.
I was extremely grateful for being selected! It was highly competitive this year as there were 20,000+ applicants and over 1500+ proposals.
Community Bonding Phase
My organization, Hexawallet, had a head start on community-building. On May 13, 2022, we held our “SOB interns — Induction session.” Hexawallet chose six interns for the SOB 2022 program. Interns were made introduced to the company and the projects we will be working on this summer by our mentors.
On May 16, there was a “Task and GIT hub alignment session” where we learned about managing issues on Github. Additionally, the weekly Show and Tell call, during which each member briefs their individual week’s work, would take place on Friday. I was assigned to design for the organization’s software “Keeper.” My mentor Sumaiah Khan would oversee the entirety of my job.
Work Assignment
I had my first meeting regarding the work assignment on the 23rd of May 2022 “Keeper Design Orientation”. My mentor told me about the number of meetings and working hours each day. Four segments would make up the entire day:
Typically, the tasks for the day were told during the morning briefing call with the mentor or the morning standup call. I had to submit the work or update the team on my progress during the evening. This timetable was adhered to during the first stage of the internship and is expected to remain unchanged during the second stage as well.
Week — 1 (23 May 2022–27 May 2022): Learning the Design System and Getting Familiar with AdobeXD
The design system for Keeper, which was being developed at the time, was introduced to me by my mentor. I had to learn it and use it to recreate a few patterns. I’ll be providing a few pictures below for the same:
We held a Show and tell call with the team on the 27th of May in which everyone presented an overview of their work. Listening to my fellow interns taught me a lot about various fields.
Extras:
- Every week on Thursday, we had Chaincode Seminars which followed the following schedule:
The selected interns were given weekly reading materials and questions based on that. In Thursday’s meeting, we had to discuss the same topic with our assigned group and ask doubts from mentors regarding the same. These seminars proved to be informative and taught me a lot about Bitcoin from the very core. On the 23rd of June 2022, we had the last seminar for Bitcoin Protocol Development. I’m looking forward to learning about Lightning Network through the next phase of these seminars.
2. For managing weekly notes and tracking my workflow, I used Notion.
The next blog will be a detailed walkthrough of my entire work for Phase 1 of the internship. Thank you for reading.
