This is an update from the Next Billion Fellowship Program. Applications are rolling and open for cohort 6 beginning in October 2025. Individuals interacting with an application have a user experience. Collectives interacting with a protocol have a world experience. There are many worlds that the Ethereum protocol touches; places where organizations, communities, or institutions experience trust through coordination. The Next Billion Fellowship is a program to support individuals working on new use cases and improving trust experience within the world computer. The stories of a global protocol are as diverse and varied as the humans that use it. In this update five Next Billion Alumni share stories about their Fellowship experience, and four new Next Billion Fellows are introduced. 📰 Devansh Mehta: Journalism Impact Certificates
5/21/2025If this document is being read on a screen, it's still a draft. The final form is intended to be a respectable LaTeX output printed to heavy, perhaps unbleached paper—that it may impart physical credibility to the reader, and create a canonical artifact of department lore. Abstract This is a proposal for a new team at the Ethereum Foundation named the Department of Dark Forestry, the Dark Forestry Department, or simply the Department. The central orienting goal of this team is to map, measure, and understand evil in the world from the perspective of the Ethereum protocol, and to use that understanding to design or enact small-but-significant interventions/programs that influence long-term outcomes for Ethereum and its human users. The Infinite Garden ☯ The Dark Forest "As an untended forest is to a long-managed scientific forest, so untended nature is to the garden. The garden is one of man's attempts to impose his own principles of order, utility, and beauty on nature. What grows in the garden is always a small, consciously selected sample of what might be grown there. " —James Scott, Seeing Like a State The Infinite Garden may be a legible touchstone for broad organizational alignment and public vision, but it does not represent a comprehensive perspective of the world through the lens of Ethereum's core values. The Dark Forest (陰森林, ☵), adapted from the hypothesis outlined in the epic trilogy by Liu Cixin, completes (or at least gives depth to) the worldview implied by The Infinite Garden (陽園林, ☱), coined by the Foundation's executive director Aya Miyaguchi.
5/17/2025Every year, the Ethereum ecosystem welcomes thousands of builders through community events, hackathons, courses, bootcamps, and campus clubs. However, many newcomers struggle to remain engaged, as they face challenges securing structured early-career opportunities. The Ethereum Season of Internships directly addresses this retention gap by creating a coordinated collection of internship opportunities across the ecosystem. What is the Ethereum Season of Internships? The Ethereum Season of Internships offers a coordinated collection of paid, fully remote summer internships across the Ethereum ecosystem. This initiative creates pathways for the next generation of contributors to connect with Ethereum projects and apply their diverse skills in development, research, design, marketing, finance, legal, and more. Our long-term vision is to make Ethereum an increasingly welcoming space for new talent, building a sustainable pipeline that transforms newcomers into committed long-term contributors. Internship Structure Duration: 12 weeks (August - October 2025) Eligibility: Open to all, especially early-career professionals and students
5/7/2025This is an update from the Next Billion Fellowship Program. Applications are open and rolling for cohort 6 beginning in October 2025. Individuals interacting with an application have a user experience. Collectives interacting with a protocol have a world experience. There are many worlds that the Ethereum protocol touches; places where organizations, communities, or institutions experience trust through coordination. The Next Billion Fellowship is a program to support individuals working on new use cases and improving trust experience within the world computer. The stories of a global protocol are as diverse and varied as the humans that use it. In this update five Next Billion Alumni share stories about their fellowship experience, and four new Next Billion Fellows are introduced. Cohort 3 📰 Journalism Impact Certificates
5/7/2025