Layer-0 Developer Academy

Community model

A technical community dies in two ways, and neither is a lack of enthusiasm. It dies when a session has no named owner, so nobody is at fault when it does not happen. And it dies when attending becomes the only way to take part, which excludes exactly the developers this programme exists to serve.

Seven recurring activities

Each one carries the role that answers for it and the artefact it leaves behind. Both are checked when the site is built: a session with no owner, or no written trace, fails the build rather than quietly fading out.

Weekly

Developer lab

Unblock real work: participants arrive with the lab that will not pass, the node that will not sync, the compiler error they cannot read.

Answered for by: Blockchain Developer Relations Lead
Session length: 1.5 h — 6 h per month
Useful at: FoundationBlockchain developerAppchain developerInfrastructure engineerBlockchain architect

Format

Open session, no set agenda. Problems are taken in the order they arrive, and solved in front of everyone rather than in private.

What it leaves behind

A thread of solved questions, indexed by error message — which is what someone stuck at two in the morning actually searches for.

Taking part without attending

Post the question in writing beforehand; it is taken in session and answered in the thread whether its author attends or not.

Monthly

Monthly open workshop

Bring new developers in through practice, with no cohort enrolment: one catalogue workshop, run in public from start to finish.

Answered for by: Technical Instructional Designer
Session length: 3 h — 3 h per month
Useful at: FoundationBlockchain developer

Format

An existing catalogue workshop, drawn from levels L0 and L1, run with its guided lab and its assessment.

What it leaves behind

The workshop itself, already public, plus the corrections the session exposed — a workshop run in public gets the best review it will ever get.

Taking part without attending

Do it alone with its brief and its tests: that is the normal mode, and the session is only company.

Monthly

Collective code review

Teach critical reading of someone else's code — the skill teaching produces worst and employment demands earliest.

Answered for by: Git / Open-Source Engineering Lead
Session length: 2 h — 2 h per month
Useful at: Blockchain developerAppchain developerInfrastructure engineerBlockchain architect

Format

A capstone or a contribution submitted by its author, reviewed live. The author is present, and the review is of the code, never of them.

What it leaves behind

The review comments on the pull request, where they still serve six months later.

Taking part without attending

Submit code for review, or read past reviews: they are public in the repositories.

Monthly

Architecture session

Settle a real design decision in front of witnesses, so participants see what an owned trade-off looks like rather than a recited best practice.

Answered for by: Chief Blockchain Architect
Session length: 2 h — 2 h per month
Useful at: Appchain developerInfrastructure engineerBlockchain architect

Format

A live decision — BAC's own, a capstone's, or a partner's — argued and then settled, with the rejected options and why they were rejected.

What it leaves behind

An architecture decision record: context, options, choice, accepted consequences. Including the decisions that turn out badly, which are not deleted.

Taking part without attending

Read the record, and contest a decision in writing: a written objection reopens the point at the next session.

Monthly

Protocol deep dive

Read a layer-0 mechanism's specification or source together, at the source, with no teaching intermediary.

Answered for by: Distributed Systems Engineer
Session length: 2 h — 2 h per month
Useful at: Appchain developerInfrastructure engineerBlockchain architect

Format

One mechanism per session — GRANDPA, ABCI, Snowman, data availability sampling — read in the official documentation and in the implementation, rotating across stacks.

What it leaves behind

A reading note citing the source of every claim, versioned against the protocol version read — without which it silently becomes wrong.

Taking part without attending

The note and reading list go out before the session; reading it alone is the intended mode, not a catch-up.

Monthly

Upstream contribution session

Produce real contributions to the repositories of the ecosystems taught. It is the only activity whose result is visible outside BAC, and the third rung of the national ladder depends on it.

Answered for by: Git / Open-Source Engineering Lead
Session length: 3 h — 3 h per month
Useful at: Blockchain developerAppchain developerInfrastructure engineerBlockchain architect

Format

Pick tractable issues, pair on them, submit during the session. A documentation fix is a contribution; a one-line patch is a contribution.

What it leaves behind

The pull requests themselves, opened under their author's name and not BAC's — it is their record, not ours.

Taking part without attending

The curated issue list stays open between sessions, with the BAC maintainer sponsoring the submission.

Quarterly

Research seminar

Connect the programme to academic work: a recent paper, presented and then criticised, including when its conclusion does not hold.

Answered for by: University & Academic Partnerships Lead
Session length: 2 h — 0.67 h per month
Useful at: Infrastructure engineerBlockchain architect

Format

One paper, one presenter, and a critique prepared by someone other than the presenter. Co-hosted with a partner institution where one exists.

What it leaves behind

A published review note stating what the paper establishes, what it assumes, and what remains open.

Taking part without attending

The paper and the note are public; a written critique is accepted with no attendance.

Six rules that keep it alive

Every session has a named responsible role. A session with no owner is not cancelled: it simply stops happening, and nobody knows when.
Every session leaves a written, public trace. Attending is a convenience, not the condition of access — otherwise the programme excludes the people it claims to serve.
The published cadence is either held or revised downwards. A calendar that gets cancelled teaches participants not to count on BAC.
Technical sessions cite their sources and protocol versions, exactly as the workshops do. A community that recites from memory goes stale faster than the curriculum.
Review is of the code, never of its author, and the author is present when their work is reviewed.
Upstream contributions are signed by their author, not by BAC.

The calendar has a ceiling

The usual way a community model fails is by adding good ideas until the calendar is one nobody can hold, then cancelling — and a cancelled session costs more credit than a session never promised.

18.7 / 20 h

Facilitated hours per month, computed from the cadences above rather than declared, against the ceiling the programme set itself. Exceeding it fails the build.

None of these sessions runs today. The model above is the one BAC commits to holding from the pilot cohort onwards, at the cadences stated; it will be revised downwards rather than cancelled if the load exceeds what the team can sustain.