A Bitcoin developer school is launching in Switzerland

A new Bitcoin developer school called 21 Lectures is looking to bring more Bitcoin developers into the ecosystem.

21 Lectures is based in Zug, Switzerland and was founded in 2018 by the president of the Bitcoin Association Switzerland Lucas Betschart.

The organisation’s mission is to bring more developers to the Bitcoin ecosystem. In their announcement post on Medium, they said that students will be “lectured by the world’s best Bitcoin developers.” They went on to say that their “courses teach developers the fundamentals to work with Bitcoin and related technologies.”

On their website, the newly formed 21 Lectures also mentioned that they “believe in the power of open source software, creative commons, and that all people should be able to access information freely.”

First course to start in March 2019

The first course at the school will run between 4th and 7th March in Zurich, Switzerland this year. The session is labelled the “advanced course” and will cover cryptography, the structure of transactions, how blocks are chained, smart contract language, the Lightning protocol, and software and toolkits to use to develop on top of the Bitcoin and Lightning networks.

The first session will be taught by specialists such as Lightning protocol co-designer Dr Christian Decker and Bitcoin core maintainer Jonas Schnelli.

Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency that is looking to get involved in the education arena. Just last week, Coin Rivet covered the story of Ripple partnering with a top Chinese university to collaborate on blockchain research programs.

Course material to be available for free

The first session will be priced at around $1,500 for individuals and over $4,000 for corporate attendees, with fees to be paid in the local Swiss currencies.

However, don’t worry if you can’t afford the lofty fees. 21 Lectures did say that they will “publish all our teaching materials freely, available to use, share, copy, distribute, and modify.”

You can find the course material on the project’s GitHub page.

Nawaz Sulemanji

Nawaz has been hooked on crypto since buying his first Bitcoin’s in 2013. After studying maths in London, Nawaz initially spent the first eight years of his career working globally across corporate supply chain’s before transitioning into the decentralised finance industry as a margin-trader and consultant. He’s a fan of open-blockchains because “it enables self-sovereignty”.