Building Developer Ecosystems In Turkey & India

Hi all, after much deliberation and interaction with the Community, we have decided to resubmit this proposal with quarterly milestones. You can see more information from the most recent Kusamarian appearance. Thank you to all who gave feedback on our previous proposal.

What is this proposal about?

The key goal is to create momentum for Polkadot in Turkey and India, two of the biggest web3 communities in the world, by onboarding developers and keeping them active in the ecosystem beyond only training. This proposal builds on the successes and learnings of the pilot developer bootcamp program. We’ll build mechanisms to keep developers in the Polkadot ecosystem beyond training by working with Parachains. This proposal is supported by Unique Network, Astar, Apillon, Moonbeam, Zeitgeist, Subquery, and Bifrost Finance. Once started, we will open the opportunity for all ecosystem teams to get involved too so this is an ecosystem-wide project.

Expected outcomes as a result of all milestones are:

• 10,000 developers onboarded Turkey and India for the Polkadot Ecosystem through bootcamps, courses, events and hackathons at universities and dev communities that we’ll run during 2024
• Two quality courses on Polkadot ecosystem
• 10 IRL events and 10 hackathons, bringing 2,000+ builders together
• 500+ developers building projects in the ecosystem and many staying in the Ecosystem thanks to connections with Parachains
• 2,500+ new wallet addresses
• 2M+ impressions on social media and traditional media

Who we are and previous successes:

Rise In (the global, web3-focused extension of Patika.dev) is one of the strongest communities in India and Turkey for devs looking to learn web3. We provide one of the most structured onboarding experiences into web3 for web2 developers:

• 200,000+ web2 developers in our platform
• 15,000+ devs from Turkey and 20,000+ devs from India onboarded to our web3 courses and bootcamps
• Partnerships with 10+ universities in India and 20+ universities and 20+ blockchain university clubs in Turkey
• 30+ IRL events and hackathons in India (including 3 hackathons), 100+ IRL and online events (including 6 hackathons) in Turkey

Our commitment to the Polkadot ecosystem:

This year, we received Council approved funding via Gov1 to partner with Polkadot and have built one of the most comprehensive Polkadot Substrate Development courses and organized the first ever Polkadot Substrate Development bootcamps in Turkey (Full report here).

• 2,396 applications
• 474 developers accepted; 98 completing the tasks and graduating
• 52 projects completed (relay chains)
• 500k+ social media reach

Team behind this:

Gulcan Yayla, CEO (X / Linkedin): Ashoka Fellow, 7+ years of dev training and community building experience (Co-founder of Kodluyoruz and Rise In), Transcend Network Fellow, 3+ years of education experience at World Bank and Malala Fund.

Emre Sarbak, CPO (X / Linkedin): ex-McKinsey, 10+ years of dev training and community building experience (VP of Technology at LaunchCode - one of the most respected nonprofit dev bootcamps in the US, co-founder of Kodluyoruz and Rise In). 

Mustafa Can Kiranli, CTO (Linkedin): 7+ years of dev training and community building experience (Co-founder of Kodluyoruz and Rise In), prev. technical founder of several apps and startups.

Ankit Raj, Head of Growth (Linkedin): Prev. Head of Growth in the largest learning apps in India such as ELSA (20+ million users), Vokal India (25 million+ users), Hello English.

Sahitya Roy, DevRel in India (X / Linkedin): Co-founder of EduHub Community, Lead Organizer of several hackathons and dev communities in India.

Details of the proposal and this specific milestone:

We’re asking support for Milestone 1 ($112,065):

1. Updating the current Polkadot Substrate Development course content
2. Working with parachains and building a new course about career options for developers to stay in Polkadot ecosystem
3. Launching the bootcamp pages for India and Turkey separately and reaching at least 1,000 registrations in both markets

After completion of this milestone, we’ll continue with opening bootcamps quarterly and marketing the importance and advantages of building a career in Polkadot, doing 5 IRL hackathons and 5 community in events in Turkey and India each, assigning a full-time Talent Success Manager to connect high potential devs with Parachains, Job opportunities, including internships, Building company opportunities, and further education opportunities (Polkadot Blockchain Academy, Polkadot Heroes, etc.).

Why does Polkadot need this project?

Our previous Polkadot bootcamp, along with other Polkadot dev education programs show that:

• Although learning Rust and Substrate development was a good first step, developers don’t know a clear career roadmap to stay in the Polkadot ecosystem and switch from their web2 careers to web3. When they see no clear steps, it’s hard for them to get involved with the ecosystem and become a long-term part of it. Some of them became Polkadot Heroes; but still, they are disconnected and need career mentorship and steps.
• Turkey and India have some of the largest and most active web3 communities in the world, too big to ignore by lack of intentional marketing and education activity and presence.
• Local language support and physical activities are critical to keep developers engaged in countries like Turkey and India. Physical events and talking with people IRL at universities, hackathons, etc. provide confidence to developers about the ecosystem.
• Awareness of Polkadot is lower than other protocols as the activity on Polkadot also shows.

We pledge to post quarterly retrospectives to inform the Community of progress ahead of the next funding request. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

The full proposal is here.