About yAcademy

We are tackling a (human) scalability problem

Ethereum is on a path towards a gloriously scalable future thanks to innovations such as interactive provers, ZK-Rollups, efficient commitment schemes, and data-availability sampling. These innovations are the fruits of years of uncompromising focus on a maximally decentralized, secure, and credibly neutral blockchain.

But there are bottlenecks that need scaling.

There is an acute shortage of software auditing talent. Considering how much value is at stake in blockchain systems, solving this bottleneck is essential to getting these trust-minimized systems for broader adoption.

Our model takes a different approach to auditing. We are nimble, with minimal administrative overhead. We audit communally, in a collaborative environment between our residents/mentors/guest auditors on one side, and our fellows on another.

The scalability gain comes from the fact that an outstanding fellow is invited to stay on as a resident, thereby helping us scale the size and quality of the next batch of fellows.

The motivations behind our model:

* Traditional ways of education and collaboration are obsolete.

* Invitation-only is an efficiency measure, to make sure time and energy is not wasted hand-holding mentees. But anyone who shows interest and meets the basic minimal requirements should get an invitation.

* Merit-based: auditors that stick around and bring value are rewarded.

* Synchronous communication is inefficient. We do have 2-3 sync calls per week, but we carry out discussions asynchronously.

* Everyone is peer-appraised. We make heavy use of the excellent Coordinape tool. This is how we keep ourselves nimble and light-weight on the administrative side, leaving us to focus on what matters: auditing.

* Some structure in the collaboration between fellows and residents/mentors/guest auditors is needed to reduce time waste.

* No time is wasted authoring educational materials: this is a trial-by-fire type of situation, mentees learn by walking along the auditing process of real pre- or in-production contracts.

Apply as a fellow:

If you are a developer or a researcher who is very fluent in programming, you may qualify. Learn more and apply.

Apply as a guest auditor:

If you are a bug bounty hunter with a track record, a security researcher, or a full-time auditor, you may qualify to join our Guest Auditor program. Learn more and apply.

Apply as a yAcademy contributor:

None of yAcademy core contributors were "hired". They all jumped in and started contributing in one or more aspects: auditing, documentation, recruitment, or ops and comms.
If you are eager to contribute in one or more areas but don't know how to break in, reach out and tell us more about yourself.