Blockchain Commons Announces Bitcoin Internship Program

Blockchain Commons’ 2022 internship will focus around Bitcoin and blockchain technology, human-rights privacy, and decentralized identity.

Blockchain Commons, a not-for-profit benefit corporation focused on Bitcoin and decentralized architectures, announced this year’s edition of its annual internship program to be held remotely during the summer months. The program’s focuses include Bitcoin and blockchain technology, human-rights privacy and advocacy, and decentralized identity.

“We are looking for interns with a wide range of expertise including not just software engineers and hardware developers, but also pre-law students, library science students, and technical writers,” said Blockchain Commons founder Christopher Allen in a GitHub post announcing the internship.

Allen said that he expects at least a third of the work during the internship to be focused on tools and resources for supporting activists around the world as they attempt to leverage the right technology for their daily advocacy efforts.

“This has been a long-held goal at Blockchain Commons, where we’re working to protect people, not just money,” Allan said. “For the second year in a row, a grant from the Human Rights Foundation is putting this work front and center this summer.”

Creating and advocating for open and secure digital infrastructure sits at the core of Blockchain Commons’ work, and Allen expects to empower interns with the knowledge and mentoring they need to help the organization thrive in the area.

Interns can expect to learn the ins and outs of open development; participate in weekly “office hours” conversations with each other and industry experts from leading Bitcoin and advocacy companies like Blockstream, HRF, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and collaborate to devise powerful open-source projects at the intersection of their passion and Blockchain Commons’ most pressing needs.

“We encourage interns to work collaboratively together and we teach them how to function in the open-source ecosystem,” Allen said in a Twitter thread. “Past internship projects have included our Spotbit pricing server, our Mori-cli app for Bitcoin inheritance, and a pseudonymity guide.”

Blockchain Commons demands 40 hours of professional work across the three-month summer program and offers two mentoring calls to all interns as well as a small honorarium to those who complete the three milestones set at the beginning of the internship. The deadline for applying is April 22.