BitDevs is a community for those interested in discussing and participating in the research and development of Bitcoin and related protocols. You can be well versed with or new to the topics, all are welcome. Be advised: discussion will be technical.
Our monthly Socratic Seminar events are formatted to foster debate, information sharing and lively discussion. In the weeks preceding the event, discussion topics are collated by meetup members from a variety of sources: pull requests in popular git repositories (e.g. Bitcoin Core, lnd, c-lightning, Joinmarket, Elements Alpha and Electrum), research papers, technical blog posts, IRC logs, network monitors and more. After a period of discussion, some events will have presentations of open source projects, companies, research and other relevant content. A feedback and Q&A section follow. After the event the group gathers at a nearby restaurant to socialize.
A newsletter is sent out the day of the event which outlines discussion topics. Archives of discussion topics and presentations can be found in the event descriptions of past meetups. The discussion portion of the event is NEVER recorded. It is recommended that you have a firm grasp of the basics of Bitcoin in order to extract the most value from our Socratic events.
Please contact the organizers if you’d like to present at a future Socratic event or have a recommended topic for discussion: bitdevsamsterdam at proton.me. There are different requirements for presentations depending on the nature of the project.
A journal club to discuss specific topics in the Bitcoin ecosystem. This is an academic-style journal club where one person chooses a topic or paper and presents it. Participants are expected to have read the paper or other material suggested by the discussion leader. The discussion leader doesn’t have to be an expert on the subject, but should be interested enough in it to read the paper thoroughly so as to give a decent presentation. After informally presenting the topic, the group can then ask questions or open discussion surrounding the topic. The presentation should be informal (slides are allowed, but whiteboard/chalkboard is preferred), and this should be a discussion, not a one-way transmission of information by the presenter. The reading material doesn’t have to be a whitepaper. In the case of widely-known topics (such as Elliptic Curve encryption) a chapter of a textbook, Wikipedia article, or other material can be suggested.
To propose a topic to present or volunteer to present a paper, please contact bitdevsamsterdam at proton.me.
Our debate series is dedicated to the investigation of controversial technical topics. The structure of the event is dependent on the topic of interest.