About the Fellowship

Polygon Fellowship organised by Devfolio is an exclusive 8-week mentor-led learn-to-earn program to get started with Web3 development. The program has 2 tracks: Beginner Track and Builder Track. As the names suggest, Beginner track is focused on developers who are new to web3/are looking to start there web3 journey. Builder track is for more advanced developers who already know a bit web3 and are looking to work on mentor-guided projects.

Application and Selection

Application to the fellowship was quite similar to Hackathon Applications on Devfolio, asking about your past experience, projects and any Web3 ideas you have in mind. This was followed by a short interview.

The interview was expected to be 20 minutes or so and I was prepared to be grilled on web3/blockchain questions (of which I knew almost nothing about!). Surprisingly, the experience was quite pleasant and I was just asked questions about my development journey, projects and experience. It lasted not more than 7-8 minutes. Honestly, I was quite positive about my selection post the interview but didn’t know I was competing with so many applicants!!

The selection was highly competitive, quoting the official blog: “Polygon partnered with Devfolio to bring together a group of talented and motivated fellows to the eight-week long fellowship, capped by a one week IRL event. These fellows were selected from more than 10,000 registrations, with an acceptance rate of 0.7%.”

Experience

To be honest, I have always been very speculative of the “web3” hype and didn’t really understand the need for it (still don’t quite a bit). Given the environmental impacts and quite a scammy nature of few applications, I was never supportive of the “revolution”.

Still, I entered this fellowship with an open mind and the hopes of learning more about the tech behind the applications and see if it is actually as revolutionary as people claim.

The pattern for our beginner track was simple, for next 6 weeks, we would learn about a new concept each week and complete some assignments and mini projects to unlock our stipend. The last 2 weeks were dedicated to building a project and showcasing it at the end of the final week at the HackerHouse in Bangalore (more about it later). Weekly topics included basics of blockchain, POW vs POS, NFTs, DAOs, Building Dapps, IPFS, Web3 Infra, Smart Contracts and a lot more. Everything was well managed, kudos to the Devfolio team! They were flexible when required and helped me throughout the fellowship.

I built quite a few mini projects like a borrowing dapp - which allows users to borrow stable coins for ethereum, memer - exclusive meme focused social media dapp using IPFS, and a couple more. Because of these projects, I not only learnt a lot of about web3 and smart contracts but also improved my frontend development skills in React.

After 6 weeks of learning and brainstorming our final project ideas, I teamed up with Devansh from my cohort to build our project - Console3.

HackerHouse

The last week of the fellowship (31st Jul - 7th Aug), all fellows were invited to the HackerHouse organised at The Paul, Bangalore. I was super excited for this week because of the hype that Devfolio team created for us during the past 7 weeks and it proved to be over and beyond the hype!

I arrived at the venue on 30th July and it was just beautiful. The venue and each individual suite was decorated, and the environment was really good (Thanks to Bangalore weather). I met so many amazing people on Day 1 itself and had amazing discussions over lunch while we waited for our rooms to be ready.

For the next week, we had a lot of sessions to attend by amazing people in this space. I got to have 1:1 chats with builders, founders, even VCs and everyone was full of energy constantly asking each other “What are you building?”. I can’t even count how many times I pitched my project to a random person who I met literally 2 mins ago. Along with the sessions and networking, every fellow was busy building for the end of the week, the Demo Day. The demo day was an incredible opportunity for us builders to demo our projects in front of other builders, founders and VCs.

For building and sessions, a huge banquet area (HackerHall) was made available with monitors setup and an amazing co-working environment. I personally prefer working alone, but it was nice to have this option.

Apart from this, there was amazing food available even at 2 AM. We got so many swags including t-shirts, bag, shorts, gadgets and so much more. Devfolio cold brews helped us through all-nighters building our projects (must try if you can get one).

After the month long week of fun, hardwork and the final demo, there was a proper graduation ceremony organised followed by an amazing after party! This week was more fun than my entire college journey:P

HackerHouse in 5 words: Building, Party, Network, Food, Swags. I don’t think developers need anything more!?

Conclusion

After this fellowship, I definitely see certain use cases of blockchain as a technology and am excited to harness it in some of my projects. I still don’t believe in the whole “Web3” hype, but defintely appreciate the tech that it works on.

Thank you so much Polygon and Devfolio for this amazing (amazing use count - 7) experience! Would definitely recommend anyone reading this blog to apply and get to know the real applications behind the hype.