Scalar School is a unique project with its own merits in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It is catering to Brazil. Although we adopt new tech well—we used to be Orkut's slaughterhouse and data provider guinea pigs, now Meta's, and so forth and so on—we develop slowly.
We are insulated by the Brazilian Portuguese language and the odd fact that we don't need English to make it inland—different from the reality of a European, for example. We are isolated, and we carry a very unique modus operandi.
Scalar School is entirely conceived by a woman who navigates the dream of becoming a Bitcoin Core/FOSS developer herself and has found several unfair, gender-based obstacles along the way.
Was I delusional from the very start? It doesn't matter. No one should go through the double standards that exist in the larger Bitcoin technical communities where the dreams start being nurtured and our future talents start being bred.
This is a project with a vision. I am the user, the product, and the ethnographic researcher. I am walking the walk, fixing the hurdles, and opening space for the women coming behind me, even though I am not there yet.
I am not using shortcuts for advantage. I like to carefully design solutions to difficult problems and work really hard to implement them, and I like freedom, and I like to be treated fairly and not receive differential and worse opportunities because I am a woman at the base. I have a strong sense of justice, an insatiable will to learn and teach, and a resilience that is larger than my sense of self.
I am not trying to build a meritless, bound-to-fail path for women. I never even agreed to make it 100% for women in the first place. I try, but I can't. I might do it, but it keeps not happening, especially when a man asks me, "Is that only for women?".
I can't pay them with the same currency of isolation, and I might contradict myself in my goals to increase the number of women in Bitcoin as fast as possible. And here comes another point: it is easy to sell promises and loose dreams to get people to flock to you. It is easy to make people users of Bitcoin by wrapping the code in ideology in such a way that it is difficult to unwrap. It is easy to cater to a community that has been there for over a decade by just agreeing with everything they do, no matter how unethical and wrong.
And if that is the KPI you're looking for, you won't find it. And people will judge, and will say it is a waste, and will claim it is a net negative for Bitcoin itself, and will ignore our efforts. But achieving the ambitious goal of Scalar School is hard. We have to fix history. We have to repair the lack of women confidently diving into bits and bytes and scrambled code and math and finding the meaning in it, and creating solutions, and solving problems, and opening meaningful PRs, and making a life out of open source by their own merits.
The open-source world is wild. And it won't divide the ocean in two just for women to pass. We'll have to figure out how to make it together. My role is to not let them fail at the base. My role is to lead by example. To be a mirror they can look at and ask questions, and get answers, without the overhead of discrimination. My role is to use my privilege to advocate for them.
My role is to make it myself, and by making it, to hand them the map. To show them the way. Most importantly, to be there for them. That is representation. That is how you inspire minorities to see themselves winning and go for it despite the adversities, the scrutiny, and the harassment of a local community that is offended by seeing a woman carving her path without giving them the possibility to make her stop. My role is to be the resistance, and by showing an alternative path, to put terrible ideas in check despite the retaliation by those profiting from them.
As a woman in Bitcoin development, I've had my time and my capacity wasted by teachers who abused their position with sheer negligence and deceit. By colleagues who couldn't respect the competition. By friends who extended a hand and guided me through traps only to ensure I would fail.
And this is the generational heritage that I am fixing and rebuilding. It is deeper than heated events full of sellers and enthusiasts. Scalar School is a quiet revolution. I am grateful to the
@HRF for sharing this dream with the Brazilian women developers in Bitcoin, and its impact won't be limited to Brazil. I hope to make my sponsors
@Alex Li and
@gladstein speak proudly about Scalar School. You're the only people to whom I'll ever owe an explanation. Thank you. See you on the other side.
