First Staking Program in Spanish: Jardineros de lo Infinito (Gardeners of the Infinite)

If you visit the ETH Kipu website, you can read that in the Kipu Stakers area we “Support communities and individuals in Latin America to manage their own nodes, promoting decentralization and collaboration in the region.”* If you have a few minutes, I invite you to continue reading this article, where we will tell you about “Jardineros de lo Infinito”*, one of the initiatives we are leading to achieve our purpose.
“Jardineros de lo Infinito” is the first educational program on staking in Ethereum that is offered 100% in Spanish for all of Latin America and also offers you the possibility of being selected to manage a node, allowing you to start putting your knowledge into practice.
The program is composed of the following phases, which we will describe below:

Registration

The registration for this first edition was launched in May of this year and sparked great interest in the region. The collaboration of various local Ethereum communities was essential for its promotion, and the number of people who signed up exceeded our expectations. Having more than 130 registrations confirmed that there was a demand, and that there is significant interest in contributing to the security and decentralization of the network.

Classes

There were two classes taught by our excellent instructors, Andy and Enti. The first session was on general Ethereum concepts, and the second session delved specifically into staking activities. Both classes lasted approximately one hour, and attendance was a necessary requirement to proceed to the next step.
If you are interested in learning more, the two sessions are available on our educational campus.

Evaluation and Feedback

After the classes, an asynchronous exam was administered, which had to be submitted by a defined date and time. The goal was twofold: first, to validate the technical knowledge shared during the virtual sessions, and second, to begin understanding each student's perspective on various aspects of staking and the Latin American context.

Interviews and Selection

The student evaluation continued through a series of individual interviews with all candidates who passed the exam and for whom we had no prior references. We are convinced that people are the key factor in any network, so it was important to dedicate the necessary time to get to know them, understand their motivations, and assess what value they could bring to the Ethereum community through their participation in our program.
For the first cohort, we selected 10 *Jardineros de lo Infinito*, residing in 10 different cities in Latin America: Quito, Ecuador; Salamá, Guatemala; Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Managua, Nicaragua; Pereira, Colombia; Cartago, Costa Rica; Lima, Peru; Veracruz, Mexico; San José, Costa Rica; and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Node Acquisition

This phase of the program is undoubtedly one of the greatest learning experiences we carry in our toolkit for planning our next edition. Opting for significant geographical dispersion meant facing very different situations in terms of costs and operational issues related to device acquisition. Each case, to a greater or lesser extent, posed a challenge for both our team and the beneficiaries. Thanks to the commitment of each program participant and the transparency maintained throughout each contact, every situation found its solution.
At the time of writing this article, we are in the process of sending funds for each beneficiary to acquire the node in their place of residence, along with a financial contribution to cover the infrastructure costs necessary for its operation.

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In future articles, we will share updates on the progress of the program, its updated metrics, and some challenges and lessons learned from this first edition.