A new bitcoin-related project is taking off in El Salvador. Its goal is to make Salvadorean users more sovereign and tech-savvy while making the BitcoinBTC network more decentralized and robust. Its name is Node Nation, and it is an initiative by the Bitcoin Office. This government institution helps bitcoin adoption in the Central America country, and it’s working in tandem with the technical education program, Cubo+, and in collaboration with the Education Ministry for this new project.
Node Nation started at the Ignacio Pacheco Castro educational complex in San Salvador and underscores the importance of technical education for a wider adoption of bitcoin. The program is aimed at high school students aged between 15 and 17. It will be implemented throughout the year in five public schools in El Salvador, with weekly lessons.
The idea is to teach attendees the concepts and processes they must know to operate Bitcoin and Lightning nodes successfully. Nodes are computers that run the Bitcoin software and communicate between them, keeping a complete record of all the transactions that have been done using the Bitcoin network since inception.
If completed successfully, Node Nation students could join the Cubo+ program to strengthen their technical skills. “Our main goal is education, establishing a Bitcoin infrastructure at the high school level throughout El Salvador, which will be managed by the student council itself with the knowledge acquired from our lessons,” Cubo+ graduate and Node Nation teacher Oscar Mendez explained to me in an interview.
The Node Nation students will learn how to run a Bitcoin node and a Lightning Network node and also how to operate Bitcoin mining equipment. The goal is to offer this technical training to empower the students and enhance El Salvador’s human talent. “For me, it is an honor to be one of the first Bitcoin educators in my country. Bitcoin is a world-changing technology, and we already see how it affects our lives here in El Salvador,” Mendez sentenced.
According to the Bitcoin Office head, Stacy Herbert, the program was initially inspired by the French education project Decouvre Bitcoin work in Ataco in 2022, where they did several Bitcoin-related activities. “We were impressed with the extent of their knowledge and their ability and enthusiasm to teach that knowledge to the next generation,” Herbert explained.
The expectations around the Node Nation program are high. “The students of CUBO+ surprised us with the sheer amount of talent available in El Salvador. And with Node Nation, this is the very first of its kind anywhere in the world. We really are the first mover nation, and we are the trailblazers,” Herbert further detailed.
El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in 2021. Since then, it has become one of the main fields for adopting this technology, with several educational projects like Mi Primer Bitcoin or TorogozDev happening since then.
