The GSoC Discovery

I first heard about GSoC through Apna College. By January 2024, I was trying to explore it — but with zero serious dev experience. Sure, I knew basic HTML/CSS/JS, but that alone won’t get you far in open source.

Instead of applying half-heartedly, I made a decision: focus on building and learning first.

Even though I didn’t apply in 2024, seeing LinkedIn posts of first-year students getting in made me aware of what’s possible — but I knew I had made the right call for myself.

Setting Goals & Getting Obsessed

Fast forward to October 2024: during my second internship, I hit a moment of personal reflection (I chickened out of talking to someone I wanted to), and that triggered a weird but effective motivation. I told myself, “If I can’t do that, at least let me start working towards something meaningful.”

So I got up, sat down, and started looking for GSoC organizations. I found one with a Django codebase — something I knew nothing about — but also it had a semi-active Flutter project.

My first ever merged contribution? A Flutter feature related to copy-paste functionality. I learned how Flutter communicates with native Kotlin using method channels. That one merge gave me the confidence to keep going.

A couple of weeks in, my GSoC org released a leaderboard. It showed top contributors, and I went back to previous year leaderboard and noticed someone who cracked GSoC 2024 had 50–60 PRs merged. That’s when I set a mental goal:

I’ll get at least 40–50 PRs in before May.

That’s when the obsession kicked in.

Each PR felt like a kill in Fortnite or a perfect Wu Shang combo in Brawlhalla. From breaking my head over failing test cases to finally seeing that purple merge button — the dopamine hits were real.

Taking on Tougher Issues

One major turning point was when I worked on a call-blocking extension in Flutter for the OWASP BLT app. It needed deep native integration — something Flutter alone couldn’t handle. I had to dive into Swift for the iOS side. It took 10–11 hours daily for a week.

Another feature was a plagiarism detection mode , integrating OpenAI. I even started with Hugging Face but later pivoted due to size issues. This forced me to learn about vector comparisons and algorithmic matching — a super technical(concepts like abstract syntax trees, Levenshtein distance or difflib) and satisfying experience.

When I’d get stuck, I’d remind myself:

“If I don’t solve this one specific problem, I’m not going to make it — so stop whining and fix it.”

The Bitcoin Chapter: Ordinals, Runes, and Mainnet Nodes

In January, I pushed myself to pick a challenge that no one else had solved in my GSoC org: deploying a token on the Bitcoin blockchain using the new Ordinals + Runes protocol (released April 2024).

It was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. I ran four servers synced to the Bitcoin mainnet, one on regtest, and another running an Ordinals server. I dove deep into how Ordinals and Bitcoin internals work, even reaching out to core maintainers like Greg, ETS, and Json on the Ordicord Discord server to get everything up and running.

Eventually, on Feb 21, 2025 @ 22:40:11 UTC , I successfully etched my token. That experience? Mind-blowing. (Link to token proof here)

This deep dive sparked my interest in Bitcoin. And just when I thought I’d take a breather, I saw a LinkedIn post:

“Summer of Bitcoin applications are open!”

The Summer of Bitcoin Journey

I applied for SoB the very next day. The entry process involved solving 3 technical challenges , each with a 1-week deadline.

The tasks were amazing — they taught me about:

• How Bitcoin transactions are formed
• SegWit
• Multisig wallets
• And more low-level transaction logic

Since I already had experience deploying a Bitcoin node for my GSoC org project, Challenge 1 (setting up regtest) was a breeze.

I completed all three in two weeks and was selected for the next round. They were the hardest two weeks up until then because it involved a lot of learning on the go about the bitcoin blockchain.

Picking the Right Org for SoB in the Proposal Round

By March, my GSoC selection felt locked in. But I had no motivation left for SoB. Life threw in some perspective again, and I realized if I didn’t start contributing, I wouldn’t have a good proposal.

Finding Unchained-Caravan

I started again with only 3 weeks left for proposal submission deadline and explored all the listed SoB orgs and shortlisted based on two things:

1. Number of projects under each org
2. Complexity and fit for me as a dev

Caravan had 3 projects and relatively less competition. It was a monorepo with both packages and a website , which was ideal. I began contributing to the website, then gradually shifted to the core package.

But none of my early PRs were eye-catching. So I made a bold move :

I started building the entire proposed project myself.

Within a week, I pushed 2 working but unrefined PRs that covered 40% of the one of the project proposal listed under Caravan.

The code wasn’t pretty — but it worked. And that’s what open source is about. Someone could’ve even used my code in their proposal — and I’d have been totally fine with it. That’s the beauty of community-driven building.

The Final Results

May 5, 8:30 PM: I was at the gym, just about to hit a leg press set. I checked my email —

I got selected for Summer of Bitcoin.

I was so pumped I had the best workout of my life.

May 8, 11:35 PM: I got the GSoC result. I was already confident by February when my token was etched. Seeing that final confirmation was just the cherry on top.

How I Searched and Selected Organizations (GSoC and SoB)

I went full detective mode.

For GSoC, I connected with people on LinkedIn and just kept asking questions — how they chose their orgs, what tech stacks they used, how they contributed. Then I explored those orgs myself and often landed on different projects within the same org.

For Summer of Bitcoin, it was even more intense. I had much less time, so I relied heavily on willpower. I listed all the organizations and chose the one I genuinely enjoyed working with — one that had a tech stack I was somewhat familiar with, an active community, and relatively less competition. I had to learn Bitcoin concepts from scratch and quickly build something meaningful.

Some tips:

• Use gsocorganisations.dev to explore orgs based on tech stack, difficulty, and history.

How to Write a Strong Proposal (Especially for SoB)

One word: Contributions.

Your proposal is secondary — your code speaks louder. That’s what worked for me in both cases.

Sure, I’ve seen people get selected with 4–5 contributions and killer proposals — but not in the orgs I was in. They all expected meaningful code contributions first.

So if you’re spending hours tweaking the formatting of your proposal and haven’t merged a PR yet — rethink your priorities.