What I Learned During the SheFi Program — And Why I Recommend It

I started my journey into the world of crypto with a lot of doubts. I thought:

"If anything, I’d invest in ETH, not Bitcoin."

But even then, I was concerned about the environmental impact.

Reading more, I discovered that Ethereum had transitioned to a more sustainable consensus mechanism — Proof of Stake (PoS) — unlike Bitcoin's Proof of Work (PoW). That helped ease my conscience a bit.

But that was just the first hurdle.

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🛠️ Setting Up: Wallets and Exchanges

I set up my wallet and opened an account on a crypto exchange. That part was fairly smooth — I'm a software engineer, so I know my way around tech.

Still, I found myself uneasy about usability and safety. Crypto addresses are long, unreadable strings, and one wrong character could mean losing your funds forever. We’re all human — and humans make mistakes.

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🤯 Trying to Make Sense of the Lingo

The terminology was intimidating:

• Second Layer solutions
• Why did I have to choose from so many networks when transferring tokens (and the anxiety of losing money with the wrong one!)
• What are NFTs, bridges, swapping? Why do they matter, and how do they work?

I kept reading, but I often felt unsure whether I was “getting it right.”

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🎓 Enter SheFi: The 13th Cohort

Then I got an invitation to join SheFi’s 13th Cohort — and everything started to make sense.

From the first lecture, things clicked. The program is built around learning by doing, with quests that reinforce every concept.

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🔑 What I Learned

Some of my biggest takeaways:

• Web2 vs. Web3 (Spoiler: Web3 gives more ownership to users.)
• The Blockchain Trilemma: balancing ⚖️ Scalability, 🛡️ Security, and 🕸️ Decentralization
• How to mint NFTs
• How Swapping, Stablecoins, and Bridging work — and why they matter

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💡 Why I Recommend It

If you’re a woman, identify as one, or as a non-binary person, are curious about crypto, overwhelmed by the jargon, or just want a safe, inclusive space to learn and grow —

SheFi is for you.

You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be open to learning.

🤓 How I will continue Learning and a Funny Story

During the program, I saw that an ETH Hackathon was happening in Prague at the end of May and decided to enroll. I set up my profile, and a guy contacted me to be part of the team. The funny part: They thought I was also a guy 😂. But, yeah, the truth is that in tech there are more guys than women, so how would they know? Anyway, I had to explain that I was a woman. I am looking pretty much forward to this experience and I'll be writing about it here as well.