Is Shopify Foundations Certification a mandatory prerequisite for publishing Shopify App?

[pmaierean]

Does anyone know if all Shopify Foundations Certification is a mandatory prerequisite to take by any Shopify Partner wanting to only publish Applications on the Shopify App Store?

I am new to Shopify and would like to assess the effort it takes to be in the position to publish applications on Shopify App store successfully. The https://academy.shopify.com/path/foundations-certification seem to be a demanding route requiring at least 10,400 minutes to complete (or 173 hours ). That is 23 of 8h working days to complete on going through marketing material and taking 8 quiz.

[pmaierean]

Such a requirement is not listed for the review of apps published the Shopify App store as per https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/store/requirements