Introducing the Latest EF Grants Cohort for May 2018

We appreciate everyone who applied, and we are thrilled to reveal the most recent Ethereum Foundation grants! We supported 22 beneficiaries totaling $2.84M.

Submit your application for the upcoming round! 🦄

Overview

The Ethereum initiative aims to foster valuable dapps and smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, with the Ethereum Foundation’s mission being to empower developers through top-notch R&D, developer experience, and education. In spite of the initial promise of the ecosystem, significant progress remains, and we are committed to collaborating with the community to achieve tangible advancements.

These grants will support teams diligently engaging in research & development to benefit the entire ecosystem and contribute to making Ethereum more scalable, practical, and secure. These initiatives do not involve ICOs, no token sales, and are solely focused on creating valuable products and experiences.

Scalability may involve executing sharding, plasma or state channels either with existing teams or independently. Alternatively, it might include optimizing geth/parity or developing alternative clients. Usability pertains to enhancing the developer experience (e.g., static analyzers, linters, development frameworks, mobile SDKs) or the user experience. Security encompasses activities from auditing current contracts to offering tools that prevent programming mistakes to aiding in the development of alternative second-layer languages focused on security. We are also starting to connect with the product/design community to address product and UX design challenges, including subjects like key management, Ethereum payments UX, and onboarding processes.

Lastly, we would like to remind ourselves of the foundation of the Ethereum project: ardent open-source developers contributing to the project in their free time. Embracing this spirit, we’ve launched a “hackternship” grant for community members proposing a significant side project associated with Ethereum.

What we offer for grantees

1. Non-dilutive funding
2. Technical guidance
3. Access to a broader user base
4. Platform to showcase your work

We aspire to equip Ethereum teams with extended runway, counsel, and resources to concentrate solely on developing valuable products and experiences.

Additionally, many of these grants may be complemented by further funding and/or collaboration upon reaching specific milestones. We believe that this will create effective feedback mechanisms for the ecosystem’s impact.

Grantee List: May 2018

Scalability:

Perun – $250K. Research & development on state channels.

PISA (by Patrick McCorry et al.) – $250K. Research & development on state channels.

Sprites Implementation (by Enuma) – $200K. Implementation of payment channels.

General Computation on Plasma (by Parsec Labs) – $50K. Implementation of plasma.

Plasma (by Kyokan) – $50K. Implementation of plasma.

Plasma (by Fourth State) – $32K. Implementation of plasma.

Usability:

DevEx grants*:

WalletConnect (by Balance.io) – $150K. Interoperability between web dapps and mobile wallets.

iOS Dev Kit (by Ackee) – $50K. iOS + Ethereum starter project (MVVM support).

EtherKit (by vault.io) – $50K. Framework for iOS development (Swift).

vipnode – $35K. Incentivization for light clients.

BrowsEth – $25K. Library in Typescript for browsers.

#buidl grants**:

ENS Foundation – $1M. Until now, the Ethereum Foundation has provided support to ENS by employing developers in-house, but ENS has reached a level of maturity to stand as a separate entity. We look forward to further collaboration with this excellent project/team ahead.

Pop Wallet –  $100K. Wallet for browsers, open-source.

Trust Wallet – $30K. Mobile wallet that is open-source.

Security:

Zeppelin – $430K. Audit of Solidity compiler (co-sponsored with Augur)

Cedille – $50K. Research and development on formal verification of smart contracts.

SecureEth – $30K. Standards for the development of smart contracts.

Gitcoin – $25K. Platform for bug bounties.

Hackternship:

Flint Programming Language – $10K. Language for smart contracts with a focus on safety.

Richard Littauer – $10K. Documentation for developer onboarding.

Chris Spannos – $10K. Documentation for developer onboarding.

Chinese Academy of Sciences (Yi Sun et al.) – $5K. Research and development for sharding.

* DevEx Grant – Enhances developer experience (“advantageous” for developers).

** #buidl Grant – Develops for the end user (“advantageous” for users).

 

Wishlist for forthcoming grants

In subsequent rounds of grants, we aim to see an increase in applications across these sectors:

1. Scalability
   
   1. Additional implementations of payment and/or state channels 💚💙
   2. Further plasma implementations 💚💙
   3. Increased sharding implementations 💚
   4. Enhancements to existing clients like geth & parity 💚💙
   5. A tokenless “Lightning Network” for Ethereum 💙
   6. Contracts for tokenless Casper staking pools 🔥
   7. Research and development in WebAssembly 🔥

2. Usability
   
   1. Enhance management of private keys and transactions in Ethereum 💚💙
   2. Alternative designs for wallets/clients 💙
   3. Standards and portability across wallets 💙🔥
   4. Tools that elevate developer experience 💚💙
   5. Enhanced documentation & educational videos for developers/users 💚💙
   6. Tokenless products for end users 🔥
   7. Development of Vyper 🔥
   8. Increased focus on high-level languages with security in mind 🔥

3. Security
   
   1. Audits for security on Solidity and Vyper 💙
   2. Audits for smart contracts 💚
   3. In particular, assessments for ERC20, ERC223, ERC721, multisig wallets, vaults 🔥
   4. Resources that safeguard against insecure code 💚💙

4. Hackternships
   
   1. Already employed (or studying)? That’s not an issue! Propose a challenge you’d like to address and we’re willing to sponsor a 10-week $10K externship for your free time working on Ethereum. 💚💙(Successful initiatives will be highlighted at a developer conference. We are also aiming to recruit and invest from this pool of sideline projects. If you’re unsure where to begin, refer to the list above.)

💚– Supported in March 2018 cohort
💙– Supported in May 2018 cohort
🔥– Recently added to wishlist

 

Next steps

This is a continuous grant initiative, and we would like to encourage the wider community to reach out to us with your proposals (application link).

Ethereum is created by the community for the community, and we’re here to assist you. Thank you for creating!

Best,
Ethereum Foundation Team
5.2.18

(Mainly rephrased from first post)