Q4 2023 Allocation Insights: What to Expect

Community & education AAvolution House Istanbul Community-led event hosted in Istanbul, Türkiye aimed at advancing account abstraction (AA) standards, concepts, and initiatives for widespread acceptance. Community & education BuildETH Patterns Developer event focused on Ethereum that examined the leading web3 development practices, held in San Francisco, California. Community & education Ethereum Costa Rica Day Occasion in San José, Costa Rica concentrating on welcoming users and developers while addressing subjects like public goods, cryptography, and Solidity. Community & education ETH Macedonia Endorsement of ETH Macedonia’s grassroots efforts, which involve engaging with the community on Discord and setting up gatherings in Skopje, Macedonia. Community & education Ethereum Lima Day Summit in Lima, Peru aimed at onboarding new Ethereum users through introductory talks and training developers with technical sessions and workshops. Community & education Eurocrypt 2024 Academic conference uniting cryptography and IT security researchers from both academia and industry. Community & education Fast Software Encryption (FSE) Conference 2024 Scholarly conference concentrating on fast and secure primitives for symmetric cryptography that encompasses a diverse range of practical and theoretical issues. Community & education Global Governance Gathering 2 Event held in Istanbul, Türkiye covering subjects pertaining to governance and the associated technologies. Community & education India Ecosystem Development Manbir Singh Development of the Ethereum ecosystem in India, concentrating on outreach to developers, community organizers, and academic institutions. Twitter, Telegram Community & education International Workshop on Formal Methods for Blockchains (FMBC) 2024 Workshop aimed at examining the advantages and constraints of formal methodologies for blockchain technology. Community & education Nethermind Summit Istanbul Builder event highlighting technical investigations into the fundamentals of blockchain: security, scalability, and decentralization. Community & education Onboarding to Ethereum Web3 Academy Complimentary educational project aimed at teaching high school students in smaller towns across Serbia about Ethereum. Community & education Rhino Review 0xarmagan Publication dedicated to providing home stakers with updates on the latest advancements in Ethereum staking and distributed validator technology (DVT). Community & education SNARK Fundamentals

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Errol Drummond Online education and resources designed to elucidate the fundamental principles and modular elements intrinsic to zero knowledge (ZK) systems from foundational concepts. Community & education Southeast Asia Run-A-Validator Workshops Samuel Chong A series of workshops aimed at nurturing the grassroots solo node operator community in Southeast Asia. Community & education Vyper Day An event dedicated to showcasing the latest advancements within the Vyper language and developer tools, taking place in Istanbul, Türkiye. Community & education ZK Auditing Fellowship yAcademy An entirely free ZK auditing fellowship targeted at seasoned developers, featuring rigorous ZK audits of both pre-production and production code. Community & education ZK Hack Istanbul A hackathon held in Istanbul, Türkiye to create new ventures that illustrate the capabilities of ZK technology. Community & education #aPRENDOcripto Latam Proof of Integrity An educational initiative offering training in blockchain technology, Ethereum-related resources, and financial literacy for at-risk communities across 14 Latin American nations. Consensus layer Kurtosis Introduce Persistent Volume Claims (PVC) compatibility into the Kurtosis Kubernetes feature set, enabling devops and others to restart instances for superior testing and shadowforks. Additionally, this serves as a precursor to facilitating synchronization of public devnets and testnets. Consensus layer PBS/ePBS Research & Prototyping Stefan Lindberg A collection of articles detailing the current state of proposer-builder separation (PBS) and the latest updates regarding enhancements to PBS and ePBS, including optimistic relays, pepc-boost, MEV-Boost+, and MEV-Boost++. Consensus layer ROP-6: Stackelberg Attacks & MEV Daji Landis & Nikolaj I. Schwartzbach Study on the implications of Stackelberg attacks on miner extractable value, aimed at shedding light on the complexities of blockchain games and the careful design required for effective transaction fee mechanisms. Consensus layer Towards a Comprehensive Formalization of Ethereum’s Economics Brett Palatiello Developing a macroeconomic framework for Ethereum with an emphasis on staking dynamics and equilibria. The objective is to gain insights into the impacts of liquid staking and related mechanisms (e.g., restaking) to mitigate their adverse effects on stake concentration. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Acceleration Program Ecosystem Development & Coordination Paul Yu Development and coordination of the ecosystem for PSE‘s Acceleration Program, aimed at inviting exceptional talent into the realms of ZK and cryptographic technologies. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Acceleration Program & ZK Contribution Program “““html
Mo Jalil Optimizing the Acceleration Program’s workflows and expanding the academic curriculum of the ZK Contribution Program to furnish robust, open-source educational materials for the community. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Chiquito Rute Figueiredo & Steve Wang Chiquito is an advanced structured language for executing zero knowledge proof (ZKP) applications. The majority of ZKP domain specific languages (DSLs) are predicated on drafting constraints, witness generation, and some level of abstraction for DRY-like templates or components. Chiquito facilitates developers to conceptualize in more advanced and organized abstractions than most ZKP DSLs, without compromising on performance. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Daimo ERC-4337 smart contract wallet functioning solely on stablecoins, which is non-custodial and does not necessitate any seed phrases. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Efficient Batch Validation of ECDSA Signatures Execute an efficient batch validation of ECDSA signatures utilizing P-256, as a component of a larger initiative to construct a circuit within a user-friendly DSL, employing aggregation- or recursion-friendly proof systems to yield succinct verification proofs. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Email Wallet Sora Suegami, Aayush Gupta, Elo Mukoro, & Wataru Contract wallet that utilizes emails enabling users to transmit crypto assets effortlessly by sending emails without any actions required from recipients (powered by ZK Email). Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Folding Schemes Research Pierre Examining contemporary folding schemes research and improving the development experience with the folding-schemes library. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs FRI Security Research & Educational Resources Colin Roberts & Waylon Jepsen Study on the security of algebraic hash functions and Fast Reed-Solomon Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity (FRI), alongside creating a curriculum for acquiring the necessary mathematics to comprehend ZK cryptography and its fundamentals. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Front-End Development for PSE Projects Kalidou Diagne Front-end development for PSE projects, including the PSE website, educational courses, and jubmoji.quest. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Groth16 Verifier in Fe onurinanc User-friendly Groth16 Verifier crafted in Fe that can be utilized by Circom users to create ZK applications. GitHub, Twitter Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Jubmoji Initiative launched at Devconnect
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Istanbul that employs NFC chips to distribute ZK-friendly Baby JubJub signatures to attendees as a means of verifiable private information, facilitating an educational opportunity regarding the potential of individual control over private information through ZKPs. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs MPC Research 0xvon Investigating multi-party computation (MPC), particularly Threshold ECDSA, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and publicly verifiable MPC, which will be compiled into explanatory articles. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs NFC x ZK Development Facilitated the technical advancement of PSE‘s Devconnect Istanbul NFC x ZK activations, including Jubmoji. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs On-Chain AAA for DePin Enhancing and deploying a dapp that signifies the on-chain authentication, administration, and authorization (AAA) for decentralized web networks. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs pylookup Yu-Ming Hsu, Jing-Jie Wang, Paul Yu, & Harry Liu Creating a straightforward, educational Python lookup argument. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs P-256 WebAuthn Circom Implementation SleepingShell P-256 WebAuthn Circom implementation that will be incorporated into a smart contract wallet capable of verifying WebAuthn ES256 attestation within a zkSNARK verifier. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Starky Implementation of BLS12-381 Signatures Electron Labs Developing ZK-recursion circuits for BLS12-381 signatures utilizing the plonky2 framework. Twitter Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs T-FHE Research Alex Kampa (AZKR Research) Expanded upon existing documentation of FHE over the torus (T-FHE) to render the information more accessible to beginners with minimal mathematical expertise. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs TLSN-ONRAMP Jomo & Ryan MacArthur A privacy-preserving mobile web application that enables anonymous users to trade fiat for ETH utilizing TLSNotary. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Torus-Based Cryptography Techniques Research Robert Granger Investigating the relevance of existing and possibly novel torus-based cryptography methodologies to ascertain the efficacy of Whisk and Curdleproofs when applied within the target group G_T, regarding both time and space efficiency. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Towards Efficient ZKML Models Saeyoon Oh Inquiry into the fundamental principles critical for establishing the integrity of machine learning models in a zero-knowledge context.

“`learning (ML) frameworks utilizing ZKPs. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs UniRep Halo2 R&D Bhargav Annem Development of Circom-STARK prover and FHE-centric investigation for UniRep Protocol. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Unsound Halo2 Jaewon In Create a repository containing minor Halo2 circuits, each exhibiting a distinct soundness issue and an associated resolution. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZK Email Aayush Gupta, Sora Suegami, & Elo Mukoro A protocol designed for generating email proofs by selectively revealing information present in the email. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZK-Friendly ML Model Explorations Saeyoon Oh Investigating various ML algorithms suitable for ZK applications that can handle the Heart Failure Prediction Dataset and assessing them against each other. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZK Learning Grant Seongsu Jeon Study of Liam Eagen’s Elliptic Curve Inner Product, inner pairing product, and lattice-based ZKP, which will be compiled and disseminated publicly. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZKML Benchmarking Jingchi Zhang Creating a ZKML benchmarking tool that assists developers in identifying trade-offs and performance characteristics among assorted frameworks. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs zkMobileNet Semar Augusto Execute a MobileNet model through Nova and conduct evaluations on various quantization techniques applicable to a neural network. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZKP Mathematics Theories Seminars Matan Prasma (AZKR Research) Regular seminars focused on a mathematical curriculum from the foundations of sets, groups & fields to the pairing construction within Elliptic Curves. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZK Soundedness Inquiry Tomoki Ono Investigation on how R1CS-based ZKP systems attain soundedness, which will be distilled into explanatory articles in both English and Japanese. Developer experience & tooling AA MEV Monitor BlockPI Network An AA exploration tool concentrating on maximal extractable value (MEV) analysis and data visualization that provides essential AA statistics and evaluates incidences of bundler transaction frontrun and AA MEV. Developer experience & tooling Fe Language Server Create a language server implementation for Fe and incorporate it within the VSCode extension. Developer experience & tools Fe Repository Contributions Saif Katout Assistance for contributions to the Fe repository. Developer experience & tools Iron Wallet A developer-focused wallet that includes standard functionalities found in crypto wallets, combined with additional integrated tools to enhance builders’ development processes. Developer experience & tools Solhint v4 Protofire DAO Ongoing development of Solhint, a public Solidity linter. Execution layer Account Abstraction Developer Team Assisting the AA developer group’s persistent efforts on ERC-4337 and its execution, along with infrastructure, documentation, ecosystem support, RIP-7560 (native AA), and further AA research initiatives. Execution layer Nethermind 2023 Internship Program Support for Nethermind’s internship program, with an emphasis on essential protocol contributors. Execution layer ROP-7: Economic Models of Signature Aggregation in Account Abstraction Davide Rezzoli Exploring the framework of a mechanism designed to align the incentives of Aggregators and Users in AA, where the Aggregator is prompted to maximize aggregation while the User pays the minimal necessary fee to compensate the Aggregator for its services. Execution layer Verkle Tries Implementation Support OnlyDust Assistance for OnlyDust community contributors to advance their work on a Verkle Tries implementation for Hyperledger Besu. General growth & assistance African Digital Repatriation Project Mulenga Kapwepwe African digital repatriation initiative aimed at discovering a method to bring African artifacts (and the ticket proceeds they produce) closer to their communities of origin, forming part of the Next Billion Fellowship Cohort #3. General growth & assistance Data Collection Grants Round Grants round designed to stimulate research and development regarding data collection and visualization of the Ethereum network. General growth & assistance Road to Devcon Grants Round Grants round aimed at bolstering the expansion of local Ethereum communities, projects, and initiatives in Southeast Asia. General growth & assistance Technical Challenges in Enterprise Ethereum Ongoing investigation of challenges and solutions for enterprise users of Ethereum across areas such as decentralized identity, alignment with NIST standards, Baseline protocol specifications, and layer 2 standards and guidelines. General growth & assistance UNICEF CryptoFund Financial instrument that enables UNICEF to accept, hold, and distribute cryptocurrency to enhance operational efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and transparency. Other IC3 A scholarly blockchain research initiative based at Cornell Tech, encompassing researchers from various universities aiming to elevate blockchain science to prominence and facilitate blockchain innovation through code. Other Security Alliance (SEAL) Infrastructure for the common good that promotes collaboration among security experts, protocols, and the community to launch ambitious and significant security initiatives.