We are thrilled to announce the outcomes of the initial phase of grants from the Ethereum Foundation.
As a reminder, the Ethereum initiative aims to back valuable dapps and smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, and the objective of the Ethereum Foundation is to enable developers with exceptional R&D, developer experience, and education. Even with the early potential of the ecosystem, we still have a significant journey ahead, and we are committed to collaborating with the community to foster tangible advancements.
These grants will energize the teams diligently engaged in research & development to support the entire ecosystem. Additionally, we aspire that these grants will communicate to the community the elements that we perceive as lacking and in need of additional backing. In other words, the Foundation exists to assist teams and individuals striving to avert a tragedy of the commons.
This year, we will intensify our collaboration with the community to enhance Ethereum’s scalability, utility, and security. Therefore, despite this grant initiative being launched two months ago as a strictly scalability-oriented program, we resolved to widen the support to include projects that are excelling in scalability, usefulness and security. These initiatives have no ICOs, no token sales, and concentrate solely on developing valuable products and experiences.
Scalability can manifest as the implementation of sharding, plasma, or state channels, whether with existing teams or independently. It may also encompass optimizing geth/parity or creating alternative clients. Usefulness focuses on enhancing the developer experience (e.g., static analyzers, linters, development frameworks, mobile SDKs, documentation, Solidity/Vyper development) or exploring innovative dapps that offer utility to the end user. Security can involve auditing current contracts, creating tools that prevent common programming errors, or contributing to alternative second-layer languages aimed at security.
We are also starting to collaborate with the design community to address product and UX design challenges. For instance, key management, Ethereum payments UX, and onboarding processes are critical areas that require significant enhancements for mainstream adoption. We intend to fund additional design studies, recruit, and connect skilled designers with promising teams in the sector.
Lastly, we want to remind ourselves of the origins of the Ethereum project: passionate open-source developers dedicating their spare time to contribute to the project. In that spirit, we have initiated a “hackternship” grant for community members proposing an impactful side project related to Ethereum.
Grant Recipient List
Here are the first Ethereum Foundation grant recipients:
L4 Research – Scalability Grant – $1.5M. Research on state channels.
Runtime Verification – Security Grant – $500K. Formal verification of Casper contract.
ETHGlobal – DevEx Grant* – $200K. World-class developer conferences for Ethereum
Prysmatic Labs – Scalability Grant – $100K. Implementation of sharding.
DDA – #buidl Grant** – $100K. Tokenless decentralized derivatives network + R&D on state channels
Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Scalability Grant – $50K. Simulation of sharding.
Plasma Taiwan Dev – Scalability Grant – $25K. Implementation of plasma.
Ethers.js – DevEx Grant – $25K. Alternative to Web3.js.
Turbo Geth – Scalability Grant – $25K. Optimization of Geth.
Solium – DevEx Grant – $10K. Static analyzer for Solidity.
Alex Komarov – Design Grant – $10K. UX study for key management
(Anonymous) – Hackternship – $10K. Deterministic WebAssembly.
Ankit Raj – Hackternship – $10K. Technical documentation for Geth and Solidity.
* DevEx Grant – Enhances developer experience (“useful” for developers).
** #buidl Grant – Develops for the end user (“useful” for users).
What we offer for teams that secure a grant
- Non-dilutive financing
- Technical consultation
- Access to more users
- Platform to showcase your work
We aim to furnish Ethereum teams with extended runway, guidance, and tools to concentrate solely on creating valuable products and experiences.
Furthermore, numerous grants may lead to extra funding and/or collaboration upon reaching specific milestones. We are convinced this will establish robust feedback loops for impact on the ecosystem.
Wishlist for upcoming grants
In upcoming grant rounds, we desire to see increased applications in these domains:
- Scalability
- Alternative sharding solutions
- Alternate plasma solutions
- Enhancing efficiency of existing clients like geth & parity
- A tokenless “Lightning Network” for Ethereum
- Utility
- UX design research to enhance private key management and transactions in Ethereum
- Alternative wallet/client designs
- Tools that enhance developer experience
- Upgraded documentation & creator/user educational videos
- Security
- Security assessments for Solidity and Vyper
- Smart contract inspections
- Tools that prevent insecure code
- “Hackternships”
- Do you have a job (or education)? No worries! Propose a challenge you wish to tackle, and we are eager to fund a 10-week $10K externship for your spare hours working on Ethereum. Successful projects will be showcased at a developer conference. We also hope to recruit and fund from this pool of side projects.
Next actions
This is a continuous grant initiative, and we would like to encourage the community to approach us with your suggestions (application link).
Ethereum is constructed by the community, for the community, and we are here to assist you. Thank you for your contributions!
Warm regards,
Ethereum Foundation Team
3.7.18