As we embark on a brand new decade(!), the Ecosystem Assist Program staff needed to talk to a few of the latest progress, transition and studying across the program, and share particulars of our 2019 monetary allocations.
What’s ESP?
The Ecosystem Assist Program (ESP) is the arm of the Ethereum Basis targeted on offering help to groups all through the Ethereum ecosystem. This contains monetary and non-financial help. ESP is an growth of the Grants program, which beforehand targeted totally on financial help.
Bettering Our Processes
The 2019 Ethereum Foundation Spring Update first previewed a few of our plans for evolving from Grants to ESP. Since that transition, we’ve continued to award simple grants, and helped make connections to different potential sources of funding the place an EF grant was not a match. Now we have additionally facilitated recommendation from trade specialists, neighborhood publicity, entry to cloud companies and different infrastructure, and extra.
During the last 9 months we’ve integrated suggestions to refine our software course of and made numerous modifications, together with:
- A standardized course of for reviewing ESP purposes
- An expanded group of area specialists obtainable to assist with peer evaluation of purposes, or to advise candidates on their tasks
- Elevated deal with offering candidates with 1:1 suggestions
- Labored extra carefully with accepted tasks to create clearer targets, roadmaps, and mutual expectations
Increasing Communications
With these stronger processes in place, we’re making an effort to extend visibility and to draw extra high-quality purposes. To that finish, we’re making some modifications to how we talk, from enhancing present channels to including some shiny new pages to the ESP website.
Some modifications are modest, however we hope that they’ll be useful in each preserving the neighborhood knowledgeable and higher making ready potential candidates. On the entrance web page now you can observe the most recent information about ESP and see which occasions we’ll be taking part in, whether or not nearly or in particular person following the present and ongoing well being disaster.
We’ve added to our FAQ, improved our inquiry varieties, and most significantly debuted some new web page banners that we expect actually tie the room collectively 😎. Maintain an eye fixed out for much more additions within the coming months, and common updates to present content material!
We’ve additionally added a Wishlist to deliver consideration to particular areas like safety, Eth2, and privateness, the place we’d wish to see extra purposes. This record is not a declaration of what is essential to the ecosystem, or perhaps a assertion of ESP’s priorities. Nonetheless, we hope the record serves as inspiration for anybody trying to get entangled! As at all times, we wish to strike a stability between demonstrating the vary of efforts that ESP helps whereas additionally embracing potential contributors working exterior of the particular areas we have outlined.
On the reporting entrance, we might be publishing common weblog posts to announce new grant recipients, however a grant is barely the start. Transferring ahead, we’ll even be highlighting what supported groups go on to perform. On the brand new Featured Projects web page, we’ll highlight tasks which might be months or years into the work that was enabled by these grants. We’ll additionally use our weblog and broaden our use of social media to rejoice grant recipients as they obtain milestones and make progress towards their targets.
Monetary Assist in 2019
Whereas we labored to enhance the Ecosystem Assist Program all through 2019, we continued to help tasks throughout the ecosystem. Awarding grants is just one means that we offer that help. There are a lot of wonderful groups that aren’t EF grant recipients, both as a result of they’re already funded or as a result of their explicit focus is simply not the appropriate match for EF funding. Nonetheless, we work to help these very important contributors in no matter means we are able to (for instance, as a bridge to new alternatives or as an amplifier of community results for his or her tasks).
That mentioned, monetary help continues to be a serious a part of how we help the broader Ethereum ecosystem. Over 70 tasks acquired monetary help in 2019. What’s listed beneath particulars newly distributed grants to groups in 2019. It doesn’t embody recurring help, tranches for newly achieved milestones from prior recipients, or funding for different EF groups. For extra particulars on the entire Basis’s work, we’ll share a 2020 Spring Replace within the coming days.
We’re together with names and summaries for every funded venture beneath. Yow will discover a searchable spreadsheet together with hyperlinks to be taught extra about particular person tasks right here.
Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0 growth is in full swing, with many groups working collectively to make Ethereum extra scalable, resilient, safe, and naturally introduce Proof of Stake! We’ve helped to fund a various bunch of two.0 purchasers, in addition to efforts towards interoperability, enhancing reliability and creating developer tooling. Along with the grants listed beneath, Ethereum 2.0 work has been supported by means of recurring funding and different channels.
Eth2 Purchasers: $1,695,000
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| Concord Consumer | Assist for the Concord staff to develop a beacon chain shopper in Java. | https://github.com/harmony-dev/beacon-chain-java |
| Lighthouse | Assist for Sigma Prime’s continued growth of the Lighthouse staking shopper, written in Rust, for the Ethereum 2.0 community. | https://lighthouse.sigmaprime.io/ |
| Nimbus | Assist for Standing’s continued growth of the Nimbus shopper for Ethereum 2.0, designed to carry out effectively on embedded methods and private cell gadgets, together with older smartphones with resource-restricted {hardware}. | https://nimbus.team/ |
| Prysm Consumer | Assist for Prysmatic Labs’s continued growth of the Prysm staking shopper for the Ethereum 2.0 community written in Go. | https://prylabs.net/ |
Eth2 Tooling & Different: $1,459,000
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| Tutorial analysis on CBC Casper | Analysis by Ryuya Nakamura of College of Tokyo and Dominik Harz of Imperial School London to ascertain the theoretical basis of CBC Casper together with the evaluation of safety, efficiency, and incentives. | https://ethresear.ch/u/nrryuya/activity/topics https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/415.pdf https://github.com/LayerXcom/cbc-casper-proof |
| Beacon Fuzz | Differential fuzzer for Section 0 of Eth2. | https://github.com/sigp/beacon-fuzz/ |
| Cryptonext | Survey and report on attainable approaches to aggregatable post-quantum signatures in Eth2. | https://cryptonext-security.com/ |
| Dmitry Khovratovich | Cryptoanalysis of the Lengendre PRF and Proof of Custody building. | https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/862.pdf |
| Herumi | Convey the Herumi BLS library according to the IEFT spec. | https://github.com/herumi/mcl |
| Lodestar | Work by Chainsafe on Eth2 light-client R&D inside their Lodestar javascript shopper; in addition to persevering with to supply help to the Eth2 JS/web-browser ecosystem by growing libraries, tooling, and academic assets. | http://github.com/ChainSafe/Lodestar |
| Nimbus | Grant to Standing, co-funded with Protocol Labs, to construct nim-libp2p, a networking stack in Nim. | https://github.com/status-im/nim-libp2p |
| Runtime Verification | Formal verification of the Eth2 Deposit Contract; constructing the Section 0 Beacon Chain spec in Okay Framework for the needs of formal verification; and formally verifying Accountable Security and Believable Liveness towards the Okay Beacon Chain. | |
| VDF analysis—hybrid prover | Analysis on the soundness and efficiency of a hybrid Wesolowski-Pietrzak VDF prover. | |
| VDF: Quantity Idea Assertion | Show a quantity theoretic assertion which suggests an info theoretic decrease certain for modular squaring. | |
| Whiteblock | Ethereum 2.0 community testing and testnet/interoperability help: evaluation of the libp2p gossipsub implementation, working with implementors to assist refine the networking stack and specification, and advancing interoperability efforts. | https://whiteblock.io/ |
Eth 1.x: $487,000
Very important work continues on enhancing Ethereum because it exists as we speak, with upgrades being labored on by 1.x contributors to assist enhance Ethereum within the fast time period. Targeted upon areas embody Stateless Ethereum, enhancing developer expertise, growing node shopper variety, making certain that operating a full node stays sustainable, and making ready a path to the two.0 rollout. As with Eth2, these are simply the allocations that took the type of grants. We’ll share extra about different supported efforts – together with Geth, further 1.x and Stateless analysis, and extra in later organizational updates.
Layer 2: $1,211,000
Layer 2 options allow all kinds of purposes that may in any other case be too costly, sluggish, sophisticated, or simply not attainable to implement immediately on the Ethereum base layer. 2019 was an thrilling 12 months throughout which groups and people throughout the neighborhood got here collectively to make large strides towards making Ethereum extra helpful and scalable. This work is essential within the close to time period, however simply as invaluable for the long run. Eth 2.0 will nonetheless profit from the improved privateness, scalability, and suppleness provided by Layer 2.
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| Connext | Aligning Connext cost hubs with generalized State Channel unification venture. | https://github.com/ConnextProject/indra, https://connext.network |
| Cryptoeconomics Labs | Plasma Chamber, an OVM-inspired, basic objective layer 2 software framework | https://www.cryptoeconomicslab.com/ |
| LeapDAO | Plasma Leap: a Extra Viable Plasma design which allows execution of sensible contract performance on plasma utilizing EVM enforcer, a computation verification engine that enables for enforcement of off-chain execution. | https://leapdao.org/ |
| Matter Labs | Productionizing Plasma Ignis, a SNARK-driven zk-rollup implementation. | https://matter-labs.io/ |
| PISA Analysis | Normal accountable watchtower system for state channels and decentralized finance protocols, which allows events to rent an accountable service to look at the off-chain protocols and on-chain contracts on their behalf. | https://www.pisa.watch/ |
| Plasma Group | Analysis into generalized plasma, Optimistic Rollup, and OVM (Optimistic Digital Machine). | https://plasma.group/ |
| Twitch Performs Pokemon on Plasma | Check suite for educational establishments and researchers to check financial and coordination theories of decentralized governance fashions. | flexdapps.com |
| Unified State Channels | A joint grant to Prototypal, Magmo and L4 analysis aimed on the unification of State Channels efforts. Along with merging efforts already in progress, contributors labored collectively to rewrite, optimize and do formal modeling of the underlying protocol; design a demo app; and design a resilient shopper that gives fund restoration ensures to customers. | statechannels.org |
Cryptography and Zero Data Proofs: $426,000
There’s extra work than ever going into analysis and growth on cryptography and 0 data proofs. These efforts strengthen the basic constructing blocks of the protocol, opening up new prospects for scaling, privateness, and safety. 2019 was all about sensible steps ahead, with instruments being constructed that make developments extra accessible to builders with out requiring a sophisticated understanding cryptography.
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| AirAssembly | Language for encoding Algebraic Intermediate Illustration (AIR), making STARK programming extra accessible by enabling succinct proofs of computational integrity in zk-STARKS. | https://ethresear.ch/t/airassembly-a-low-level-language-for-zk-starks/6419/4 |
| Aztec | Cryptographic building which permits nested composition of a batch of Aztec vary proofs inside a zk-SNARK circuit, to allow future growth of privateness preserving rollups. | https://www.aztecprotocol.com/ |
| Circom | A sturdy and scalable language for advanced arithmetic circuit design. | https://github.com/iden3/circom |
| FPGA Snark Prover | Bettering effectivity of zk-SNARK proof creation by offloading operations to an FPGA (discipline programmable information array). | |
| Kestrel Institute | ACL2 Ethereum shopper and AXE equivalence checker to formally confirm cryptographic primitives (together with MiMC, PiMC, Edison hash, BLAKE2) relevant to numerous makes use of of zk-SNARKS. | https://www.kestrel.edu/home/projects/fv-of-r1cs/index.html |
| Legendre PRF Bounty | The Legendre PRF (pseudo-random perform) is required to allow secret-shared validators utilizing multi-party computations. These bounties encourage extra analysis on key restoration assaults, to extend confidence in utilizing this cryptographic primitive. | https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/862.pdf, https://legendreprf.org/bounties |
| MACI | Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure: a collusion resistance scheme that drastically will increase the chance concerned in shopping for or promoting votes. | https://github.com/barryWhiteHat/maci |
| Platon | Validation and implementation of the “Proof of Custody” scheme, which permits secret shared validators by way of multi-party computation, enabling trustless staking swimming pools in addition to redundancy to lower the chance of getting slashed on account of compromised {hardware} or software program. | https://github.com/PlatONnetwork/proof_of_custody |
| Statebox | Analysis into utilizing class concept to show diagrams, securely and compositionally, into zk-SNARK circuits. | www.statebox.org |
Developer Expertise: $1,322,000
Ethereum opened up an entire new design house for purposes. As builders have explored this house, inevitably they’ve found new ache factors and required new instruments. We’re making vital investments in enhancing developer expertise on Ethereum, from enhancing the vary of programming languages, software program libraries, dev tooling, node infrastructure, decentralized storage, messaging, and extra. These developments allow builders to do extra, extra simply, to allow them to deal with their merchandise relatively than on constructing their very own customized tooling. In the end we would like it to be straightforward – and enjoyable – to construct on Ethereum.
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| Buidler | Extending capabilities for Buidler, a process runner for Ethereum sensible contract builders. | https://buidler.dev/ |
| DeepSEA | Analysis at Yale and Columbia on DeepSEA, a language producing coq proofs to compile formally verified code to the EVM making certain no bugs are launched. | https://certik.org/deepsea_blockchain.html |
| Ethereum on ARM | Customized Linux photos to mechanically flip useful resource constrained gadgets into full Ethereum nodes. | https://github.com/diglos/pi-gen (for ARM32 repository, Raspberry Pi 4 picture), https://github.com/diglos/userpatches (for ARM64 repository, NanoPC-T4 and RockPro64 picture) |
| Moon | EVM and WASM runtimes for formality language in addition to associated libraries, documentation and tutorials. | https://github.com/moonad/, https://sunshinecybernetics.com/, https://github.com/moonad/Formality/blob/master/DOCUMENTATION.md |
| NomicLabs | Developer expertise analysis, prioritization, and roadmapping. | https://nomiclabs.io/ |
| Play | Decentralized database for verified Solidity code. | https://playproject.io/play-ed/ |
| py-libp2p | Capstone venture by 4 College of Pennsylvania seniors to develop a python implementation of libp2p, utilized by IPFS and Eth2, and accompanying easy-to-use toolsets | https://github.com/libp2p/py-libp2p |
| Shadowlands | Framework for constructing terminal-based Ethereum apps with a textual content UI, as an alternative choice to apps with web-based UI. | https://github.com/kayagoban/shadowlands |
| Solhint | Continued growth and added plugins for Solhint, a software for linting solidity code to determine unhealthy coding practices. | github: https://github.com/protofire/solhint/, Firm profile: https://protofire.io |
| Solidity Protection | Enhancements to the solidity-coverage software, which offers a means for Solidity builders to measure the accuracy of their javascript take a look at suites, obtain protection reporting and extra. | https://github.com/sc-forks/solidity-coverage |
| SOLL | Second State’s LLVM primarily based compiler, a yul various to assist transition Solidity to eWASM. | https://github.com/second-state/SOLL, https://www.secondstate.io/ |
| Swarm | Analysis and growth on Swarm, a decentralized storage answer. | https://swarm.ethereum.org/ |
| Tenderly | Enhancements to Buidler’s console.log performance. | https://tenderly.dev/ |
| Web3J | Improvement and upkeep of the Web3j library to be able to present an improved expertise for Java, Android and Kotlin builders. | https://blog.web3labs.com/web3j-ethereum-foundation-grant-update, https://www.web3labs.com/web3j, https://github.com/web3j/web3j |
Person Expertise: $213,000
We’re at all times looking out for common instruments and upgrades that cut back friction for the tip person with out compromising decentralization or any of the opposite issues that make Ethereum particular. Addressing widespread ache factors like fuel prices, identification administration, handle readability, and interoperability makes it simpler for dapp builders all over the place to onboard customers.
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| Eauth | Oauth2 appropriate authentication service framework primarily based on Ethereum. | https://github.com/pelith/node-eauth-server |
| ENS Basis | Continuation funding for Ethereum Identify Service, decentralized Web naming infrastructure on Ethereum. | https://ens.domains/ |
| Ethereum Pockets SDK | Abstraction layer which permits dapp builders to simply combine with a number of wallets. | https://dappsdk.io/ |
| Everest | Id and credential system which permits identification claims equivalent to KYC standing to be securely revealed, shared, and verified on Ethereum Mainnet. | https://everest.org |
| Gasoline Station Community | Meta transactions commonplace and decentralized community of relay nodes to deal with fuel charges on behalf of customers. | https://gasstation.network/ |
| POAP | Subsidization of Proof of Attendance Protocol fuel prices at Devcon. | http://www.poap.xyz |
Neighborhood and Schooling: $422,000
Merely put, Ethereum wouldn’t exist with out its neighborhood and the people who work to develop and enrich our ecosystem. These groups deliver individuals collectively each in particular person and on-line, enhance the range of our international neighborhood, and assist to construct a common data base by making academic supplies free and obtainable to all.
Oblique Funding $484,000
A brand new type of ecosystem wants new methods of fascinated by funding! The Ethereum ecosystem depends on open supply builders and impartial thinkers to thrive. To this finish, we glance to help novel methods of funding proficient contributors exterior the normal buildings of corporations and organizations; grants and VCs; contracts and salaries. This class is all about entrusting assets to the neighborhood.
| Grant | Description | Extra Information |
|---|---|---|
| Gitcoin | Funding for operations, bounties and CLR matching. | https://gitcoin.co/ |
| MolochDAO | Funding for the launch of MolochDAO in an effort to diversify growth funding. | https://molochdao.com/ |
| UNICEF | ETH and BTC donations to UNICEF’s Crypto-denomintated Fund to help blockchain improvements within the growing world and encourage the usage of cryptocurrencies (with out changing them into fiat). | https://www.unicef.org/ |
We’re happy with the whole lot our 2019 cohort achieved, and we’re forging forward in 2020 with renewed vitality and objective. As at all times, large because of the neighborhood in your ardour and help, and we stay up for preserving you updated with the most recent from the ESP staff! 🦄
