The Privateness & Scaling Explorations group is worked up to announce the winners of the Layer 2 Group Grants 2022.

The Layer 2 Group Grants spherical began on October twenty fourth, 2022 and was open for six weeks. In complete we obtained 130+ proposals and thank every challenge for taking the time to use.
The wishlist compiled sought functions from all areas together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and training.

This chart exhibits share of preliminary candidates by class:

Because of the prime quality of proposals, we raised the finances from an preliminary 750k USD to a complete of 948k USD.

The awarded functions share per class:

Grantees

We congratulate the 22 grantees awarded and current their challenge descriptions damaged down by class:

🔒 Cybersecurity

• Candidelabs – ERC-4337 Public Infrastructure

  • An open supply bundler and a paymaster service as public good infrastructure for ERC-4337 good contracts wallets, layer 2 targeted.

• Quantstamp – Rollup Safety Framework

  • The challenge will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They need to set up a basis for fundamental greatest practices and transparency for these options to help new builders of those methods and allow the group to evaluate the safety dangers of a selected rollup earlier than they use one. Comparable to those who can be found for good contract growth and the very high-level overviews of rollup safety like L2Beat.com. The framework will focus on issues and particulars of escape hatch growth and operational dangers for end-users and builders and set up a constant language for these and different options.

👨‍💻 Consumer Expertise

• Spiro – zkWallet

  • Multi-party wallets (e.g. Gnosis secure multisigs) are a confirmed approach for a gaggle of customers to share management over an account’s digital belongings and behaviors. Sadly, present implementations of multi-party wallets expose the privateness of their complete variety of operators and their related externally owned accounts. The purpose of this challenge is to construct a personal multi-party pockets that shields finish customers by using account abstraction (EIP-4337) and zero-knowledge proofs.

• Kautuk Kundan – Stackr Community

  • Stackr community is an SDK for launching standalone customizable app-specific rollups utilizing acquainted web2-like tooling. It focuses on the core precept of a roll-up, that’s, to run a state machine off-chain and use L1 to retailer transaction particulars. This may be achieved by general-purpose languages that may preserve the app-state off-chain and supply an interface to work together with it, thus appearing as a standalone L2. It permits constructing a brand new class of functions that may have extra freedom over their execution selections.

• ScopeLift – L2 Optimizors

  • Layer 2 networks share safety with main-net by posting transaction name knowledge to Layer 1. Because of this, Layer 2 customers pay their portion of the main-net fuel prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 fuel will be >25,000x costlier than Layer 2 fuel, so paying for name knowledge dominates L2 transaction prices. With customized router contracts that use much less name knowledge than commonplace strategies, we are able to considerably scale back transaction prices to work together with standard protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 permits anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering straightforward instruments. It supplies a simple software that launches your individual Layer 2 with needed instruments—for instance, block explorer, token bridge, monitoring instruments, and so forth.

• ScopeLift – Layer 2 Governance with Versatile Voting

  • Versatile Voting is an extension of the favored Governor system utilized by many DAOs. It permits new sorts of delegation contracts to be written, making it simpler for governance token holders to take part in on-chain votes. One such use case is the topic of this grant: Layer 2 governance voting. Holders of bridged governance tokens might vote from Layer 2, paying the cheaper fuel costs obtainable there. These votes could be trustlessly mirrored on L1 the place the DAO’s Governor system is deployed.

• Clement Walter – Starksheet

  • Starksheet goals to democratize the entry and utilization of on-chain assets (knowledge and logic). It leverages a well-known spreadsheet to assist the consumer question and hyperlink on-chain assets. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and will be queried later-on from some other dApp/contract

• Kristof Gazso – Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler

  • The challenge will embody the event of an ERC-4337 bundler in Typescript and the related modifications to a Geth node for simulation functions in order that the bundler can run on any immediately Geth-compatible chain (which incorporates most L2s) with little modifications. The bundler may even expose the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and preserve an inner mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation will likely be developed.

• Soul Pockets – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets

  • Simple-to-use browser pockets implementation powered by ERC-4337.

📚 Group and Schooling

• Jose Figueroa – L2 en Español
  
  • L2 en Español is an open group that goals to analysis, educate and drive the adoption in all these Ethereum’s scaling options. They concentrate on each builders and new customers of their quest to remain updated with these applied sciences and their utility. We create content material and perform totally different actions from publications to workshops free of charge, whereas supporting the totally different tasks that innovate on this area, whereas sustaining additionally its core neutrality.

• Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
  
  • This will likely be an open-source, community-driven, and academic challenge. This will likely be an internet site for individuals interested by Layer2 however with out prior information about Layer2 or Blockchain. We goal to make use of well-designed diagrams and interactive animation to assist individuals get the concept behind Layer2 in 30mins. Afterward, we’ll information individuals to some real-world Layer2 apps step-by-step and allow them to really feel the advantages of Layer2.

🗄️ Information Evaluation

• Blockscout – Blockscout Block Explorer
  
  • An open-source block explorer is at present wanted for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by many L2 tasks, and extra customizations particular to L2 knowledge necessities will enhance usability. As well as, a brand new interface, options, analytics and developer pleasant enhancements will assist create a extra clear and usable group explorer.

• Quantstamp – Evaluating Rollup Compression
  
  • Compression is commonly neglected when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make knowledge obtainable with the intention to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the tactic for this publication varies, and should embody compressed knowledge. There’s additionally variability within the compression strategies used. This challenge will discover the usage of compression within the rollup setting. First, the challenge will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the strategies which may be used. Second, the challenge will survey present rollups to analyze the approaches which might be really utilized in observe. Third, the challenge will consider approaches proposed or used throughout comparable methods and try to establish why a selected method is used. Lastly, the challenge will use the insights collected with the intention to counsel new approaches for compression of rollup knowledge and pose open issues to the group.

• Diablobench – Efficiency and Safety Analysis of Layer 2 Blockchain Programs
  
  • The College of Sydney and the EPFL have designed a benchmark suite to guage the safety and efficiency of blockchain methods. The primary evaluations in contrast layer 1 blockchains similar to Algorand, Solana and Diem and will likely be printed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This challenge goals at including layer 2 blockchain methods to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to supply the primary in depth and lifelike benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain methods on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • By means of this challenge, we goal to ship a high-quality set of Dashboards that assist allow knowledge scientists, researchers, and all group members to higher perceive Layer 2 Exercise
  • We are going to mixture knowledge throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources similar to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of circumstances, immediately from the challenge APIs/RPCs.
  • We are going to clear and set up this knowledge to supply a collection of shows that may enable the group to visualise modifications throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, hire paid to Ethereum, development in TVL, day by day lively addresses, new addresses, complete addresses, charges paid, and developer exercise based mostly on GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We goal to label good contracts (and finally allow the group to label good contracts) by utilization classes (Native switch, DeFi DEX, DeFi different, NFT, CEX, Stablecoin, ERC20 different, L2 hire, Bridge, Arbitrage/MEV, Utility). This labeling will enable us to research and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive degree and likewise present the “hottest” good contracts within the totally different utilization classes. We’re leveraging identified labels from Dune, Arbiscan, Etherscan, and others.

• L2 Beat – L2 Beat
  
  • Proceed to work on clear and verifiable insights into rising layer two (L2) applied sciences with expanded metrics and training.

📊 Information Visualization

• Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Commonplace for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This challenge will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement with the intention to be thought-about feature-complete within the basic layer two setting. Moreover, our purpose is to suggest and specify a normal API interface that the layer two networks ought to expose to basic block explorers. We envision that such a standardized interface will allow and significantly simplify the event of a number of block explorers that may plug-and-play reusable with all of the layer 2 networks that help the usual. Within the splendid situation, the usual would flip the event of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a challenge that might be accomplished by an skilled group throughout a weekend hackathon. Our purpose will likely be to additionally outline a normal that’s consumer-agnostic. As such, it won’t matter whether or not it’s consumed by a block explorer that’s supplied commercially, is open supply, or doubtlessly even decentralized. The challenge can pay particular consideration to what distinctive layer two knowledge a block explorer ought to present, with an emphasis on these associated to safety of the chains monitored by it.

• Blossom Labs – Blobscan
  
  • The primary explorer for the EIP-4844 shard blob transactions. It indexes and presents them in a searchable format that the consumer can visualize and navigate by means of in a simple approach, offering the required infrastructure to scale Ethereum.

🧮 Cryptography and Zero-knowledge proofs

• Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Daybreak Track (College of California at Berkeley) – Specular
  
  • The preferred optimistic rollups (ORUs) at present, Arbitrum and Optimism, try to increase present Ethereum consumer software program (Geth) to help interactive fraud proof (IFP) development, aiming to reuse prior L1 engineering efforts and replicate EVM semantics at L2. Sadly, to take action they tightly couple their on-chain IFP verifier with a particular consumer program binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This method (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of a number of Ethereum consumer packages, magnifying monocolture failure danger; (2) results in an unnecessarily giant and sophisticated trusted computing base (TCB) that’s tough to independently audit; and, (3) suffers from a frequently-triggered, but opaque improve course of—each additional rising auditing overhead, and complicating on-chain entry management within the long-term.
  • We’re subsequently targeted on constructing a safe, trust-minimized ORU that addresses these issues, whereas preserving scalability and dispute decision effectivity. To take action, we’ve designed an IFP system native to the EVM, that enforces Ethereum’s semi-formally specified semantics [5] exactly on the degree of a single EVM instruction. As part of this work, we constructed Specular, an ORU which leverages Geth—modified minimally with solely 99 lines-of-code to help IFP development—demonstrating the practicality, extensibility and trust-minimal nature of our method.

• Nethermind, Justin Thaler (Georgetown College), Matthew Inexperienced (Johns Hopkins College), and Pratyush Tiwari (Georgetown College) – Concrete Safety Evaluation for L2 Deployed Proof Programs
  
  • We suggest to research the concrete safety of the proof methods (SNARKs, STARKs) that safe -rollups. We observe that some proof methods have safety analyzed within the interactive setting, whereas their safety after making use of the Fiat—Shamir transformation is barely conjectured. Moreover, we imagine that in some circumstances extra environment friendly assaults are attainable than the claimed safety degree asserts.

• Ethstorage – Proof of Storage on L2 Dynamic Datasets with an Ethereum L1 Contract
  
  • Given a listing of commitments of BLOBs (e.g., KZG commitments from EIP-4844/Danksharding, listed from 0…n-1) in an L1 contract, the challenge is to check an environment friendly proof system to effectively confirm on L1 that the BLOBs are saved off-chain with the specified redundancy (e.g., 30~50 bodily replicas). By placing these storage nodes in an L2 community and assuming 1/m of nodes is sincere, we might construct an L2 storage community that reuses mainnet safety whereas extending Ethereum scalability dramatically.
  • Additional analysis will try to reply the questions of the right way to construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are continuously modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the listing or a BLOB of an index is modified); and the right way to construct incentivized/fee system to make sure desired replication issue utilizing ETH as fee; it’s attainable to ask a storage node to retailer partial BLOBs whereas sustaining the identical degree of safety of Mainnet?

We had been extraordinarily pleased with the standard of candidates for this grants spherical. The analysis and work they produce may have a constructive influence on the ecosystem. We propose keeping track of them!