Allocation update: 1st quarter 2021 | Ethereum Foundation Blog

Community and education Development of the Chinese ecosystem ETHPlanet Supporting ETHPlanet’s ecosystem-building initiatives in China, including working with students and universities, events, community organizations, and educational resources. Community and education RESPECT Decipher Blockchain conference focused on research and discussion, organized by Decipher, a blockchain company from Seoul National University. Community and education Devspace Virtual Hackathon IT Society of India Student hackathon organized by the IT Society of Indiatargeting developers, researchers and students. Community and education ETHGlobal The virtual and in-person hackathons focused on building the Ethereum developer community through learning opportunities and hands-on hacker support. Community and education Informational websites Deploying a series of easy-to-digest, informative and educational websites about the Ethereum ecosystem Community and education Development of the Russian-speaking ecosystem Sponsorship of a series of Russian-language Ethereum virtual meetings Community and education Web3 Teacher Training Program Blockchain Acceleration Foundation Developed a program and course to train university students and faculty to become educators in Ethereum development, with the aim of providing them with a foundation to lead educational initiatives at their respective universities. Consensus layer Topological Analysis of Beacon Chain Network Shreyas Samaga Apply topological data analysis techniques to aspects of the beacon chain network, including visualization of validator behavior, insights into p2p network structure and health, and inspection of key consensus metrics. Consensus layer Beacon chain ransom attack DeMontfort University Proof of concept of a ransomware attack against Ethereum validators, illustrating the need for more secure infrastructure for large providers. Consensus layer Chain Keeper NodeFactory Application and GUI to manage multiple validators and beacon nodes with statistics and monitoring. Consensus layer North Star Safe chain Continued development of the Lodestar JS beacon chain client, with goals including R&D for thin clients, improving tools and documentation, and preparing for the Altair hardfork. Consensus layer Prism Prysmatic Laboratories Continued development of the Prysm client, focusing on support and refinement of beacon chain production, as well as R&D on Altair, Merge and Sharding. Consensus layer Proof of preservation of MPC fragmentation data Plato Continued research and development on multi-party computation for establishing Ethereum validators and decentralized staking pools. Consensus layer ssz.dev Website resources documenting and demonstrating the SSZ serialization standard, including a visualization playground and a React-based SSZ implementation. Consensus layer tPlonk Christian Rechberger Research and development on tPlonk, a search-based hash function compatible with SNARK. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Dark Forest Infrastructure and tools Blaine Bublitz and Jacob Rosenthal Continued work on zero knowledge tools, infrastructure and community developer support related to Dark Forest. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs BLS Global Portfolio James Zaki L2 wallet contract replacing ECDSA signatures with compressed BLS signatures in optimistic rollups. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs CREAM Couger Development of a protocol for secure, anonymous, and verifiable voting technology, as well as additional zero-knowledge R&D and enterprise adoption efforts. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs CLR.fund user interface Spencer Graham Improvements to CLR.fnd user interface, aiming to create an application that can be deployed by anyone to manage their own CLR funding cycle. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Dark Forest Continued work on Dark Forest, a decentralized and persistent RTS (real-time strategy) game, demonstrating the use of zk-snarks to construct “incomplete information” environments in which users can maintain a private state while submitting publicly valid and verifiable actions. Dark Forest was created to demonstrate this framework’s ability to create complex environmental and strategic dynamics in decentralized gaming. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Forum moderation with prediction markets Smart contracts and self-moderating bots to use prediction markets to mitigate spam in online forums. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs MicroMix v2 Activity Extensions to MicroMix, an ETH and ERC-20 mixer based on Semaphoreincluding the ability to deploy a new contract for any denomination, a mixer ledger to avoid splitting liquidity, enable layer 2 deployment, and a completely open source, non-minified user interface. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs MPC Phase 2 Geoff Lampard Producing a suite of components for browser-based trust configuration ceremonies. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Assessing the Safety of Optimism Kyle Charbonnet Security assessment of Optimism’s code base, resulting in a report detailing the design and structure of Optimism’s code and highlighting security vulnerabilities. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Reputation Proof Service: Design and Specifications Jay Graber Design and specification of a reputation proof service that exports cryptographic proofs of user attributes from existing sites where users have gained reputation, such as Github or Twitter, which can be verified by decentralized sites or applications . Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Reputation proof service: development Raphaël Roullet Development of a reputation proof service that exports cryptographic proofs of user attributes from existing sites (such as Github or Twitter) to be verified by sites or decentralized applications. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Cumulative Block Explorer Site Design Rachel Akerley UX strategy and UI design for a cumulative block explorer dashboard, including search-based information architecture and visual identity. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Cumulative Differential Compression Blagoj Dimovsk Research paper and proof of concept for efficiently storing data on blockchain while using rollups for airdrop use case. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Unirep Social Design a smart contract obligating users on a Unirepprivate and decentralized social media platform based on risking one’s reputation to publishany post resulting in a reduction or addition to their total reputation score. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs zk data market Jacksoom Liu Designing for a customer without trust data market using a smart contract to enable the release of encrypted data for sale, while buyers can confirm authenticity using an exposed data segment and a seller-issued ZKP. Cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs Zkopru strength tests Stress testing, monitoring tools, CI configuration and cluster testing scripts for Zkoprua layer 2 scaling solution for private transactions using zk-SNARK and optimistic rollup. Developer experience and tools ETH winter teaching resources Nick Ulven Converting ETH Winter program resources, including introductory Eth materials, mentor reading lists, and quests, into a publicly accessible format. Developer experience and tools GASOL: gas analysis and optimization toolbox Complutense University of Madrid Development of a super-optimizer for Ethereum smart contracts that optimizes block by block by searching for instruction sequences that are semantically equivalent to the original sequence in the block but consume less gas, with the aim of reducing overall costs of transaction and increase transaction capacity. Developer experience and tools Software engine for game theoretical modeling University of St. Gallen And Status Box Software engine for theoretical modeling of compositional games, e.g. auction mechanisms or governance structures, using Compositional game theory. Developer experience and tools web3swift Universal library providing web3 functionality in the Swift language, to enable the creation of complete native dApps in the Mac/iOS ecosystem. Developer experience and tools Design of the Zkopru ceremony site Rachel Akerley User-friendly website design zkopru Rollup Trust Configuration Ceremony. Execution layer EIP1559 R&D Bésu Coordination of efforts to prepare EIP 1559 for adoption by key developers and customers. Execution layer Bésu Maintenance and development on the Besu eth1 client. Execution layer Void Spirit Maintenance and development on the Nethermind eth1 client. Execution layer Nimbus Maintenance and development on the Nimbus eth1 client. Execution layer OpenEthereum Maintenance and development on the eth1 Erigon client (fka TurboGeth). Execution layer Erigon Maintenance and development on OpenEthereum, acquisition of the Parity client. Indirect financing Basic protocol Funding for Basic Grants support the research, development and adoption of the Baseline Protocol, which allows businesses to synchronize their systems of record and reduce costly errors in B2B transactions. Indirect financing CLR matching Gitcoin Funding rounds 9 and 10 of Gitcoin’s CLR grants, funding public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem. Indirect financing CLR.FND Developed a production-ready version of clr.fund, a decentralized quadratic finance protocol using BrightID and MACI to enable permissionless, pseudonymous, minimum-trust protocol-level funding for Ethereum. Layer 2 StablePay Layer 2 SDK SDK to accept payments and eventually convert them to stablecoins via multiple L2s with a single API. Verifiable delay functions Review of research papers on biprimality Benjamin Wesolowski In-depth review of a research paper titled “Large Primes Get Me High: New Results on Biprimality Testing” by Dmitry Khovratovich and Mary Maller, to validate a breakthrough result in biprimality testing that could facilitate RSA MPCs at large scale.