Today we are unveiling more than $2 million in Foundation-led and co-funded grants to promote the development of Serenity (Eth2.0) as we move closer to the launch of the Beacon Chain.
Eth2.0 customer subsidies
In recent months, the Ethereum Foundation has awarded substantial awards to key client development teams currently responsible for delivering long-running multi-client testnets in the run-up to the Phase 0 launch.
We are proud to announce the recipients of these grants.
Harmony
Price: $189,000 for Harmony Beacon Chain development
GitHub
Prysmatic Laboratories
Reward: $725,000 for Prysm client development
Website | GitHub
Sigma Premier
Prize: $485,000 for Lighthouse client development
*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & ConsenSys
Website | GitHub
Status
Reward: $500,000 for Nimbus client development
Website | GitHub
Networking
Status
Prize: $150,000 for nim-libp2p development
*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & Protocol Labs
Website | GitHub
The Nimbus team at Status is building a native nim language implementation of libp2p for use in Nimbus and other projects. Additionally, the team aims to create an implementation suitable for resource-constrained devices.
White block
Reward: $184,000
*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & ConsenSys
Website
Whiteblock is funded to continue Eth2.0 network testing and testnet/interoperability support. Whiteblock will analyze the libp2p gossipsub implementation, continue to work with implementers to help refine the stack and network specifications, and advance interoperability efforts.
Research and development
Dmitri Khovratovich
Reward: $10,000
Dmitry Khovratovich, an expert cryptanalyst, is funded to produce a report on the security of the Legendre PRF (as described by Grassi et al.) and the proof of custody system intended for use in Phase 1 of Eth2.0.
Chain safe
Price: $217.5K for Lodestar thin client and javascript development
Website | GitHub
Chainsafe is working on Eth2.0 thin client R&D within its Lodestar javascript client and continues to provide support to the Eth2.0 JS/web browser ecosystem by developing libraries, tools and educational resources.
Bonuses
The following bounties are open to help continue research and development efforts for the future of Ethereum.
Phase 0 consensus
The Ethereum Foundation is offering 5 ETH bounties (or 1,000 DAI, whichever is greater) for any recommendation of substantial changes (bug fixes, optimizations, etc.) that fall into the Eth 2.0 Phase 0 specification before the genesis of ‘Eth 2.0. These include changes to the state transition function, the fork choice rule, or the deposit contract. For more information, see the problem of the open bonus on the submission of specifications.
Legendre PRF
The Legendre pseudo-random function is an extremely MPC-friendly one-bit PRF. This PRF is currently expected to be used in the Proof of Custody system in Phase 1 of Eth 2.0, as it is the only known method to make Proof of Custody possible in a shared secret setting. To encourage more research into this PRF, the Ethereum Foundation has presented a series of bounties here: legendreprf.org/bounties
User-friendly hashing challenge for STARK
The Ethereum Foundation asked StarkWare to recommend a STARK-Friendly Hash (SFH). The StarkWare hash challenge is a public competition to evaluate the security of currently proposed SFH candidates. The challenge is offered at four security levels: low security, medium security, target security and high security in several scenarios. See starkware.co/hash-challenge for more details on the competition and how to get started.
