Today, the Ethereum Foundation unveiled over $2 million USD in Foundation-led and co-funded grant funding aimed at facilitating Serenity (Eth2.0) development as the launch of the Beacon Chain moves closer.
In recent months, the Ethereum Foundation granted substantial awards to leading client development teams currently tasked with delivering long-standing multi-client testnets as development approaches the launch of Phase 0.
In May, the Ethereum Foundation informed that over the next year, it plans to spend $30 million USD on key projects across the ecosystem, the budget being insulated against downward ETH price movement.
See below more details on the recipients of these grants:
Harmony
Award: $189k for Harmony beacon chain development
Award: $725k for Prysm client development
| Website | Github |
Sigma Prime
Award: $485k for Lighthouse client development
*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & ConsenSys
| Website | Github |
Status
Award: $500k for Nimbus client development
| Website | Github |
Networking
Status
Award: $150K for nim-libp2p development
*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & Protocol Labs
| Website | Github |
Status’ Nimbus team is building a native nim-language implementation of libp2p for use in Nimbus and other projects. Further, the team aims to create an implementation suitable for resource-restricted devices.
Whiteblock
Award: $184K
*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & ConsenSys
Whiteblock is funded to continue Eth2.0 network testing and testnet/interoperability support. Whiteblock will analyze the libp2p gossipsub implementation, continue to work with implementors to help refine the networking stack and specification, and advance interoperability efforts.
Research and Development
Dmitry Khovratovich
Award: $10K
Dmitry Khovratovich, an expert cryptanalyst, is funded to produce a report regarding the security of the Legendre PRF (as described by Grassi et al.) and the proof-of-custody scheme intended to be used in Phase 1 of Eth2.0.
Chainsafe
Award: $217.5K for Lodestar light-client and javascript development
| Website | Github |
Chainsafe is working on Eth2.0 light-client R&D within their Lodestar javascript client along with continuing to provide support to the Eth2.0 JS/web-browser ecosystem by developing libraries, tooling, and educational resources.
Bounties
The following bounties are open to help further research and development efforts for the future of Ethereum.
Phase 0 Consensus
The Ethereum Foundation is offering 5 ETH bounties (or 1000 DAI, whichever larger) for any recommendations for substantive changes (bug fixes, optimizations, etc) that make it into the Phase 0 Eth 2.0 spec prior to the Eth 2.0 genesis. These include changes for the state transition function, fork choice rule, or deposit contract. For more information, check out the open bounty issue on the specs repo.
Legendre PRF
The Legendre pseudo-random function is an extremely MPC-friendly one bit PRF. This PRF is currently slated to be used in the proof of custody scheme in Phase 1 of Eth 2.0, as it is the only known method to make the proof of custody possible in a shared secret setting. To encourage more research about this PRF, the Ethereum Foundation has set out a series of bounties here: legendreprf.org/bounties
STARK-Friendly Hash Challenge
The Ethereum Foundation has asked StarkWare to recommend a STARK-Friendly Hash (SFH). The StarkWare hash challenge is a public competition aimed at evaluating the security of current proposed SFH candidates. The challenge is proposed at four security levels: low-security, medium-security, target-security, and high-security in multiple scenarios.
