Allocation Update: Q1 2021 | Ethereum Foundation Blog

community education Chinese ecosystem development ETHPlanet Support for ETHPlanet’s ecosystem-building initiatives in China, including work with students and universities, events, community organizing, and educational resources. community education DEFERENCE Decipher Blockchain conference focused on research and discussion led by Decipher, a blockchain society at Seoul National University. community education Virtual Devspace Hackathon Indian Computer Society Student run hackathon hosted by the Indian Computer Societyaimed at developers, researchers and students. community education ETHGlobal Virtual and in-person hackathons focused on building the Ethereum developer community through learning opportunities and hands-on support for hackers. community education informative websites Deployment of a series of easy-to-understand informative and educational websites about the Ethereum ecosystem community education development of the Russian-speaking ecosystem Sponsorship of a series of virtual Ethereum meetings in Russian language community education Web3 Teacher Training Program Blockchain Acceleration Foundation Development of a curriculum and course to train university students and professors to become educators in Ethereum development, with the aim of giving them a foundation to lead educational initiatives at their respective universities. consensus layer Topological Analysis of the Beacon Chain Network Shreyas Samaga Apply topological data analysis techniques to aspects of the beacon chain network, including visualization of validator behavior, insight into the structure and state of the p2p network, and inspection of key consensus metrics. consensus layer Beacon Chain Rescue Attack Montfort University Proof of concept of a ransomware attack on Ethereum validators, illustrating the need for a more secure infrastructure for large providers. consensus layer ChainGuardian node factory Application and graphical interface for the management of multiple validators and beacon nodes with statistics and monitoring. consensus layer Polar Star ChainSafe Continued development of the Lodestar JS beacon chain client, with goals including research and development of thin clients, improved tools and documentation, and preparation for the Altair fork. consensus layer Prism prismatic 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 Shard Data Proof of Custody MPC Plato Ongoing research and development in multi-stakeholder computing to set up ethereum validators and decentralized stake pools. consensus layer ssz.dev Website resources that document and demonstrate the SSZ serialization standard, including a visualization playground and the React-based implementation of SSZ. consensus layer tPlonk christian rechberger Research and development on tPlonk, a SNARK-compatible search-based hash function. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Dark forest Infrastructure and Tooling Blaine Bublitz and Jacob Rosenthal Ongoing work on zero-knowledge tools, infrastructure, and community developer support in relation to Dark forest. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs BLS Global Wallet james zaki L2 wallet contract that replaces ECDSA signatures with compressed BLS signatures in optimistic accumulations. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs CREAM Cougar Development of a protocol for secure, anonymous, and verifiable voting technology, as well as additional R&D efforts and zero-knowledge enterprise adoption. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs CLR.fund User Interface spencer graham improvements to CLR.fnd user interface, with the goal of creating an application that anyone can deploy to run their own CLR funding round. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Dark forest Ongoing work on Dark Forest, a decentralized and persistent RTS (real-time strategy) game, demonstrating the use of zk-snarks to build “incomplete information” environments where users can maintain private state while publicly submitting valid, verifiable actions. Dark Forest was created to demonstrate the ability of this framework to create complex environmental and strategic dynamics in decentralized games. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Forum moderation with Prediction Markets Smart contracts and automated moderator bots to use prediction markets to mitigate spam in online forums. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs MicroMix v2 activity Extensions to MicroMix, an integrated ETH and ERC-20 mixer Traffic lightsincluding the ability to deploy a new contract for any denomination, a mixed registry to avoid splitting liquidity, enable Layer 2 deployment, and a fully open source, non-minified user interface. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs MPC Phase 2 geoff lamperd Production of a set of components for reliable browser-based installation ceremonies. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Optimism Security Assessment Kyle Charbonnett Security assessment of the Optimism codebase, which results in a report that details the design and structure of the Optimism code and flags security vulnerabilities. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Reputation testing service: design and specification jay graber Design and specification for a reputation testing service that exports cryptographic proofs of user attributes from existing sites where users have accumulated reputation such as Github or Twitter, which can be verified by decentralized sites or applications. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Reputation Test Service: Development Rafael Roulette Development of a reputation testing service that exports cryptographic proofs of user attributes from existing sites (such as Github or Twitter) for verification by decentralized sites or apps. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Cumulative Blocks Explorer Site Layout raquel akerley UX strategy and UI design for a cumulative block exploration dashboard, including research-based information architecture and visual identity. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Cumulative Difference Compression Blagoj Dimovsk Research paper and proof of concept for efficient data storage on the blockchain while using stacks for the airdrop use case. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Unirep Social Design a smart contract that requires users in a unirep-private and decentralized social media platform for risk reputation to publishwith any post that results in a reduction or addition to your total reputation score. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs zk data market jackson liu design for a confident data mart using a smart contract to allow encrypted data to be released for sale, while buyers can confirm authenticity using an exposed data segment and a seller-issued ZKP. Cryptography and Zero Knowledge Proofs Zkopru stress tests Stress tests, monitoring tools, CI configuration and cluster test scripts for Dilla layer 2 scaling solution for private transactions using zk-SNARK and optimistic digest. Developer experience and tools ETH Winter Educational Resources nick the wolf Conversion of ETH Winter program resources, including Eth introductory papers, mentor reading lists, and missions, into a public consumption format. Developer experience and tools GASOL: Gas analysis and optimization toolkit Complutense University of Madrid Development of a super optimizer for Ethereum smart contracts that optimizes block by block by searching for sequences of instructions that are semantically equivalent to the original sequence in the block but consume less gas, with the goal of reducing overall transaction costs and increase transaction capacity. Developer experience and tools Software engine for game theoretical modeling University of St Gallen Y status box Software engine for game-theoretical modeling of composition games, for example, auction mechanisms or governance structures, using compositional game theory. Developer experience and tools web3swift Universal library that provides web3 functionalities in the Swift language, to enable the creation of full-featured native dApps in the Mac/iOS ecosystem. Developer experience and tools Zkopru ceremony site design raquel akerley User-friendly website design for the I’m going to dig Accumulated Trust Installation Ceremony. execution layer EIP 1559 R&D Better Coordination of efforts to prepare EIP 1559 for adoption by major developers and customers. execution layer Better Maintenance and development on the Besu eth1 client. execution layer nether mind Maintenance and development on the Nethermind eth1 client. execution layer Cloud Maintenance and development on the Nimbus eth1 client. execution layer OpenEthereum Maintenance and development on the Erigon (fka TurboGeth) eth1 client. execution layer erigon Maintenance and development at OpenEthereum, an acquisition of the Parity client. indirect financing Reference protocol financing for Reference Grants support the research, development and adoption of the Baseline protocol, which allows companies to synchronize their systems of record and reduce costly errors in B2B transactions. Indirect Financing CLR Match gitcoin Funds equivalent to rounds 9 and 10 of the Gitcoin CLR grants, funding public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem. indirect financing CLR.FND Development of a production-ready version of clr.fund, a decentralized quadratic funding protocol that uses BrightID and MACI to enable permissionless, pseudonymous, and minimally trusted protocol-level funding for Ethereum. layer 2 StablePay Layer 2 SDK SDK to accept payments and optionally convert them to stablecoins via multiple L2s with an API. Verifiable delay functions Biprimality Research Article Review Benjamin Wesolowski In-depth review of a research paper titled “Large Prime Numbers Get Me High: New Results in Biprimality Testing” by Dmitry Khovratovich and Mary Maller, to validate an innovative result in biprimality testing that could facilitate large-scale MPC RSAs .