The Ethereum community, key developers and researchers, and others have long recognized scalability as perhaps the most important key technical challenge that must be solved for blockchain applications to achieve mass adoption. Blockchain scalability is difficult primarily because a typical blockchain design requires every node on the network to process every transaction, which limits the transaction processing capacity of the entire system to the capacity of a single node.
There are two main paths to improve blockchain scalability. First (“fragmentation”) involves creating better designed base layer blockchain protocols that still maintain most of the desired decentralization and security properties of a blockchain that we see in the simple designs available today, but only require a few percent of nodes to view and process each transaction. , allowing many more transactions to be processed in parallel at the same time. The second involves creating “layer 2” protocols that send most transactions off-chain and only interact with the underlying blockchain to enter and exit the layer 2 system and in the event of system attacks.
We view the two strategies as complementary to each other and believe in supporting a multi-pronged strategy towards Ethereum scalability that involves both strategies and treats them as complementary to each other.
Technical reading materials on Ethereum scalability technologies
fragmentation:
Examples of existing Layer 2 systems:
With the Ethereum blockchain reaching 1 million transactions per day, and both Ethereum and other blockchain projects frequently reaching full transaction capacity, the need to scale progress becomes increasingly clear and urgent. To that end, in addition to the ongoing and future work happening internally on scalability, we are starting two experimental grant schemes that we hope will empower more independent teams to collaborate with the Ethereum team’s base layer scalability research and development efforts. research. such as building independent layer 2 projects that can be linked and improve the scalability of Ethereum.
Independent teams of developers, companies, and university and academic groups are welcome to apply; We recognize that different types of applicants may require different formats and processes, and we are willing to be flexible to accommodate the needs of individual teams.
Subsidy program for fragmentation clients
In recent months, the development of fragmentation has accelerated rapidly. A specification for an initial prototype is near completion, with a roadmap that allows it to creep into Ethereum slowly, first as a “loosely coupled” sidechain anchored to the Ethereum basechain via a “validation manager contract”, then introducing ever tighter integration with the Ethereum base chain over time. A reference implementation in python is being built on top of Py-EVMand a testnet in python isn’t too far away.
And in this next step, we want you to be involved. We want the Ethereum sharding testnet, and later the sharding mainnet, to be a multi-tenant ecosystem from the start, without the Ethereum Foundation supporting any privileged production implementations. The Ethereum Foundation-funded research team will continue to build an implementation in python and possibly other languages, but this is intended as a reference and proof of concept first and foremost. While our goal is to continue to focus heavily on research and specification, we don’t want to ultimately “win” the competition whereby the customer gets the most actual users once the network goes live.
Instead, the Ethereum Foundation will make grants available to independent groups in the community who want to help build an implementation and participate in the testnets and mainnet sharding. These payments are NOT intended to be sources of substantial profit for the recipient organizations; rather they are intended to cover some of the costs involved, with the understanding that anyone participating in the scheme will have access to a unique opportunity to participate in the development of Ethereum 2.0, in close collaboration with Ethereum’s principal researchers, and be part of the development. from one of the first clients that will be available when the sharding mainnet goes live.
This will take the form of a specialized program, which will exist alongside a more general grant program that the Foundation will launch soon. grant amounts of 1,000,000 will be available, and possibly more for highly successful projects; The size of the grant will take into account the quality of the team, the scope of the proposed implementation, and the progress of the project over time. Participants will interact closely with the core research team and have a key role in shaping the final specification that is developed over the course of specification implementation and testnet execution.
Layer 2 Scalability Solution Grant Program
There have been a lot of independent proposals recently about how blockchains like Ethereum can be extended through second layer protocols. We recognize and appreciate that developers and researchers are enthusiastic about researching and implementing technologies in this area, and that many teams want the freedom to conceive and build their own design incorporating their own ideas. We want to offer an opportunity for such teams to exercise their creativity and develop their scalable blockchain proposals, all while staying within the Ethereum family.
To that end, we are announcing a grant scheme for projects that are building scalability and latency-reducing “layer 2” platforms that live on top of Ethereum, benefiting from the security of the Ethereum blockchain as a layer. foundation and interoperability with the large Ethereum community and platform.
Like the fragmented client scheme, this will take the form of a specialized grant programme, and grant amounts of 1,000,000 will be available depending on scope, scale and quality. The subsidy may be available even if the project has an independent business model or funding from other potential sources in the Ethereum community, although we will prioritize funding for projects that would otherwise lack the ability to sustain themselves, and it is absolutely necessary. that the funded work is end-to-end open source and provides a common good to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Funding objectives include efforts to develop high-quality implementations of existing known Layer 2 scaling strategies (eg, state channels, Plasma), as well as research and development of new ones.
closing notes
Both programs are at a very early stage, and grants will initially be decided at the discretion of Ethereum’s core leadership. Details, including the terms, conditions and schedules under which payments will be made, may change as a result of our initial experience with program participants, and we expect the program to be consolidated and expanded throughout the year.
Please also note that while the payments from these partnership programs are much higher than we have made from our previous grant programs, these payments come with a much greater expectation of focus and quality. We target qualified teams with direct experience in the Ethereum or blockchain space, or experience in the broader fields of mechanism design, distributed systems or cryptography, as well as software engineering. The programs are also heavily targeted at fragmented customers and Layer 2 scaling solutions; this is NOT a general purpose grant program. It is still being developed, and the details will be released as soon as they are ready.
How to apply
The first step is to send an email to [email protected]with the following information:
- Official name of the project, applicant and main developers
- More information about the team, including previous activity, if any, in the Ethereum or blockchain space or distributed systems, mechanism design, or cryptography
- Proposal and impact on scalability
- Estimated timeline for development and completion milestones, grant amount request, and total estimated overall budget
