We are pleased to announce the selected recipients for the recent round of community grants.
This round awards invited proposals that make the Ethereum staking experience easier, safer, and more secure. We were excited to see all the great work put forth by these teams, and we look forward to continuing to find new ways to support the ecosystem. In the meantime, if you’re working on something in this space and need help, please consider submitting a project inquiry with the Ecosystem Support Program.
Over $1 million has been allocated in 25 grants in 4 different categories:
| category | amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| community education | 391,800.00 |
| new tools | 200,000.00 |
| data analysis / visualization | 180,000.00 |
| research | 268,655.00 |
A few months after Ethereum’s proof-of-stake journey, it bodes well for the health of our ecosystem to see so many deserving teams across such a broad distribution of categories.
community education
The largest category of this round was community education. Easing the path to staking is crucial to the long-term health of the staking ecosystem. Staking communities and educational content are useful pieces of this puzzle, and we look forward to further development here, especially outside of the English-speaking world.
| Beneficiary(ies) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| cadCAD Edu | cadCAD Masterclass: ETH2 Validator Economics | An online cadCAD Edu course built around the economics of the eth2 validator. The team will also produce open source cadCAD validation models for the community to do their own analysis. |
| Carlos Mesa | How to bet? Video guides in Spanish | Video and content staking guides for the Spanish-speaking community |
| Ching-Yi Lin, Pi-Tan Hu | Eth2xK8s: Ethereum’s participation with Kubernetes | Getting started guide for running multi-validator setups with Kubernetes, including all the necessary configuration files. |
| coin cashew nut | End-to-end eth2 validation guide | Detailed step-by-step staking guides, plus other guides on grafana boards, docker eth2 installations, and protecting validation keys with the ledger |
| empire companies | eth2.academia | An interactive educational resource that bridges the information gap between the many moving parts of the eth2 ecosystem: from highly technical research papers to customer-user interactions and everything in between. |
| butta, lamboshi, superphiz, unvetica, worth altering | EthStaker | I support the EthStaker community in continuing to build an online place and set of resources for interested hobbyists to get started. |
| jeffrey milewski | Fundamentals of the Eth2 economy | An online course and website focused on the economics of participating as a validator and the institutional economics of the eth2 protocol |
| grumpy ross | My journey to Ethereum staking | An article/guide that traces the experience of learning to bet from a very beginner level. |
| rudy lu | WeETH Bettor | Support for eth2 validator and staking ecosystem in China |
| scott piriou | Staking Guide for Beginners in French | A series of eth2 staking articles for the French-speaking community. |
| The ether | The Aether Wiki | An eth2-focused wiki with the goal of educating and helping onboard potential validators |
| techtech | pole | Eth2 educational content, including participation guides, in Japanese |
new tooling
Just as community and education are vital to getting stakeholders across the starting line, robust open source tools are key to ensuring stakeholders can safely run their nodes. In this round, the tools we looked at were primarily geared towards security and orchestration, and we hope to continue to innovate here in the future.
| Beneficiary(ies) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| bengobel | valid8r | A command line tool to “validate” the local configuration of a validator. Check common system and application defaults around the performance and security of a staking configuration. |
| Daniel disputes | mnemonic division | An open source and web tool that uses threshold cryptography to create ‘K of N’ mnemonics. This will make it easier to store validation mnemonics safely. |
| isaac sharp | HSM BLS signer | A standard for a blst-based HSM BLS signer, including open source code and documents. This work will help stakeholders to manage their keys more securely. |
| jakub tonik | steak | A macOS app to simplify the betting experience for traders of all skill levels by wrapping a platform to run Ethereum software on Apple hardware. |
| Mara Schmiedt, Alon Muroch, Collin Myers | Eth2 Secret Shared Validators | Audited implementation of a shared secret validator configuration, a critical piece of improving validator resiliency and diversification on the eth2 network |
Data analysis / visualization
As more ETH is staked with beacon chain, it is increasingly important to have an idea of the function and state of the network. Last years Data Challenge Medal there was ample evidence of the interests and ability of the Ethereum ecosystem to collect and analyze network data. Projects in this category further these mainnet goals.
| Beneficiary(ies) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| botfly | beaconcha.in | Ongoing development of beaconcha.in’s FOSS block explorer, including an open source mobile client and support for the merge+sharding testnet. |
| jim mcdonald | chained | Integration of eth1 deposit tracking into chaind, a tool for collecting and indexing data from running staking nodes. |
| Omni Analytics Group | Ethereum 2.0 Validator Health Level Tracking | A continuation of the work initially submitted to the Medalla data challenge: a formal methodology for analyzing validators based on performance and an accompanying web dashboard. |
| long tailed duck | Exploring validator rewards and penalties | A series of blog posts explaining validator rewards/penalties using mainnet data. |
Research
Finally, there were some research projects included in this round. There are many open research questions related to staking and the future of the network; we actively invite further research efforts in this area.
| Beneficiary(ies) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Barcelona Supercomputing Center | Eth2 Network Tracker | Eth2 rumor network sniffer extensions focused on improving p2p gossip data collection. |
| Barcelona Supercomputing Center | Eth2 client resource monitoring | Monitoring of R&D resources for each of the 4 mainnet clients. |
| Diego Losada, Fernando Collado | Ethereal on ARM | R&D to provide users with an easy way to run a full Eth2 node on ARM devices (such as Raspberry Pi 4) |
We are excited to follow these teams into 2021 and beyond, and to see the broader impact they have on the fledgling Ethereum betting ecosystem.
The breadth and quality of this grant round is an incredible sign for the burgeoning staking community and the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole. Here is the start of a great year! 🚀
