Allocation Update – Q1 2024

Community & educationBITS Pilani Ethereum Ecosystem Advancement InitiativeSupport for Ethereum educational development at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani in India through coursework, practical projects, and community engagement.Community & educationBlockchain Fundamentals Course & Solidity BootcampXerxisEthereum educational content for the local Ethiopian developer community in Amharic.Community & educationDeveloper CoursesEthereum BogotáProduction and organization of advanced in-person Solidity development courses over a seven month period.Community & educationCommunity Building MeetupsEspacio CriptoSeries of six in-person community-building meetups for communities in Mexico City to explore and be educated about Ethereum content.Community & educationETHBostonConference and hackathon in Boston, USA, centered around topics related to the Ethereum protocol layer, real-world assets, and privacy and security.Community & educationETH Bratislava HackathonHackathon hosted in Bratislava, Slovakia, exploring themes such as scaling, liquid staking and restaking, and privacy solutions.Community & educationETH BucharestConference and hackathon in Bucharest, Romania that delved into themes such as blockchain mass adoption, governance models, and privacy solutions.Community & educationETH Cape TownHackathon organized in Cape Town, South Africa that will include developer workshops covering topics such as layer 2s (L2s) and tooling.Community & educationETHDamConference and hackathon dedicated to privacy and security, organized in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.Community & educationEthereum Development WorkshopsJesse RaymondEthereum development workshops at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria which comprises online interactive talks and practical workshops on Solidity.Community & educationEthereum Education ExplorationsAnkit GangwalEthereum education efforts at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad in India through academic research, community building, and educational programs.Community & educationEthereum TegucigalpaSupporting the Ethereum community in Honduras through a series of community-building activities including meetups, bootcamps, hackathons, and educational collaborations with local universities.Community & educationEthereumZuri.chAcademic and research-focused conference in Zürich, Switzerland that delved into topics such as the protocol layer, scaling, and security.Community & educationETH KipuSupport for ecosystem development efforts across Latin America, including a series of educational initiatives for developers and beginners, grassroots community activities, and events organizing.Community & educationETHKLSupporting the Ethereum community in Malaysia through a series of community-building activities including regular meetups, a hacker house, and a conference and hackathon.Community & educationETHMumbaiThe first Ethereum hackathon hosted in Mumbai, India that revolved around the themes of privacy, social tooling, and DeFi.Community & educationETHSamba HackHackathon organized in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil which includes a bootcamp for beginners and workshops for advanced developers.Community & educationETHTaipeiConference and hackathon in Taipei, Taiwan that delved into DeFi, security, and topics related to the protocol layer such as clients, L2s, and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs).EmailCommunity & educationETHTallinnHybrid hackathon centered around decentralized infrastructure, privacy and security, and scalability, hosted in Tallinn, Estonia.Community & educationFinancial Cryptography & Data SecurityAcademic conference dedicated to all aspects of securing transactions and systems, including both fundamental and applied real-world deployments.Community & educationGuild AuditsProviding free security developer training programs in Nigeria through lectures, events, and hackathons.TwitterCommunity & educationHouse of Account AbstractionAccount abstraction meetup that explored cutting-edge topics such as shared mempool, modular smart accounts, and censorship resistance in London, UK.Community & educationInternational Workshop on Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT)Workshop with the goal of exchanging ideas between SMT solver developers and users of SMT, and motivating new research in SMT.Community & educationmagmaBorderless AfricaTwo-week residency organized in Kenya for African builders comprising structured workshops, office hours with mentors, peer-to-peer coordination, and community-building sessions.Community & educationmuBuenosDeveloper-focused, six-week popup city in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Community & educationMuseMatrix DeSci FellowshipDeSci Fellowship dedicated to building open-source tooling over the course of six months, with peer-to-peer learning sessions.Community & educationPetnica Science Center BootcampNine-day seminar about blockchain with an emphasis on Ethereum and its underlying technologies, for students in Serbia.EmailCommunity & educationSEED LatamSupporting local node operators through creating educational articles, hosting webinars, and providing direct support.Community & educationSpaghettETHEcosystem development efforts throughout Italy and assisting with the development of new Ethereum communities in Southern Italy.Community & educationStack Too DeepBlockchain Society IIT RoorkeeEthereum-focused hackathon for students of the Indian Institute Of Technology Roorkee, exploring themes such as zero knowledge (ZK), social impact, and rollups.Community & educationUpdating the Ethereum Yellow PaperPierre-Louis DespaigneUpdating the Ethereum Yellow Paper to include the Shanghai and Cancun forks.Community & educationWeb3 Family ConferenceConference hosted in Barcelona, Spain that explored a wide range of topics including cryptography, privacy, and scaling.Community & educationzkDay BarcelonaConference dedicated to ZK cryptography and its applications, organized in Barcelona, Spain.Community & educationzkMarekVideos explaining advanced cryptography and mathematical topics in a way that is accessible to software engineers without a mathematical background.Community & educationZKProof 6Three-day workshop in Berlin, Germany revolving around ZKPs and their standardization, applications, and programmability.Community & educationzkWarsawMonthly meetups with invited guests delving into cryptography basics, multi-party computation (MPC), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and other advanced mathematics and Ethereum topics.Consensus layerCombining Logic & Consensus via SemitopologiesMurdoch GabbayUsing semitopologies to design new declarative methods of specifying and reasoning about consensus protocols and/or about ‘rational byzantine behavior’.Consensus layerDependable Distributed Systems (DDS) – ConsenSysResearch on a set of key topics for advancing the Ethereum consensus protocol that falls within the DDS team’s domain of expertise: distributed systems design, specification, analysis, and formal verification.Consensus layerDHT MonitoringProbeLabDiving into the details of Ethereum’s distributed hash table (DHT) network to verify and better understand the performance of the network, analyzing areas such as node churn, routing table health, and resilience against attacks.Consensus layerGossipSub MonitoringProbeLabPerforming a comprehensive passive monitoring study of the GossipSub protocol and developing the capability to measure its performance by building the right tools and infrastructure for data collection, storage, analysis, and visualization.Consensus layerLantern.Discv5Pier TwoConsensus layer light client in C# using the .NET framework that fetches data directly from beacon nodes via libp2p.Consensus layerLeaderless ePBS Consensus Mechanism ResearchElla ShenLeaderless ePBS consensus mechanism to address the limitations of the existing proof-of-stake system by making the process more equitable for validators, eliminating the possibility of proposer bribes, and ensuring that all fees are burned while validators receive attestation rewards.Consensus layerLighthouseSigma PrimeContinued development of the Lighthouse consensus client.Consensus layerLodestarChainSafeContinued development of the Lodestar consensus client.Consensus layerROP-10: Economic Validation of Execution TicketsPascal Stichler & Christian HaugResearching the purchasing mechanism of execution tickets by analyzing the overall mechanism requirements, delving into the specific attributes, investigating pricing, and simulating different configurations.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsAcceleration Program Ecosystem Development & CoordinationPaul YuEcosystem development and coordination for PSE‘s Acceleration Program, which seeks to onboard promising talent to the ZK and cryptography world.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsDevRel Coordinations & Communications SupportElo MukoroDeveloper relations coordinations for ZK Email and support for the PSE Communications team.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsDJ Prediction MarketIntegrating a prediction market into a DJing platform such that the prediction market will select the subsequent track at every second bar. A conductor will evaluate the performance of each bar, which then influences the payout of the prediction market.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEfficient Implementation of ProtoStarAk36Efficient implementation of ProtoStar with halo2 frontend using HyperPlonk.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEmbedded Engineer for the Semaphore Network TeamEmbedded engineer for the Semaphore Network team to explore product-market fit, pinpoint suitable regions for deployment, and prepare for trial implementations.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEnd-to-End Publicly Verifiable Secure 2PCDeveloping public verifiability for 2PC, where public entities can verify the correctness property given the public transcript of the 2PC.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofseSim Walletdungexn, Manul Singh Parihar, & Tanmay GoelMobile-based hardware crypto wallet based on eSIMs with remote provisioning of accessibility.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEthSIM Embedded Software EngineerEmbedded software engineer for EthSIM, focusing specifically on enhancing wireless connectivity.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEthSIM Rollout in AfricaBorderless AfricaSupporting the EthSIM research team identify rollout opportunities in Africa, get diverse feedback, and develop local relationships for a V1 trial.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsfhe-httpBen TsengSetting up an extension on http that enables web services to provide fhe services to users.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFHE State-of-KnowledgeBhargav AnnemProcuring a knowledge base for current FHE schemes used in machine learning (ML) models, with the goal of surveying the current implementations and identifying the key insights used in these ML implementations.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFolding by HandYugoArticle providing an in-depth and intuitive explanation of Nova’s folding scheme mechanism’s primitives and its advantages compared to conventional recursive proofs.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFront-End Development for PSE ProjectsMark RoddyFront-end development to build mobile-native applications for various PSE projects such as EthSIM.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsGaussianJanmajaya MallToolbox and library that developers can use to build private shared state applications.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsImplementing Liam-Eagen-MSM Gadget in Halo2Seongsu JeonImplementing a protocol on halo2 that proves that a point on an elliptic curve is the multi-scalar multiplication (MSM) of some points.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsImproving MSM Performance Using GPUFu-Chuan Chung & Moven TsaiEnhancing the performance of proving speed using the GPU on mobile phones as part of mopro, a toolkit for ZK app development on mobile.Twitter, TelegramCryptography & zero knowledge proofsIZK ProofsPADO LabsImplement and optimize the interactive zero-knowledge (IZK) proof protocol QuickSilver in Rust.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPLUME & ZK Email DevelopmentsAayush GuptaDistribution of grants to accelerate PLUME, a nullifier-friendly signature scheme on ECDSA, and ZK Email, a protocol for creating Proof of Email by selectively disclosing information contained in the email.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsProof of PassportFlorent Tavernier, Youssef, & Rémi ColinProof of passport protocol that mints users a soulbound token after verification that they are a holder of a passport, which is completed on-chain in a ZK circuit.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsProving ML Models with ZKPsSaeyoon OhDelving into the fundamental concepts essential for proving the integrity of ML models using ZKPs.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPSE Core Program – Costa RicaTwo-month program aimed at recruiting 20 ZKP and cryptography enthusiasts from Costa Rica, primarily students, to actively contribute to ZK open-source projects.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPSE Development ActivitiesMach34Support for PSE‘s various development activities, including contributing to ideation, code review and development, and holistic engagement with advanced cryptography experiments.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPSE Technical CoordinatoralizkTechnical coordinator for the zkEVM Community Edition project and the PSE/Halo2 ecosystem.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsSecure Signatures & Account Abstraction Enhancement InitiativeComethConducting a comprehensive review and enhancement of critical smart contracts to fortify the security and functionality of Ethereum’s account abstraction and the ERC-4337 ecosystem.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTLSNotary DevelopmentTanner ShawBuilding a browser extension and web application for TLSNotary, a protocol for creating cryptographic proofs of authenticity for any data on the web.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTooling to Enable Micro Benchmarks for GPU/MSMsFu-Chuan Chung & Moven TsaiImplementing micro-benchmarking tooling for running MSMs or using the GPU on mobile phones as part of mopro, a toolkit for ZK app development on mobile.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTowards Efficient Lattice-Based Folding SchemesNgoc Khanh NguyenResearch exploring whether an efficient lattice-based folding scheme can be constructed to support an arbitrary number of folding steps.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsWasanCryptography research organization in Japan with the purpose of empowering Japanese and Asian blockchain researcher communities.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofszk-auctionsAndrew NaguibToolkit for developing practical and versatile primitives for conducting secure and private auctions using ZKPs.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZK-Friendly ML Model ExplorationsSaeyoon OhExploring different ZK-applicable ML algorithms that can perform the Heart Failure Prediction Dataset.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZKML – AIGC NFTDapp utilizing ZKML to train an autoencoder to convert images into a latent representation then construct them to a specific artistic style, enabling NFT collection owners to deploy a model trained on their unique images and generate new ones.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZKP2PAlex Soong, Brian Weickmann, Richard Liang, & Sachin KumarPrivacy-preserving, trustless peer-to-peer (P2P) fiat onramp that is interoperable with all popular web2 payment rails.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsETHDenver BUIDLQuestVivek BhupatirajuZK activation at ETHDenver where attendees collected ZK-friendly signatures using NFC badges and cards. Attendees could use their badges to privately exchange contact information, and prove ownership of signatures to complete quests and earn items at the BUIDL store.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZK-StrappingYoungwan Kwon & Changmin ChoReplacing a bootstrapping process in FHE with ZKPs.Data analysisEnhancing Observability & Data Availability for Ethereum Blob DataBlocknativeBuilding and supporting an archive for EIP-4844 blobs that will collect, store, and make blob data accessible to the Ethereum ecosystem as a public good.Developer experience & toolingBuidl GuidlEducational community of builders creating products and prototypes and providing Ethereum developer education.Developer experience & toolingEthPM v4ApeWorXResearch exploring what an updated EthPM specification would need to include to provide a better developer experience for EVM developer tooling teams.Developer experience & toolingFe Lang Crypto-Primitives Verification & ImplementationNethermindVerification of an Fe Lang BN254 curve library and implementation of a BLS signature scheme which uses the verified BN254 curve.Developer experience & toolingFe Lang Memory AllocatorSaif KatoutImplementing an allocator for Fe in the standard library, thus enabling the capability to replace the built-in memory types with standard library implementations and allowing developers to implement their own types using the allocator.Developer experience & toolingGovernance PaymasterAseem SoodVariety of on-chain paymasters that operate fully on-chain, to independently support various DAO functions across two different types of Governors.Twitter, EmailDeveloper experience & toolingSolidePeter TranOpen-source, lightweight Solidity integrated development environment (IDE) and knowledge hub that community members can contribute to.Developer experience & toolingWeb3.jsChainSafeContinued development and maintenance of Web3.js, an extension platform for building decentralized peer-to-peer applications in TypeScript/JavaScript to interact with Ethereum.Execution layerErigonFunding for Erigon’s continued work on the Ethereum mainnet, specifically their execution client development and applied R&D on performance optimizations.Execution layerethRPCtoRESTAmit Kumar MishraMiddleware application that acts as a REST wrapper for JSON-RPC interface of Ethereum nodes.Execution layerEVM Gas Cost EstimatorImappExtension of the EVM Gas Cost Estimator project, developing automation and tooling that includes more OPCODEs and precompiles into the standardized reporting.Execution layerROP-8: Geographical Distribution of Ethereum ValidatorsFrancesco Mosterts & Jonas BostoenExamining the geographic distribution of Ethereum’s nodes and validators using P2P network data.EmailExecution layerVerkle Tries Implementation SupportOnlyDustSupport for OnlyDust community contributors to continue working on a Verkle Tries implementation for Hyperledger Besu.Execution layerVerkle Tries In-CircuitDragan PilipovicIntroducing Verkle Tries into the halo2 library to enhance cryptographic primitives and data structures for improved proof systems.General growth & supportDVT ResearchNethermindAssessing the benefits and risks of using distributed validator technology (DVT) on staking performance and seeking an optimal strategy for operators to maximize their income.General growth & supportETHStakerSupport for ETHStaker’s activities in 2024, such as running events, promoting execution diversity, and supporting solo stakers.DiscordGeneral growth & supportGrassroots Adoption of Crypto in UkraineValeriia “Ria” PaninaResearching the drivers and blockers of the adoption of crypto and other dapps for ordinary users and mapping emergent use cases and behaviors around decentralized technologies of Ukrainians, as part of the Next Billion Fellowship Cohort #3.General growth & supportOpen-Source Transcriptions for ConferencesKaitoOpen-source transcriptions for the talks delivered at ETHDenver, EthCC, and Devcon 2024 to enhance the accessibility of Ethereum ecosystem content.TwitterGeneral growth & supportThe Red GuildCollective of security researchers, educators, and advocates committed to protecting web3 applications in the Ethereum ecosystem.EmailGeneral growth & suppotRoad to Devcon Grants RoundGrants round to support the growth of local Ethereum communities, initiatives, and projects in Southeast Asia.General researchAcademic Grants RoundGrants round funding formal research that aims to create more knowledge about Ethereum, blockchain technology, and related domains.General researchHybrid Auction PBSvita & Hiroshi TeiResearch which explores and proposes a new style of hybrid auction model that does not modify the protocol or the consensus, and which meets the needs and expectations of users.TwitterGeneral researchPreconfirmations for Based Rollup ExplorationLimeChainSuggested architecture for a preconfirmations subsystem which outlines any changes needed to existing in- or out-of-protocol mechanisms.EmailGeneral researchTransport Privacy Exploration of the Validator-Relayer Builder APIHOPRExploring transport-level privacy issues in the Ethereum MEV ecosystem, specifically assessing privacy leaks at the interface between validators and relays.Indirect fundingEthereum Colombia Quadratic Funding RoundQuadratic funding round run by Ethereum Colombia to distribute funding to local projects working on public goods.Layer 2L2BEATOpen-source L2 data, research, and tooling hub that provides critical resources for the Ethereum L2 ecosystem.OtherAccount Abstraction SupportSmoo.thIndustrialization of cryptographic libraries, specifically LibMPC and LibEd25519, aiming to optimize them for better performance and security within the Ethereum ecosystem.OtherBringing Verkle Tries to Portal NetworkMilos StankovicImplementing MVP support for state in the Trin client and researching how Verkle Tries can be supported, optimizing state storage and retrieval to make Portal Network more efficient.OtherD4CMohasContinued development of D4C, a Geth fork for fuzzing the devp2p protocols of Ethereum.Protocol growth & supportEthereum Node Crawler Features & MaintenanceAngus DippenaarSupport for the advancement and maintenance of the Ethereum node crawler.