Beneficiary Recruitment: January 2022 – Japan Regional Subsidy Edition!

In today’s roundup, we are excited to introduce four beneficiaries of recent local grants in Japan! We see Ethereum as an ever-growing, creative, and inclusive playground, and it is our responsibility to ensure everyone can continue to play.

Committing to public goods or new use cases without a quick financial return is challenging, and it is important to support dedicated teams working to solve interesting problems, improve public infrastructure, and build creative blockchain use cases. In this round of local grants, the Ethereum Foundation is excited to spotlight local communities actively working to demonstrate the potential of decentralized technologies.

zk cream: Zero-Knowledge Confidential Trusted Ethereum Anonymous Mixer

zkCREAM:Confidential Reliable Ethereum Anonymous Mixer is a set of protocols and dapps that enable more robust, accessible, secure, anonymous, and verifiable voting for public elections in Japan. zkCREAM was developed as a pilot program. It consists of a series of smart contracts and a user-friendly interface app that allows the general public to vote completely anonymously while maintaining the integrity and verifiability of the final vote tally. Also supports like More collusion-resistant, more trustworthy, and more anonymous.

The team’s next development focus will be building both an easy-to-use mobile and desktop voting application. We will introduce and leverage the use of zkCREAM in the Ethereum community. The team will also develop additional voting logic layers to support other common scenarios, including second-round voting, instant runoff voting, and ranked-choice voting.

Ryodan System AG: Building Layer 2 with zkRollups and zkCloud

The Ryodan team is working to solve issues of scalability, privacy, and code complexity. They take a multi-pronged approach that integrates both protocol R&D and tool building to make zero-knowledge proofs more accessible to developers.

that much zkCloud The service aims to help developers more easily write smart contracts and programs using zero-knowledge proofs. zkCloud currently supports Groth16 and PLONK proofs, with STARK coming soon. The team is also developing an optimized zkSTARK Rust library along with other tools that enable a no-code approach to zero-knowledge-based applications.

The team is also developing a new zk-rollup based on the design. proposal CEO Leona Hioki. This approach offers potential privacy and efficiency gains by not requiring transaction history data for contract execution.

Departure orbit: Recording infrastructure for physical and digital artworks

Startrail is an Ethereum-based infrastructure for recording the provenance and exhibition history of physical and digital works of art. In addition to using ERC721 to represent works of art or certificates, NFC chips can be attached to physical works of art and linked to certificates on the blockchain.

CEO Taihei is a contemporary artist who was inspired to use blockchain technology to solve problems he faced in the art industry. Since 2016, he has assembled a team of people with art and technology backgrounds who are inspired by the potential of distributed ledger technology to solve problems of provenance and compliance of artwork ownership. They work with people in the arts industry, including artists, gallerists, curators, and web-based marketplaces, to ensure that their practical operational needs are met.

The team’s next goals include open sourcing smart contracts and expanding the infrastructure to global markets. We advocate for the rights of everyone involved in the art industry, including artists and collectors, and hope to attract all types of art industry participants into the Ethereum ecosystem.

w3a.io: Smart Lock authentication for physical devices

W3a.io uses Ethereum to verify permissions to physical devices. The team first explored this concept in 2020. joint experiment with Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) They tested a blockchain-based system for automated ride sharing on the NAIST campus. “Virtual keys” allowed authorized users to lock and unlock their cars with their smartphones, and users were incentivized to return their cars to locations with the highest demand.

W3a.io builds on the concepts and lessons learned from the NAIST pilot and uses digital signatures to authenticate authorized operators of physical devices, even when offline. The team hopes to be able to apply it to many use cases to make it easier to bring Ethereum into the real world!

family: Ethereum partnership certificate

Famiee is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping all types of families access the benefits available to legally married couples through a platform that issues partnership certificates on Ethereum. A network of participating businesses offers services to couples holding a Famiee certificate that provide benefits only available to legally married couples, such as employee family benefits, joint mortgage applications, family discounts, public assistance or life insurance.

Famiee began issuing certificates for same-sex partners in February 2021, and has expanded its services to include other types of families and partnerships that are not legally recognized in certain places, such as marriages or single mothers where the woman chooses to keep her original name. I plan to do it. Living together and supporting each other. They are currently developing a mobile app to issue certificates that meet high standards for privacy, security and KYC.

The numerous local Ethereum communities around the world are a big part of why Ethereum feels simultaneously global and personal to many people. That’s why we’re constantly experimenting with ways to support communities around the world.

Thanks again to all the contributors who are driving real-world adoption of Ethereum, and if you think you could be next, please visit us. grants page Find out more about what we look for in the projects we fund.