Ethereum Foundation Grant Update – Wave III

We’ve been working hard to get to know so many amazing people and projects, and we’re excited to announce the Wave III recipients of the Ethereum Foundation Grants Program!

We started 2018 like this: blog post Enables scalability studies for first and second layer solutions. Since then, we have invested more than $11 million in 52 projects to advance the Ethereum ecosystem. The grant funded multiple Plasma and state channel implementations, various client studies, improved developer frameworks, security audits, and more (find them all in previous posts: Wave I & Wave II)!

Take a look at the selection process

Since the grant program was adopted, we’ve received feedback asking for more transparency about the process and deeper investigation into the different types of projects being considered. Funding status and grant process updates are as follows:

Funding Status

Since the beginning of 2018, the EF Grants Program has awarded more than $11 million to 52 projects (Waves I, II, and III).

Our funding allocation remains faithful to the original purpose of the program, providing nearly $7M scalability project. After that almost security was granted.$2M accepts #buidl project (project to improve user experience) $Received 1.6 million and DevEx projects (projects that improve the developer experience)$744K. Although dollar allocations are still focused on scalability, the number of projects funded is more evenly distributed across categories.

Grant Process Updates

The EF grant program is constantly evolving. With this round, we have improved our internal processes to ensure timely disbursement of funds. We believe it is important to understand how fast the space is moving and to quickly distribute funds to the front lines. Ultimately, we aim to continue making grants to provide more immediate support to projects and teams driving decentralization and transparency.

The ideal candidate will have strong technical knowledge, a project roadmap, and demonstrate a commitment to fostering collaboration within the ecosystem. For more information about applicant expectations and process workflow, see: Applicant Expectations and FAQs.

Wave III

The grant program evolves with each round. Our goal is to effectively fuel projects that build critical infrastructure for young communities. There are a lot of tracks that need to be laid before Ethereum is “made”, and it has been amazing to see all the projects working to lay these tracks.

Wave III’s applicant pool delivered a record number of strong teams and innovative ideas. It’s exciting and humbling to see so many different projects from around the world with a common interest in promoting Ethereum development. These are people who spend their free time reading. ethresearch.chDevelop new libraries and wallet designs, and participate in a community discussing the latest DApp usability and security. We love it.

Without further ado…

🎉 We are proud to announce the Wave III finalists! 🎉

scalability

• starkware — 6K ETH $4M in performance-based bounties. Development of standard reports and production quality software for optimized STARK-friendly hash functions and tooling
• Force Move Game Framework — $300,000. Force Movement Game State Channel Framework
• Harmony — 90,000 dollars. Minimal sharding and random beacon chain

security

Usefulness

Developer Experience (DevEx Grant)

Build for end users (#buidl grant)

• DappNode — $250,000. Large-scale full node adoption
• Uniswap — $100,000. DEX Framework
• nethermind — 50,000 dollars. .NET client implementation
• tess — $20,000. Gnosis safe UI design

education

Hackton Hips

Scalability will continue to be a focus of EF grants, but we plan to fund other important work as well. This includes a better UX, new clients, high-level language, better developer tools, and efforts to make Ethereum applications more secure. With Wave III, we expanded into our training and community activities to help bring new talent into the ecosystem.

Want to #BUIDL with us? Check out the developer wishlist below and follow the links for more information. If you can imagine a project related to any of the topics listed, submit an application and talk to us!

Wishlist for the next grant round

scalability

1. Additional payment and/or status channel Implementation 💚💙💜
2. more plasma Implementation 💚💙
3. more Shaffer Implementation 🔥
4. Improved efficiency for existing customers, etc. Guess & equal 💚💙
5. Tokenless”lightning network“For Ethereum 💙
6. WebAssembly Research and Development 🔥

seclusion

1. starks Research and Development 🔥
2. BLS12-381 Implemented in a new language 🔥
3. libp2p Python implementation 🔥

Usefulness

1. Improved private key management and Ethereum transactions 💚💙
2. Alternative Wallet/Client Design 💙💜
3. standard and portability Between wallets💙
4. tooling Improves your developer experience 💚💙💜
5. Improved documentation and developer/user training videos 💚💙💜
6. Tokenless end-user products 💜
7. viper development 💜
8. More focus on security high level Language 💜
9. Non-transferable ID token 🔥

security

1. Security audit for: viper 💙💜
2. Smart Contract Audit 💚💜
3. Especially thanks to ERC20, ERC223, ERC721, multisig wallets and vaults 💜
4. Tools to prevent vulnerable code 💚💙💜
5. IDE with visual debugger 🔥
6. Privacy protection solution

Hackturnship

Do you already have a job (or school)? are you okay! Suggest a problem you’d like to solve, and we’ll cover a $10,000 external internship for 10 weeks to work on Ethereum in your spare time. 💚💙💜 (Successful projects will be featured at developer conferences. We are also looking to hire and fund this pool of side projects. If you’re looking for where to start, see the list above.)

💚 — Wave I / 💙 — Wave II / 💜 — Wave III / 🔥 — Added to wishlist