Grantee Roundup: January 2022 – Japan Local Grants Highlights!

In this edition, we’re thrilled to present four recipients from a recent wave of Local Grants in Japan! We envision Ethereum as a continually expanding, creative, and inclusive environment, and it is our duty to ensure that everyone can engage in its possibilities.

Committing to public goods and innovative use cases can be challenging without immediate financial returns, so it’s crucial to support the dedicated teams striving to tackle intriguing problems, enhance public infrastructure, and cultivate unique blockchain applications. In this Local Grants round, the Ethereum Foundation is pleased to highlight a local community actively working to showcase the power of decentralized technology.

zkCREAM: Zero-knowledge Confidential Reliable Ethereum Anonymous Mixer

zkCREAM: The Confidential Reliable Ethereum Anonymous Mixer is a suite of protocols and dapps that facilitates more resilient, accessible, secure, anonymous, and verifiable voting for public elections in Japan. Developed as a pilot initiative, zkCREAM comprises a collection of smart contracts and a user-friendly application that enables the general public to vote anonymously while ensuring the integrity and verifiability of the final vote counts. It also supports MACI, enhancing its resistance to collusion, reliability, and anonymity.

The team’s next objective is to create both mobile and desktop voting applications that are user-friendly. This will demonstrate and promote the use of zkCREAM within the Ethereum community. Moreover, the team aims to implement additional voting logic layers to accommodate various scenarios, including quadratic voting, instant runoff voting, and ranked-choice voting.

Ryodan System AG: Building Layer 2 with zkRollups and zkCloud

The Ryodan team addresses scalability, privacy, and code complexity challenges. Their multifaceted strategy encompasses both protocol research and development, alongside constructing tools that simplify the use of zero-knowledge proofs for developers.

The zkCloud service is designed to assist developers in utilizing zero-knowledge proofs for writing smart contracts and applications more effectively. Currently, zkCloud supports Groth16 and PLONK proofs, with STARKs being developed as well. The team is also working on an optimized zkSTARK Rust library and other tools to facilitate a no-code approach to applications based on zero-knowledge proofs.

Additionally, the team is developing a new zk-rollup based on a design proposed by CEO Leona Hioki. This methodology presents potential privacy and efficiency enhancements by eliminating the need for transaction history data during contract execution.

Startrail: Records Infrastructure for Physical and Digital Artwork

Startrail offers an Ethereum-based infrastructure for documenting the provenance and exhibition history of both physical and digital artwork. In addition to utilizing ERC721 to represent an artwork or its certificate, NFC chips can be attached to physical pieces and linked to their corresponding certificates on the blockchain.

CEO Taihei, a contemporary artist himself, was motivated to implement blockchain technology to address challenges he faced in the art world. Since 2016, he has assembled a team comprising members from both artistic and technical backgrounds who are excited about the potential of distributed ledger technology to address issues of provenance and compliance in art ownership. They collaborate with industry professionals, including artists, gallerists, curators, and online marketplaces, ensuring they cater to practical operational needs.

The team’s future goals include open-sourcing their smart contracts and extending their infrastructure to global markets. By advocating for the rights of everyone in the art sector, including artists and collectors, they aim to integrate a diverse range of art industry stakeholders into the Ethereum ecosystem.

w3a.io: Smart Lock Authentication for Physical Devices

W3a.io leverages Ethereum to authenticate usage rights for physical devices. The concept was initially explored in 2020 through a joint experiment with Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), which involved testing a blockchain-based system for automated car sharing on the NAIST campus. A “virtual key” allowed authorized users to lock and unlock a car using their smartphones, incentivizing users to return cars to locations with higher demand.

Building on the insights gained from the NAIST pilot, W3a.io utilizes digital signatures to confirm the identity of authorized users for physical devices, even in offline scenarios. The team aspires to apply this concept across numerous use cases, facilitating the integration of Ethereum into real-world applications!

Famiee: Partnership Certificates on Ethereum

Famiee is a non-profit organization focused on enabling all types of families to gain access to benefits typically reserved for legally married couples via a platform for issuing partnership certificates on Ethereum. A network of participating companies offers services to couples holding Famiee certificates, granting them benefits otherwise limited to legally married couples, such as employee family benefits, joint mortgage applications, family discounts, public assistance, or life insurance.

Since February 2021, Famiee has issued certificates for same-sex partners and plans to expand its services to encompass other family configurations and partnerships not legally acknowledged in some regions, such as marriages where women retain their original surnames, or single mothers cohabitating for mutual support. They are actively developing a mobile app to issue certificates that uphold high standards of privacy protection, security, and KYC.

Numerous local Ethereum communities across the globe play a vital role in making Ethereum feel both universal and intimately personal for many individuals. Therefore, we continually experiment with new ways to support local communities worldwide.

We extend our gratitude to all contributors fostering Ethereum adoption in the real world. If you believe you could be the next, please visit our grants page to discover more about the criteria we consider for funding projects.