Q2 2021 Allocation Update from the Ethereum Foundation Blog

Community & education Ethereum Cat Herders Supportive community for Ethereum’s core developers that offers project management, communication, and coordination services. Community & education EthCC Ethereum France A developer conference that takes place in Paris, France. Community & education Ethereum HN A grassroots community group in Honduras that organizes meetups, workshops, and developer events dedicated to Ethereum. Community & education Ether University Content and Educational Resources Nathan Leung Resources and community-building initiatives aimed at undergraduate students involved in the ETH Summer learning program. Community & education ETHUni: ETH Spring Community Development Scott Moses Sunarto Focus on community growth and assistance for the ETH Spring undergraduate program while also managing content formatting and migration to the ETH Spring website. Community & education ETHUni: ETH Summer Therese Cresalia and Scott Moses Sunarto Management of ETH Summer, a virtual program designed to introduce undergraduate students of computer science and mathematics to Ethereum. Community & education Smart Contract Auditing Bootcamp Secureum A well-structured program aimed at equipping aspiring auditors with knowledge about smart contract security and auditing. Community & education Ethereum Public Goods Funding Mapping Sumedha Deshmukh A research initiative aimed at charting out the landscape of funding for public goods within the Ethereum ecosystem. Community & education Cryptofund 2021 UNICEF A cryptocurrency-funded investment initiative aimed at supporting startups that leverage blockchain technology for social good. Consensus layer Eth2 Crawler ChainSafe A crawler offering API and frontend access to data related to beacon chain nodes via DiscV5 technology. Consensus layer Fast Hash-to-Curve Research Dimitri Koshelev Research and reports on expedited G2 hash functions for BLS12-381, with focus on potential performance gains in SNARKs, L2 applications, and more. Consensus layer Stereum Rock Logic Provides Docker images for solo stakers to easily set up a beacon chain client along with all dependencies, supporting production clients on both mainnet and testnet. Consensus layer Beacon Fuzz Sigma Prime Ongoing development and maintenance of Beacon Fuzz, a testing framework for beacon chains, focusing on performance improvements and testing new Altair functions for security vulnerabilities. Consensus layer Lighthouse Sigma Prime Continued enhancements and support for the Lighthouse beacon chain client. Consensus layer Beacon Chain Liveness Improvements Stanford University’s Tse Lab Investigating solutions to prevent potential liveness attacks on the consensus algorithm of Ethereum’s beacon chain. Consensus layer Ethereum Staking Committee Japan An initiative aimed at promoting staking in Japan by raising awareness, facilitating education, and providing support to the engineering community while enhancing the technical, regulatory, and business aspects of staking. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZK Games Justin Glibert Cutting-edge research into the application of zkSNARKs within blockchain gaming mechanics to create decentralized real-time strategy games. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs Verkle Trie Optimizations Dag Arne Osvik Implementing the verkle trie data structure aimed at achieving Stateless Ethereum. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs MPC Phase 2 UI Enhancements Geoff Lamperd Enhancements to the Phase 2 UI for the MPC trusted setup process, streamlining based on findings from the zkopru MPC. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ZK Developer Tooling Jacob Rosenthal and Blaine Bublitz Creation of tools to enhance the experience of ZK developers, including contributions to Dark Forest, circom, and Hardhat. Cryptography & zero knowledge proofs ETHUni: Private Data Marketplace POC Nick Ulven A proof of concept for an on-chain marketplace for confidential or permissioned data utilizing zkSNARKs. Developer experience & tooling clr.fund UI clr.fund Enhancements made to improve user experience on the clr.fund decentralized quadratic funding protocol, including updates to the deployer, subgraph, documentation, new MACI circuits for scalability, and the conduction of a trusted setup ceremony. Developer experience & tooling Vyper/Fe Formally Verified Compiler formalize.eth The formal verification of the transformation of the Fe smart contract language to Yul, along with the development of required features to enable a complete ERC20 implementation. Developer experience & tooling Viblex Heiko Burkhardt Graphically visualizes smart contract architectures, allowing users to analyze and interact with contracts across mainnet, testnets, and local environments. Developer experience & tooling Gas Cost Estimator Stage II Imapp A systematic methodology for estimating gas costs of EVM OPCODEs that considers variations in hardware, software, and programming environments, intended to guide discussions around adjusting OPCODE pricing. Developer experience & tooling Formal Verification of Yul Compiler Transformations Kestrel Institute Formalizing the semantics of the Yul programming language and utilizing/enhancing existing verification tools for proving the accuracy of Yul compiler optimizations. Developer experience & tooling Decentralized Community Management Research Other Internet A study and paper focusing on decentralized community management, evaluating organizational dynamics, communication strategies, and conflict resolution, offering proposed best practices for community management. Developer experience & tooling GCatch++ Penn State University An extension of GCatch, which detects concurrency bugs in Go programs, to encompass detection of channel-related non-blocking bugs applicable to Ethereum clients. Developer experience & tooling Transaction Classification Schema Rotki An open-source library encompassing schemas to decode Ethereum transactions and categorize corresponding actions, like distinguishing a transaction as a CLR donation, token exchange, or liquidity addition to an AMM. Developer experience & tooling Decentralized Identity Tooling Symfoni An open-source toolkit designed for decentralized identity management and verified credentials on Ethereum, featuring a wallet, data container, and SDK. Execution layer Nethermind Execution Client Nethermind Ongoing support and development for the Nethermind execution client. Execution layer Layer 1 R&D Quilt Facilitating ongoing research and development focused on Layer 1 protocol features and security enhancements. Execution layer Nimbus Execution Client Status Continued development and upkeep of the Nimbus execution client. Execution layer Fluffy Portal Client Status Work on the development of the Fluffy light client, which aims to facilitate resource-limited devices in engaging with the Ethereum network via necessary APIs for standardized wallet operations without needing full state synchronization. Execution layer Erigon Torquem Ongoing maintenance and upgrades for the Erigon (formerly TurboGeth) execution client. Layer 2 Arbitrum Review Kev Zettler An extensive review of the Arbitrum system and its codebase, with a focus on identifying vulnerabilities for the Arbitrum team, in line with a prior review of Optimism. Layer 2 L2Beat A platform that showcases usage metrics and risk assessments for a comparative analysis of Layer 2 scaling solutions. User experience BrightID Advancing the BrightID social identity network framework, emphasizing enhanced node security and anti-sybil mechanisms, alongside the development of a web client and support for blind signatures. User experience ZK Games Design Support Moe Janneh Offering design and artistic support for teams engaged in developing experimental ZK games and applications.