We are today unveiling over $2M USD in Foundation-led and co-funded grant funding aimed at furthering Serenity (Eth2.0) development as we move nearer to the launch of the Beacon Chain.

Eth2.0 Client Grants

In recent months, the Ethereum Foundation granted substantial awards to leading client development teams currently tasked with delivering long-standing multi-client testnets as development approaches the launch of Phase 0.

We are proud to announce the recipients of those grants.

Harmony

Award: $189k for Harmony beacon chain development

Github

Prysmatic Labs

Award: $725k for Prysm client development

Sigma Prime

Award: $485k for Lighthouse client development

*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & ConsenSys

Status

Award: $500k for Nimbus client development

Networking

Status

Award: $150K for nim-libp2p development

*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & Protocol Labs

Status’ Nimbus team is building a native nim-language implementation of libp2p for use in Nimbus and other projects. Further, the team aims to create an implementation suitable for resource-restricted devices.

Whiteblock

Award: $184K

*Co-funded by: Ethereum Foundation & ConsenSys

Website

Whiteblock is funded to continue Eth2.0 network testing and testnet/interoperability support. Whiteblock will analyze the libp2p gossipsub implementation, continue to work with implementors to help refine the networking stack and specification, and advance interoperability efforts.

Research and Development

Dmitry Khovratovich

Award: $10K

Dmitry Khovratovich, an expert cryptanalyst, is funded to produce a report regarding the security of the Legendre PRF (as described by Grassi et al.) and the proof-of-custody scheme intended to be used in Phase 1 of Eth2.0.

Chainsafe

Award: $217.5K for Lodestar light-client and javascript development

Chainsafe is working on Eth2.0 light-client R&D within their Lodestar javascript client along with continuing to provide support to the Eth2.0 JS/web-browser ecosystem by developing libraries, tooling, and educational resources.

Bounties

The following bounties are open to help further research and development efforts for the future of Ethereum.

Phase 0 Consensus

The Ethereum Foundation is offering 5 ETH bounties (or 1000 DAI, whichever larger) for any recommendations for substantive changes (bug fixes, optimizations, etc) that make it into the Phase 0 Eth 2.0 spec prior to the Eth 2.0 genesis. These include changes for the state transition function, fork choice rule, or deposit contract. For more information, check out the open bounty issue on the specs repo.

Legendre PRF

The Legendre pseudo-random function is an extremely MPC-friendly one bit PRF. This PRF is currently slated to be used in the proof of custody scheme in Phase 1 of Eth 2.0, as it is the only known method to make the proof of custody possible in a shared secret setting. To encourage more research about this PRF, the Ethereum Foundation has set out a series of bounties here: legendreprf.org/bounties

STARK-Friendly Hash Challenge

The Ethereum Foundation has asked StarkWare to recommend a STARK-Friendly Hash (SFH). The StarkWare hash challenge is a public competition aimed at evaluating the security of current proposed SFH candidates. The challenge is proposed at four security levels: low-security, medium-security, target-security, and high-security in multiple scenarios. See starkware.co/hash-challenge for more details about the competition and how to get started.