We are delighted to offer the community $5 million in funds to contribute towards Coordicide-related research.

Since we announced our path to Coordicide, our focus has been on researching the best way to implement it. Some of our research has already been published, and more is yet to come.

Given that Coordicide is a top priority, we want to fund community contributions to our research. This way, we hope to attract expertise from academia and other research organizations to propel the growth of the IOTA ecosystem and to further the adoption of the technology.

The Natural Evolution of Research

Research began by defining the core questions and the essence of the solution, which we presented on the Coordicide website. We are thrilled to have reached the stage where the scope of the project allows for contributions from researchers beyond our core team. So, the next step in our evolution is to open the research pipeline to the broader community of academics and researchers. This step is an opportunity for the best and brightest in Distributed Ledger Technology to come to the table and offer their contributions to Coordicide in the most constructive way possible.

Potential topics of interests for IOTA Foundation include, but are not limited to:

Proof-of-Work alternatives for spam prevention in the Tangle

Optimization of the networking layer to avoid network congestion

Reputation system based on node behavior

Efficient tip selection algorithms

Theoretical properties of query-based voting schemes (e.g., FPC)

Theoretical behavior of cellular automata based consensus

Efficient algorithms for timestamping of transactions

Scaling through trustless partial Tangle validation

Attacks on the IOTA protocol (e.g., voting, eclipse)

Efficient decentralized random number generators

How to Apply

We are thrilled that you want to apply for funding and work with our skilled research team! The process is straightforward, and we have streamlined things to save your time and ours. Initial proposals are not to exceed two (2) pages. Proposals should, of course, describe the research to be conducted, as well as a tentative budget and timeline. After an initial review by the grant committee, projects of interest to the Research Department will be contacted for more details. We are open to large proposals (up to and over $1,000,000), as well as smaller grants, which may be less than $50,000. To give an example of a smaller grant, Professor Sebastian Müller recently received a grant for $18,900 for research on the Fast Probabilistic Consensus mechanism.

In the coming weeks, we will update the Coordicide website with more details about each of the research topics mentioned above, so researchers will have a clear idea of what projects have the greatest chance of acceptance. The grant application form will also go live with the website update.

In the meantime, feel free to reach out to us by email if you have an idea you just can’t wait to share. You can also always find our researchers in our community Discord server (check the #tanglemath or #goshimmer-discussion channels).

We look forward to reviewing your applications and your research. Hold tight for the next update!