The nonprofit dedicated to the advancement and maintenance of the ethereum software officially announced the beneficiaries of its first wave of development grants.

A total of 13 projects received more than 2.5 million dollars to work on scalability, security, development experiences, the study of the user interface and the 39; other derivatives of the blockchain ethereum, according to a Wednesday announcement.

Grants will help the ethereum community to better develop distributed applications (dapps) and smart contracts, according to the post. The Foundation also noted the different topics that each recipient is looking for and said: "We hope these grants will signal to the community what we think are the missing pieces in the ecosystem that need more support."

The Foundation went on to say that she "is there to serve the teams and individuals who work to prevent a tragedy of the commons."

Notably, the Foundation has acknowledged that the grant program has changed in direction since its first announcement in January. At the time, it was aimed at developers working on scaling the ethereum network, as previously reported.

On Wednesday, the Foundation explained the change:

"We have decided to expand support for projects that are doing a great job in terms of scalability, utility and security: these projects have not been implemented. ICO, no symbolic sales and focus only on creating useful products and experiences.]

Subsidies are also not strictly related to the main network. The Foundation noted that some of its grants went to "hackers" for community members who proposed a useful side project.

That said, some of the largest grants were spent on scalability research – L4 Research earned $ 1.5 million to work on state channels, while Prysmatic Labs earned $ 100,000 for the sharding.

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