Allocation Update – Q4 2023

Community & educationAAvolution House IstanbulCommunity-run event organized in Istanbul, Türkiye to push forward account abstraction (AA) standards, ideas, and projects to mainstream adoption.Community & educationBuildETH PatternsEthereum developer event that explored the top web3 development patterns hosted in San Francisco, California.Community & educationEthereum Costa Rica DayEvent in San José, Costa Rica that focused on onboarding users and developers while covering topics such as public goods, cryptography, and Solidity.Community & educationETH MacedoniaSupport for ETH Macedonia’s grassroots activities, including engaging with the community on Discord and organizing meetups in Skopje, Macedonia.Community & educationEthereum Lima DayConference in Lima, Peru to onboard new Ethereum users with basic talks and educate developers through technical sessions and workshops.Community & educationEurocrypt 2024Scientific conference bringing together researchers in cryptography and IT security, from academia and industry.Community & educationFast Software Encryption (FSE) Conference 2024Academic conference focusing on fast and secure primitives for symmetric cryptography that covers a broad range of practical and theoretical topics.Community & educationGlobal Governance Gathering 2Event organized in Istanbul, Türkiye covering topics related to governance and the technology surrounding it.Community & educationIndia Ecosystem DevelopmentManbir SinghEthereum ecosystem development in India, with a focus on outreach to developers, community builders, and universities.Twitter, TelegramCommunity & educationInternational Workshop on Formal Methods for Blockchains (FMBC) 2024Workshop to discuss the possibilities and limitations of formal methods for blockchain technology.Community & educationNethermind Summit IstanbulBuilder event that featured technical explorations around the cornerstones of blockchain: security, scalability, and decentralization.Community & educationOnboarding to EthereumWeb3 AcademyFree educational initiative that focuses on educating high school students in smaller cities around Serbia about Ethereum.Community & educationRhino Review0xarmaganJournal dedicated to providing home stakers with the latest developments in Ethereum staking and distributed validator technology (DVT).Community & educationSNARK FundamentalsErrol DrummondOnline course and resource aimed at explaining the core concepts and modular components inherent in zero knowledge (ZK) systems from first principles.Community & educationSoutheast Asia Run-A-Validator WorkshopsSamuel ChongSeries of workshops aiming to grow the grassroots solo node operator community in Southeast Asia.Community & educationVyper DayEvent dedicated to demonstrating the latest developments within the Vyper language and developer tooling, hosted in Istanbul, Türkiye.Community & educationZK Auditing FellowshipyAcademyA free full-length ZK auditing fellowship for advanced developers that comprises trial-by-fire ZK audits of pre- and in-production code.Community & educationZK Hack IstanbulHackathon organized in Istanbul, Türkiye to build new projects that showcase what ZK can do.Community & education#aPRENDOcripto LatamProof of IntegrityEducational program providing training on blockchain technology, Ethereum educational material, and financial literacy to vulnerable communities across 14 Latin American countries.Consensus layerKurtosisAdd Persistent Volume Claims (PVC) support to the Kurtosis Kubernetes featureset, to allow devops and others to restart instances for enhanced testing and shadowforks. This is also a precursor to support syncing public devnets and testnets.Consensus layerPBS/ePBS Research & PrototypingStefan LindbergSeries of articles describing the current proposer-builder separation (PBS) landscape and the latest developments around improving PBS and ePBS, such as optimistic relays, pepc-boost, MEV-Boost+, and MEV-Boost++.Consensus layerROP-6: Stackelberg Attacks & MEVDaji Landis & Nikolaj I. SchwartzbachResearch on the effects that Stackelberg attacks can have on miner extractable value, to illuminate the underlying complexity of games on the blockchain and emphasize the care needed in designing good transaction fee mechanisms.Consensus layerTowards a Holistic Formalization of Ethereum’s EconomicsBrett PalatielloBuilding a macroeconomic model of Ethereum with a focus on staking and understanding equilibria and dynamics. The goal is to better understand the effects of liquid staking and similar constructions (e.g. restaking) in order to minimize their undesirable effects on e.g. stake concentration.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsAcceleration Program Ecosystem Development & CoordinationPaul YuEcosystem development and coordination for PSE‘s Acceleration Program, which seeks to onboard promising talent to the ZK and cryptography world.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsAcceleration Program & ZK Contribution ProgramMo JalilStreamlining the Acceleration Program’s processes and scaling the educational curriculum of the ZK Contribution Program to provide robust, open-source learning resources to the community.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsChiquitoRute Figueiredo & Steve WangChiquito is a high-level structured language for implementing zero knowledge proof (ZKP) applications. Most ZKP domain specific languages (DSLs) are based on writing constraints, witness generation, and some abstraction for DRY like templates or gadgets. Chiquito allows the developer to think in more high-level and structured abstractions than most ZKP DSLs, while not sacrificing performance.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsDaimoERC-4337 smart contract wallet that runs on stablecoins only, is non-custodial, and does not require any seed phrases.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEfficient Batch Verification of ECDSA SignaturesImplement an efficient batch verification of ECDSA signatures using P-256, as part of a larger project to develop a circuit in a user-friendly DSL and use aggregation- or recursion-friendly proof systems to output succinct proof of verification.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEmail WalletSora Suegami, Aayush Gupta, Elo Mukoro, & WataruContract wallet using emails that allows users to send crypto assets simply by sending emails without any actions from recipients (powered by ZK Email).Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFolding Schemes ResearchPierreReviewing modern folding schemes research and enhancing the development experience with the folding-schemes library.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFRI Security Research & Educational ResourcesColin Roberts & Waylon JepsenResearch on the security of algebraic hash functions and Fast Reed-Solomon Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity (FRI) and developing a curriculum for learning the necessary mathematics to understand ZK cryptography and its primitives.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFront-End Development for PSE ProjectsKalidou DiagneFront-end development for PSE projects, including the PSE website, learning courses, and jubmoji.quest.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsGroth16 Verifier in FeonurinancDeveloper-friendly Groth16 Verifier written in Fe which can be used by Circom users to build ZK applications.GitHub, TwitterCryptography & zero knowledge proofsJubmojiProject deployed at Devconnect Istanbul that utilizes NFC chips to give out ZK-friendly Baby JubJub signatures to participants as a form of provable private data, providing an educational experience about the possibility of personal control over private data using ZKPs.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsMPC Research0xvonResearch on multi-party computation (MPC), especially Threshold ECDSA, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and publicly auditable MPC, which will be summarized into explainer articles.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsNFC x ZK DevelopmentSupported the technical development of PSE‘s Devconnect Istanbul NFC x ZK activations, including Jubmoji.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsOn-Chain AAA for DePinImproving and deploying a dapp that represents the on-chain authentication, administration, and authorization (AAA) for decentralized internet networks.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofspylookupYu-Ming Hsu, Jing-Jie Wang, Paul Yu, & Harry LiuImplementing a simple, educational Python lookup argument.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsP-256 WebAuthn Circom ImplementationSleepingShellP-2556 WebAuthn Circom implementation, which will be integrated in a smart contract wallet that validates WebAuthn ES256 attestation within a zkSNARK verifier.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsStarky Implementation of BLS12-381 SignaturesElectron LabsDeveloping ZK-recursion circuits for the BLS12-381 signatures using the plonky2 framework.TwitterCryptography & zero knowledge proofsT-FHE ResearchAlex Kampa (AZKR Research)Elaborated on existing documentation of FHE over the torus (T-FHE) to make the materials more accessible to newcomers with little mathematical background.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTLSN-ONRAMPJomo & Ryan MacArthurPrivacy-preserving mobile web application allowing anonymous peers to exchange fiat for ETH using TLSNotary.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTorus-Based Cryptography Techniques ResearchRobert GrangerExploring the applicability of existing and potentially new torus-based cryptography techniques to determine the efficiency of Whisk and Curdleproofs when instantiated in the target group G_T, in terms of both time and space.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTowards Efficient ZKML ModelsSaeyoon OhResearch on the fundamental concepts essential for proving the integrity of machine learning (ML) models using ZKPs.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsUniRep Halo2 R&DBhargav AnnemCircom-STARK prover development and FHE-related research for UniRep Protocol.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsUnsound Halo2Jaewon InEstablish a repository featuring small Halo2 circuits, each presenting a unique soundness bug and a way to fix it.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZK EmailAayush Gupta, Sora Suegami, & Elo MukoroA protocol for creating proof of email by selectively disclosing information contained in the email.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZK-Friendly ML Model ExplorationsSaeyoon OhExploring different ZK-applicable ML algorithms that can perform the Heart Failure Prediction Dataset and comparing them.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZK Learning GrantSeongsu JeonResearch on Liam Eagen’s Elliptic Curve Inner Product, inner pairing product, and lattice-based ZKP, which will be summarized and shared publicly.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZKML BenchmarkingJingchi ZhangDeveloping a ZKML benchmark that aids developers in discerning the trade-offs and performance nuances among various frameworks.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofszkMobileNetSemar AugustoImplement a MobileNet model using Nova and perform analyses on different quantization methods that can be used on a neural network.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZKP Math Theories LecturesMatan Prasma (AZKR Research)Weekly lectures on a mathematical course from the basics of sets, groups & fields up to the pairing construction of Elliptic Curves.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsZK Soundedness ResearchTomoki OnoResearch on how R1CS-based ZKP systems achieve soundedness, which will be summarized into explainer articles in both English and Japanese.Developer experience & toolingAA MEV MonitorBlockPI NetworkAA browser focusing on maximal extractable value (MEV) analysis and data visualization that will show basic AA statistics and provide analyses of the bundler transaction frontrun and AA MEV incidences.Developer experience & toolingFe Language ServerBuild a language server implementation for Fe and integrate it with the VSCode plugin.Developer experience & toolingFe Repository ContributionsSaif KatoutSupport for contributions made to the Fe repository.Developer experience & toolingIron WalletDeveloper-centric wallet that has the usual functionality of a crypto wallet, as well as additional built-in tooling to speed up builders’ development workflows.Developer experience & toolingSolhint v4Protofire DAOContinued development of Solhint, an open-source Solidity linter.Execution layerAccount Abstraction Developer TeamSupporting the AA developer team’s continuous work on ERC-4337 and its implementation, infrastructure, documentation, supporting the ecosystem, RIP-7560 (native AA), and additional AA research.Execution layerNethermind 2023 Internship ProgramSupport for Nethermind’s internship program, with a focus on core protocol contributors.Execution layerROP-7: Economic Models of Signature Aggregation in Account AbstractionDavide RezzoliInvestigating the design of a mechanism to align the Aggregator and User incentives in AA, in which the Aggregator should perform as much aggregation as possible and the User should pay the lowest fee necessary to compensate the Aggregator for its service.Execution layerVerkle Tries Implementation SupportOnlyDustSupport for OnlyDust community contributors to continue working on a Verkle Tries implementation for Hyperledger Besu.General growth & supportAfrican Digital Repatriation ProjectMulenga KapwepweAfrican digital repatriation project that seeks to find a mechanism to bring African artifacts (and the ticket revenue they generate) closer to their communities of origin, as part of the Next Billion Fellowship Cohort #3.General growth & supportData Collection Grants RoundGrants round to encourage research and development around data collection and visualization of the Ethereum network.General growth & supportRoad to Devcon Grants RoundGrants round to support the growth of local Ethereum communities, initiatives, and projects in Southeast Asia.General growth & supportTechnical Challenges in Enterprise EthereumContinued exploration of issues and solutions for enterprise users of Ethereum in areas including decentralized identity, NIST standards alignment, Baseline protocol specification, and layer 2 standards and specifications.General growth & supportUNICEF CryptoFundFinancial vehicle allowing UNICEF to receive, hold, and disburse cryptocurrency to increase their operational efficiency, cost effectiveness, and transparency.OtherIC3Academic blockchain research initiative based at Cornell Tech with researchers across multiple universities with the goal of bringing the science of blockchains to the forefront and delivering blockchain innovation in code.OtherSecurity Alliance (SEAL)Common good infrastructure for coordination between security professionals, protocols, and the community to collaborate on and launch ambitious and impactful security initiatives.