We're excited to announce the grantees selected for the recent staking community grants round.
This grants round invited proposals that make the Ethereum staking experience easier, safer, and more secure. We were thrilled to see all of the great work proposed by these teams, and we're looking forward to continuing to find new ways to support the ecosystem. In the meantime, if you're working on something in this space and could use support, consider submitting a project inquiry with the Ecosystem Support Program.
More than $1M has been allocated across 25 grants in 4 different categories:
| category | amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| community / education | 391,800.00 |
| new tooling | 200,000.00 |
| data analysis / visualization | 180,000.00 |
| research | 268,655.00 |
A few months into Ethereum's proof-of-stake journey, it bodes well for the health of our ecosystem to see so many deserving teams across such a wide distribution of categories.
Community / Education
The biggest category this round was community / education. Easing the path to staking is crucial for the health of the staking ecosystem long term. Staking communities and educational content are helpful pieces of this puzzle, and we're looking forward to more development here, especially outside the English speaking world.
| Grantee(s) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| cadCAD Edu | cadCAD Masterclass: ETH2 Validator Economics | A cadCAD Edu online course built around eth2 validator economics. The team will also produce open source cadCAD validator models for the community to conduct their own analyses. |
| Carlos Mesa | How to stake? Spanish Video Guides | Video staking guides and content for the Spanish-speaking community |
| Ching-Yi Lin, Pi-Tan Hu | Eth2xK8s: Ethereum Staking with Kubernetes | Starter guide for running multi-validator setups with Kubernetes, including all necesssary configuration files. |
| Coin Cashew | End-to-end eth2 validator guide | Detailed step-by-step staking guides, plus further guides on grafana dashboards, docker eth2 installs, and securing validator keys with ledger |
| Empire Ventures | eth2.academy | An interactive educational resource that bridges the informational divide between the many moving parts of the eth2 ecosystem: from highly technical research work to client user interactions and to everything in-between. |
| butta, lamboshi, superphiz, unvetica, worthalter | EthStaker | Support for the EthStaker community to continue building an online place and set of resources for hobbyist stakers to get started. |
| Jeffrey Milewski | Foundations of Eth2 Economics | An online course and website focused on the economics of participating as a validator and the institutional economics of the eth2 protocol |
| Ross Moody | My Journey to Ethereum Staking | An article/guide that tracks the experience of learning how to stake from a very beginner level. |
| Rudy Lu | WeETH Staker | Support for the eth2 staking and validator ecosystem in China |
| Scott Piriou | Staking guide for beginners in French | A series of eth2 staking articles for the French-speaking community. |
| The Ether | The Ether Wiki | An eth2-focused wiki with the goal of educating and helping onboard prospective validators |
| Techtec | PoL | Eth2 educational content, including staking guides, in Japanese |
New tooling
Just as community and education are vital to getting stakers across the starting line, robust open source tools are key in ensuring that stakers can run their nodes safely and securely. This round, the tools we saw were primarily security and orchestration oriented, and we look forward to continued innovation here moving forward.
| Grantee(s) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Ben Goebel | valid8r | A command line tool to "validate" a validator's local setup. Check for common system and application defaults around performance and security of a staking setup. |
| Daniel Streit | Mnemonic Split | A web tool and open source code that uses threshold cryptography to create 'K of N' mnemonics. This will make it easier to store validator mnemonics safely and securely. |
| Isaac Agudo | HSM BLS Signer | A standard for an HSM BLS signer based on blst, including open source code+docs. This work will help stakers more securely manage their keys. |
| Jakub Tomanik | MacSteak | A macOS application to make the staking experience streamlined for operators of all skill levels by wrapping a platform for running Ethereum software on Apple hardware. |
| Mara Schmiedt, Alon Muroch, Collin Myers | Eth2 Secret Shared Validators | Audited implementation of a secret-shared validator configuration, a critical piece to improved validator resilience and diversification on the eth2 network |
Data analysis / visualization
As more ETH is staked with the beacon chain, it is increasingly important to have insight into the function and health of the network. Last year's Medalla Data Challenge was ample evidence of the interests and capability of the Ethereum ecosystem to gather and analyze network data. The projects in this category further these goals on mainnet.
| Grantee(s) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Bitfly | beaconcha.in | Continued development of the beaconcha.in FOSS block explorer, including an open-source mobile client and merge+sharding testnet support. |
| Jim McDonald | chaind | Integration of eth1 deposit tracking into chaind, a tool for collecting and indexing data from running staking nodes. |
| Omni Analytics Group | Ethereum 2.0 Validator Health Tier Tracking | A continuation of work initially submitted to the Medalla data challenge: a formal methodology for analyzing validators based on performance and an accompanying web dashboard. |
| pintail | Exploring Validator Rewards and Penalties | A series of blog posts explaining validator rewards/penalties using mainnet data. |
Research
Finally, there were a few research projects included in this round. There are many open research questions related to staking and the future of the network; we actively invite more research efforts in this area.
| Grantee(s) | Project | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Barcelona Supercomputing Center | Eth2 Network Crawler | Extensions to the rumor Eth2 network crawler focused on improving p2p gossip data collection. |
| Barcelona Supercomputing Center | Eth2 Client Resource Monitoring | Resource monitoring R&D for each of the 4 mainnet clients. |
| Diego Losada, Fernando Collado | Ethereum on ARM | R&D to provide users an easy way of running a full Eth2 node on ARM devices (such as Raspberry Pi 4) |
We're excited to follow these teams in 2021 and beyond, and to see the wider impact that they have on the budding Ethereum staking ecosystem.
The breadth and quality of this round of grants is an incredible signal for the burgeoning staking community and for the Ethereum ecosystem at large. Here's to the start of a great year! 🚀