The Privacy & Scaling Explorations team is excited to announce the winners of the Layer 2 Community Grants 2022.
The Layer 2 Community Grants Round began on October 24, 2022, and was open for six weeks. We received more than 130 proposals. Thank you to all the projects that took the time and effort to apply.
You can also find out more about the following: wishlist Compilation of all applications, including Layer 2 explorers and cryptography.
The chart below shows the initial applicant percentages by category.
We increased the budget to 948k USD from the initial 750k.
The number of awarded applications per category.
Grantees
The 22 grantees are congratulated and their project descriptions are presented by category.
đź”’ Cybersecurity
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Candidelabs ERC-4337 Public Infrastructure
- An open source Layer 2 focused bundler, and a Paymaster Service as Public Good Infrastructure for ERC 4337 Smart Contract Wallets.
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Quantstamp Rollup Security Framework
- The project will develop a detailed framework of security for rollups’ unique features. The goal is to provide a solid foundation of best practices, transparency and guidance for new developers to use these systems. They also want the community be able to assess security risks associated with a specific rollup prior to using it. The framework will be similar to the ones available for smart contracts development and high-level overviews on rollup security, like L2Beat.com. The framework will cover the concerns of end-users, developers, and operators regarding escape hatches development and operational risk.
👨‍💻 User Experience
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Spiro – zkWallet
- Multi-party Wallets (e.g. Gnosis multisigs have been proven to be a reliable way for users to control digital assets and account behaviors. Unfortunately, the current implementations for multi-party wallets reveal their operators’ identities and externally owned accounts. This project aims to create a multi-party private wallet that protects users using account abstraction (EIP-4337) and zero-knowledgeproofs.
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Kautuk Kundan Stackr Network
- The Stackr Network SDK is a tool that allows you to launch standalone, customizable rollups for apps using web2-like tools. It is based on the core principle for a rollup: to run a state-machine off-chain, and to use L1 as a storage medium for transaction details. It can be done by using general-purpose programming languages that maintain the application-state off-chain, and provide an interface for interacting with it. It allows the building of a whole new class applications with more flexibility in their execution.
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ScopeLift – L2 Optimizers
- Layer 2 networks are able to share security with Main-net through the posting of transaction call data on Layer 1. Layer 2 users are responsible for their share of main-net gas charges when they execute transactions. Layer 1 gas can be >25,000x more expensive than Layer 2 gas, so paying for call data dominates L2 transaction costs. We can reduce the transaction costs for popular protocols by using custom router contracts which use less call data.
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Testinprod – Layer 1.5
- Anyone can launch their own Layer 1.5. own The layer 2 toolkit is easy to use. It launches your application with ease. own Layer 2 with necessary tools—for example, block explorer, token bridge, monitoring tools, etc.
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ScopeLift – Layer 2 Governance and Flexible Voting
- Flexible voting is a variation of the Governor system, which many DAOs use. This allows for new types of delegation contracts, which makes it easier for token holders to take part in on-chain voting. The grant will be used to support Layer 2 Governance Voting. Holders who have bridged their governance tokens would be able to vote at Layer 2 and pay the lower gas prices. These votes will be reflected in a trustworthy manner on Layer 1, where the DAO Governor system is deployed.
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Clement Walter Starksheet
- Starksheet’s goal is to democratize access and use of on-chain (data and logical) resources. It uses a familiar spreadsheet for the user to query and link on chain resources. The work The NFTs are saved in the chain and can later be queried from any dApp/contract
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Kristof Gazso Typescript ERC-4333 Bundler
- The project will involve the development of ERC 4337 bundlers in Typescript, and the modifications necessary to a Geth simulation node so that they can be run on any Geth compatible chain (which includes many L2s). The bundler will expose all RPC calls specified in the specification and maintain a mempool for future-proofing.proof When P2P will be developed.
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Soul Wallet – Open-source ERC-4337 wallet
- ERC 4337 is a browser wallet with easy-to-use functionality.
đź“š Community and Education
- Jose Figueroa – L2 en Español
- L2 en Español is an open community that aims to research, educate and drive the adoption in all these Ethereum’s scaling solutions. The community focuses on new users as well as developers in order to stay current with these technologies. We produce content and do different activities for free, including publications and workshops, while supporting projects that innovate in the space while maintaining its neutrality.
- Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
- The event will be open to the public.sourceThis is a community-driven and educational project. This website will be for people who are curious about Layer2 and Blockchain but have no prior knowledge. In 30 minutes, we will use interactive animation and well-designed diagrams to explain Layer2. We will then guide them through some Layer2 applications in real life, step-by-step. This way they can feel the benefits.
🗄️ Data Analysis
- Blockscout Blockscout Block Explorer
- An open-source Block explorer is needed to support the L2 eco-system. Blockscout, which is used by several L2 projects already, will have its usability increased with additional customizations that are specific to L2 requirements. A new interface, features and analytics, as well as improvements for developers, will create a more transparent, usable and transparent community explorer.
- Quantstamp – Rollup Compression Evaluation
- Rollups often overlook compression. In order to verify the state transitions and state roots, rollups need to be able to present data. The method of publication for these publications can vary, but may include compressed information. Also, the techniques of compression used vary. This project will investigate the use of compression when a rollup is used. The first step of the project is to document possible techniques and places where compression may be applied. Second, it will examine existing rollups and investigate the methods that are used in actual practice. Third, the project evaluates approaches proposed or applied across similar systems in an attempt to determine why they are used. Finaly, the project will take the information collected and suggest new ways to compress the rollup data.
- Diablobench Performance and security evaluation of layer 2 blockchain systems
- The University of Sydney, in collaboration with EPFL, has designed a benchmark set to evaluate the performance and security of Blockchain systems. The first evaluations will soon be published at a peer-reviewed conference (Eurosys), comparing layer 1 blockchains, such as Algorand and Solana. This project will add layer 2 blockchains to the Diablo Benchmark and use it as the basis for the first comprehensive and realistic benchmark assessment of layer 2 Blockchain systems deployed worldwide.
- Web3-data – Layer 2 Activity Tracking & Comparison Suite
- We aim to provide a set of Dashboards with high quality that will help data scientists, researchers and community members better understand Layer 2 Activity.
- We will aggregate data from Layer 2 networks using sources like Dune, L2Beats Santiment CoinGecko Github Discord and in many cases directly from project APIs/RPCs.
- We will clean up and organize the data to provide a series of displays which will allow community members to see changes in key L2 metrics. tps is the rent paid to Ethereum. TVL growth, daily active addresses are new addresses. Total addresses are total addresses.
- This will allow us to analyze and visualize usage patterns on a high level. This will enable us to visualize and analyze usage patterns at a high-level and also show the utility. “hottest” Smart contracts are available in different categories of usage. We are using well-known labels from Dune Arbiscan Etherscan and others.
- L2 Beat – L2 beat
- Continue to the next page work By expanding metrics and education, we will provide transparent and verifiable information on emerging layer two (L2) technology.
đź“Š Data Visualization
- Quantstamp Back-End API standard for L2 Block Exposers
- This project will define the properties that a layer two block explorer must implement to be considered complete in its general setting. Our goal is also to specify and propose a standard API that layer two networks can expose to block explorers. A standardized API interface, we envision, will greatly simplify and enable the development of block explorers which can be reused with all layer 2 network that support the standard. The standard could, in an ideal scenario turn the core development of a block explorer project into one that can be completed by a team of experienced developers during a weekend hackathon. It is our goal to create a standard that can be used by any consumer. It will therefore not matter if it is consumed by an open-source block explorer, or a commercially available block explorer. sourceThe project will pay special attention to what unique layer two data a block explorer should provide, with an emphasis on those related to security of the chains monitored by it. The project is going to pay particular attention to what layer two data should be provided by a blockexplorer, with a focus on the ones related to security.
- Blossom Labs – Blobscan
- First explorer for EIP-4844 transactions. It indexes them and presents them as a searchable format, which the user can easily navigate and visualize.
🧮 Cryptography & Zero-knowledge Proofs
- Zhe Ye, Ujval MisraDawn Song, University of California at Berkeley Specular
- The two most popular optimistic rollups today, Arbitrum, and Optimism are attempting to extend the Ethereum client software, Geth, to support interactive fraud. proof (IFP), aiming at reusing prior L1 engineering and replicating EVM semantics for L2. Unfortunately, to do so they tightly couple their on-chain IFP verifier with a specific client program binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This approach (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of multiple Ethereum client programs, magnifying monocolture failure risk; (2) leads to an unnecessarily large and complex trusted computing base (TCB) that is difficult to independently audit; and, (3) suffers from a frequently-triggered, yet opaque upgrade process—both further increasing auditing overhead, and complicating on-chain access control in the long-term.
- We are focused on creating a trust-minimized ORU to address these issues, while maintaining scalability, and dispute resolution efficiency. We have created an IFP native to the EVM that enforces Ethereum’s semi-formally defined semantics. [5] At the exact level of an EVM instruction. As part of this work, we built Specular, an ORU which leverages Geth—modified minimally with only 99 lines-of-code to support IFP construction—demonstrating the practicality, extensibility and trust-minimal nature of our approach.
- NethermindJustin Thaler (Georgetown University), Matthew Green, (Johns Hopkins University), Pratyush T. Tiwari, (Georgetown University) Concrete Security Analysis of L2 Deployed proof systems
- We suggest analyzing the concrete security of the proof We observe that some systems (SNARKs and STARKs), which secure -rollups. We are observing that some proof systems have security analyzed in the interactive setting, while their security after applying the Fiat—Shamir transformation is only conjectured. We also believe that, in some cases, more effective attacks are possible than what the security level claims.
- Ethstorage – Proof of storage on L2 dynamic datasets with an Ethereum contract L1
- Given a list of commitments of BLOBs (e.g., KZG commitments from EIP-4844/Danksharding, indexed from 0…n-1) in an L1 contract, the project is to study an efficient proof The system will efficiently verify that the BLOBs (e.g. 3050 physical replications) are stored off chain with the desired level of redundancy. We could create an L2 storage network by putting these nodes into an L2 network, and assuming that 1/m nodes are honest. This would reuse mainnet security while increasing Ethereum’s scalability.
- The research that is done will try to answer questions such as how to construct the proofHow to create an incentive/payment system that ensures desired replication factor by using ETH as a payment. Is it possible to ask storage nodes to store partial BLOBs with the same level security of Mainnet.
This round of grants was extremely well received by the recipients. The quality of the research and work The products they produce have a positive influence on the ecosystem. Keep an eye on these guys!
“This article is not financial advice.”
“Always do your own research before making any type of investment.”
Source: blog.ethereum.org