The Privateness & Scaling Explorations group is worked up to announce the winners of the Layer 2 Neighborhood Grants 2022.

The Layer 2 Neighborhood Grants spherical began on October twenty fourth, 2022 and was open for six weeks. In whole we acquired 130+ proposals and thank every venture for taking the time to use.
The wishlist compiled sought purposes from all areas together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and schooling.

This chart reveals share of preliminary candidates by class:

As a result of top quality of proposals, we raised the finances from an preliminary 750k USD to a complete of 948k USD.

The awarded purposes share per class:

Grantees

We congratulate the 22 grantees awarded and current their venture descriptions damaged down by class:

🔒 Cybersecurity

• Candidelabs – ERC-4337 Public Infrastructure

  • An open supply bundler and a paymaster service as public good infrastructure for ERC-4337 good contracts wallets, layer 2 targeted.

• Quantstamp – Rollup Safety Framework

  • The venture will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They need to set up a basis for primary greatest practices and transparency for these options to help new builders of those methods and allow the neighborhood to evaluate the safety dangers of a specific rollup earlier than they use one. Comparable to people who can be found for good contract improvement and the very high-level overviews of rollup safety like L2Beat.com. The framework will focus on issues and particulars of escape hatch improvement and operational dangers for end-users and builders and set up a constant language for these and different options.

👨‍💻 Person Expertise

• Spiro – zkWallet

  • Multi-party wallets (e.g. Gnosis protected multisigs) are a confirmed approach for a bunch of customers to share management over an account’s digital property and behaviors. Sadly, present implementations of multi-party wallets expose the privateness of their whole variety of operators and their related externally owned accounts. The purpose of this venture is to construct a non-public multi-party pockets that shields finish customers by using account abstraction (EIP-4337) and zero-knowledge proofs.

• Kautuk Kundan – Stackr Community

  • Stackr community is an SDK for launching standalone customizable app-specific rollups utilizing acquainted web2-like tooling. It focuses on the core precept of a roll-up, that’s, to run a state machine off-chain and use L1 to retailer transaction particulars. This may be achieved by general-purpose languages that may preserve the app-state off-chain and supply an interface to work together with it, thus performing as a standalone L2. It permits constructing a brand new class of purposes that can have extra freedom over their execution decisions.

• ScopeLift – L2 Optimizors

  • Layer 2 networks share safety with main-net by posting transaction name information to Layer 1. Consequently, Layer 2 customers pay their portion of the main-net fuel prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 fuel could be >25,000x dearer than Layer 2 fuel, so paying for name information dominates L2 transaction prices. With customized router contracts that use much less name information than normal strategies, we will considerably cut back transaction prices to work together with well-liked protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 allows anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering straightforward instruments. It supplies a simple software that launches your personal Layer 2 with obligatory instruments—for instance, block explorer, token bridge, monitoring instruments, and many others.

• ScopeLift – Layer 2 Governance with Versatile Voting

  • Versatile Voting is an extension of the favored Governor system utilized by many DAOs. It permits new sorts of delegation contracts to be written, making it simpler for governance token holders to take part in on-chain votes. One such use case is the topic of this grant: Layer 2 governance voting. Holders of bridged governance tokens may vote from Layer 2, paying the cheaper fuel costs obtainable there. These votes could be trustlessly mirrored on L1 the place the DAO’s Governor system is deployed.

• Clement Walter – Starksheet

  • Starksheet goals to democratize the entry and utilization of on-chain sources (information and logic). It leverages a well-known spreadsheet to assist the consumer question and hyperlink on-chain sources. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and could be queried later-on from some other dApp/contract

• Kristof Gazso – Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler

  • The venture will embrace the event of an ERC-4337 bundler in Typescript and the related modifications to a Geth node for simulation functions in order that the bundler can run on any immediately Geth-compatible chain (which incorporates most L2s) with little modifications. The bundler may even expose the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and preserve an inner mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation shall be developed.

• Soul Pockets – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets

  • Straightforward-to-use browser pockets implementation powered by ERC-4337.

📚 Neighborhood and Training

• Jose Figueroa – L2 en Español
  
  • L2 en Español is an open neighborhood that goals to analysis, educate and drive the adoption in all these Ethereum’s scaling options. They give attention to each builders and new customers of their quest to remain updated with these applied sciences and their utility. We create content material and perform totally different actions from publications to workshops totally free, whereas supporting the totally different initiatives that innovate on this house, whereas sustaining additionally its core neutrality.

• Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
  
  • This shall be an open-source, community-driven, and academic venture. This shall be an internet site for folks interested by Layer2 however with out prior data about Layer2 or Blockchain. We purpose to make use of well-designed diagrams and interactive animation to assist folks get the concept behind Layer2 in 30mins. Afterward, we’ll information folks to some real-world Layer2 apps step-by-step and allow them to really feel the advantages of Layer2.

🗄️ Knowledge Evaluation

• Blockscout – Blockscout Block Explorer
  
  • An open-source block explorer is presently wanted for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by many L2 initiatives, and extra customizations particular to L2 information necessities will improve usability. As well as, a brand new interface, options, analytics and developer pleasant enhancements will assist create a extra clear and usable neighborhood explorer.

• Quantstamp – Evaluating Rollup Compression
  
  • Compression is commonly missed when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make information obtainable with the intention to confirm state transitions or state roots; nonetheless, the tactic for this publication varies, and should embrace compressed information. There’s additionally variability within the compression strategies used. This venture will discover using compression within the rollup setting. First, the venture will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the strategies which may be used. Second, the venture will survey current rollups to analyze the approaches which are truly utilized in observe. Third, the venture will consider approaches proposed or used throughout related methods and try to establish why a specific strategy is used. Lastly, the venture will use the insights collected with the intention to recommend new approaches for compression of rollup information and pose open issues to the neighborhood.

• Diablobench – Efficiency and Safety Analysis of Layer 2 Blockchain Techniques
  
  • The College of Sydney and the EPFL have designed a benchmark suite to guage the safety and efficiency of blockchain methods. The primary evaluations in contrast layer 1 blockchains corresponding to Algorand, Solana and Diem and shall be revealed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This venture goals at including layer 2 blockchain methods to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to supply the primary in depth and practical benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain methods on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • By this venture, we purpose to ship a high-quality set of Dashboards that assist allow information scientists, researchers, and all neighborhood members to higher perceive Layer 2 Exercise
  • We’ll mixture information throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources corresponding to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of instances, immediately from the venture APIs/RPCs.
  • We’ll clear and set up this information to offer a collection of shows that can permit the neighborhood to visualise modifications throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, lease paid to Ethereum, progress in TVL, every day lively addresses, new addresses, whole addresses, charges paid, and developer exercise primarily based on GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We purpose to label good contracts (and in the end allow the neighborhood to label good contracts) by utilization classes (Native switch, DeFi DEX, DeFi different, NFT, CEX, Stablecoin, ERC20 different, L2 lease, Bridge, Arbitrage/MEV, Utility). This labeling will permit us to investigate and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive stage and in addition present the “hottest” good contracts within the totally different utilization classes. We’re leveraging identified labels from Dune, Arbiscan, Etherscan, and others.

• L2 Beat – L2 Beat
  
  • Proceed to work on clear and verifiable insights into rising layer two (L2) applied sciences with expanded metrics and schooling.

📊 Knowledge Visualization

• Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Customary for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This venture will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement with the intention to be thought-about feature-complete within the basic layer two setting. Moreover, our purpose is to suggest and specify an ordinary API interface that the layer two networks ought to expose to basic block explorers. We envision that such a standardized interface will allow and enormously simplify the event of a number of block explorers that can plug-and-play reusable with all of the layer 2 networks that assist the usual. Within the best situation, the usual would flip the event of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a venture that may very well be accomplished by an skilled group throughout a weekend hackathon. Our purpose shall be to additionally outline an ordinary that’s consumer-agnostic. As such, it won’t matter whether or not it’s consumed by a block explorer that’s offered commercially, is open supply, or doubtlessly even decentralized. The venture can pay particular consideration to what distinctive layer two information a block explorer ought to present, with an emphasis on these associated to safety of the chains monitored by it.

• Blossom Labs – Blobscan
  
  • The primary explorer for the EIP-4844 shard blob transactions. It indexes and presents them in a searchable format that the consumer can visualize and navigate by way of in a simple approach, offering the mandatory infrastructure to scale Ethereum.

🧮 Cryptography and Zero-knowledge proofs

• Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Daybreak Track (College of California at Berkeley) – Specular
  
  • The preferred optimistic rollups (ORUs) right now, Arbitrum and Optimism, try to increase current Ethereum shopper software program (Geth) to assist interactive fraud proof (IFP) building, aiming to reuse prior L1 engineering efforts and replicate EVM semantics at L2. Sadly, to take action they tightly couple their on-chain IFP verifier with a selected shopper program binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This strategy (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of a number of Ethereum shopper packages, magnifying monocolture failure threat; (2) results in an unnecessarily massive and sophisticated trusted computing base (TCB) that’s troublesome to independently audit; and, (3) suffers from a frequently-triggered, but opaque improve course of—each additional rising auditing overhead, and complicating on-chain entry management within the long-term.
  • We’re due to this fact targeted on constructing a safe, trust-minimized ORU that addresses these issues, whereas preserving scalability and dispute decision effectivity. To take action, we’ve got designed an IFP system native to the EVM, that enforces Ethereum’s semi-formally specified semantics [5] exactly on the stage of a single EVM instruction. As part of this work, we constructed Specular, an ORU which leverages Geth—modified minimally with solely 99 lines-of-code to assist IFP building—demonstrating the practicality, extensibility and trust-minimal nature of our strategy.

• Nethermind, Justin Thaler (Georgetown College), Matthew Inexperienced (Johns Hopkins College), and Pratyush Tiwari (Georgetown College) – Concrete Safety Evaluation for L2 Deployed Proof Techniques
  
  • We suggest to investigate the concrete safety of the proof methods (SNARKs, STARKs) that safe -rollups. We observe that some proof methods have safety analyzed within the interactive setting, whereas their safety after making use of the Fiat—Shamir transformation is simply conjectured. Moreover, we consider that in some instances extra environment friendly assaults are attainable than the claimed safety stage asserts.

• Ethstorage – Proof of Storage on L2 Dynamic Datasets with an Ethereum L1 Contract
  
  • Given an inventory of commitments of BLOBs (e.g., KZG commitments from EIP-4844/Danksharding, listed from 0…n-1) in an L1 contract, the venture is to review an environment friendly proof system to effectively confirm on L1 that the BLOBs are saved off-chain with the specified redundancy (e.g., 30~50 bodily replicas). By placing these storage nodes in an L2 community and assuming 1/m of nodes is trustworthy, we may construct an L2 storage community that reuses mainnet safety whereas extending Ethereum scalability dramatically.
  • Additional analysis will try to reply the questions of how you can construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are always modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the listing or a BLOB of an index is modified); and how you can construct incentivized/cost system to make sure desired replication issue utilizing ETH as cost; it’s attainable to ask a storage node to retailer partial BLOBs whereas sustaining the identical stage of safety of Mainnet?

We had been extraordinarily proud of the standard of candidates for this grants spherical. The analysis and work they produce may have a constructive affect on the ecosystem. We recommend keeping track of them!