Layla Zulfa
The Ethereum ecosystem is experiencing a significant infusion of strategic support, with a wide-ranging funding initiative designed to accelerate development, enhance security, foster global community engagement, and drive innovation across critical technological frontiers. This comprehensive commitment spans over 50 distinct projects and initiatives across nine key categories, touching numerous countries and addressing challenges from core protocol resilience to advanced cryptographic research and grassroots education. The initiative underscores a continued dedication to nurturing a decentralized, scalable, and secure future for the world’s leading programmable blockchain.
A Global Commitment to Community & Education for Web3 Adoption
A substantial portion of the funding is directed towards cultivating a robust global community and advancing educational efforts, recognizing that human capital and accessible knowledge are foundational to Ethereum’s long-term success. Over 30 initiatives fall under this category, demonstrating a clear focus on geographical diversity and thematic breadth. Conferences and hackathons are pivotal, bringing together developers, researchers, and enthusiasts from every corner of the globe.
In Europe, Bluechip25 in Vienna, Austria, is dedicated to crypto safety, sharing best practices, and setting new benchmarks for trust and transparency. Edinburgh Decentralized Finance Summit in Scotland focuses on DeFi, tokenization, and agentic finance, while ETHSofia in Bulgaria delves into AI and blockchain, web3 security, and scaling. Serbia hosts Web3 Kamp, an immersive residential bootcamp on web3 technologies, smart contracts, ZKPs, and decentralized architectures at the Petnica Science Center.
Asia is a hub of activity with EDCON in Osaka, Japan, exploring core protocol development, cypherpunk principles, and public goods. ETHTokyo and ETHShanghai are major conferences and hackathons in Japan and China, respectively, covering themes like AI, privacy, security, DeFi, infrastructure, and public goods. Malaysia’s dEVMatch 2025, organized by the APU Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Club (APUBCC), is a student-run hackathon equipping developers with skills to solve real-world blockchain challenges. In China, ETH Huangshan is a co-living hackathon focusing on open source, ZK, privacy, and AI-crypto intersections, while Ethereum Protocol Day in Shenzhen explores EIP upgrades, cryptography, and ZK. The Women Web3 Wave bootcamp in Dali, China, is specifically designed for women to build projects in DeFi, RWAs, ZKP, privacy, and AI.
Across the Americas, BuildETH in San Francisco, USA, concentrates on Ethereum infrastructure, DeFi protocols, AI agents, and new financial rails. DeFi Security Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, offers a technical deep dive into securing dapps. Argentina and the broader Latin America region are further supported by Destino Devconnect, a grants round for community-led events. Ethereum Brasil in São Paulo focuses on bridging TradFi with DeFi, and the Midwest Blockchain Conference in Michigan, USA, covers infrastructure, regulation, and RWAs. Peru sees the launch of Ethereum University Circles, a 12-week pilot at Universidad San Pablo to introduce students to Ethereum’s technical and philosophical foundations, with an open-source playbook for wider replication.
Africa is also a key region, with ETHAccra in Ghana hosting a developer summit and hackathon on identity, onchain finance, and scaling. ETHSafari in Kenya explores DeFi, ZK, and security, and ProdFest in Jos, Nigeria, showcases African web3 apps and research.
Beyond regional events, global initiatives like dev3pack support women+ and student developers transitioning from web2 to web3 through coding challenges, mentorship, and open-source contributions. Digibastion, a public good security platform, provides step-by-step security guides and real-time threat feeds. Ethereum for the World by Kolektivo Labs highlights and accelerates Ethereum-based projects contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). OWASP Smart Contract Security is developing standardized security documentation, and the University of Málaga Blockchain Course in Spain is fostering Ethereum-aligned talent with scholarships. Finally, the ZK Core Program, spanning Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, aims to kickstart local ZK communities through educational programs and meetups.
An Ethereum Foundation spokesperson, commenting on the breadth of community and educational initiatives, stated, "Our commitment to global outreach and education is paramount. By empowering developers and communities worldwide, we are not only expanding the reach of Ethereum but also ensuring that diverse perspectives contribute to its evolution. These initiatives are designed to lower barriers to entry, foster innovation, and build a resilient, informed ecosystem from the ground up."
Strengthening Ethereum’s Core Protocol: Consensus and Execution Layers
The foundational layers of Ethereum – consensus and execution – are receiving critical support to ensure the network’s stability, scalability, and readiness for future upgrades. These efforts are crucial for maintaining Ethereum’s status as a robust and decentralized platform.
On the Consensus Layer, significant grants are directed towards client development and research. Lighthouse by Sigma Prime and Teku by Consensys are receiving continued support, enabling them to pursue protocol R&D and implement new features, including Teku’s work on a ZK Stateless Client to receive, sync, and verify execution proofs for zkEVM deployment. Research projects like AI-Assisted Testing Framework from Tsinghua CryptoEconomics Lab are designing advanced frameworks to detect synchronization vulnerabilities between consensus layer clients using AI techniques. BEAMSIM by Quadrivium offers a high-performance simulation framework for testing lean consensus signature aggregation protocols. Mamy Ratsimbazafy’s Constantine PeerDAS extends KZG support, crucial for data availability sampling, while Jihoon Song is working on FOCIL and other Glamsterdam EIPs. leanMultisig by Tom Wambsgans is developing a high-performance PQ aggregate signature library. The PBS Foundation continues its stewardship of the MEV ecosystem, coordinating for current and future hard forks and supporting mev-boost R&D. ProbeLab provides essential observability tooling and insights into the L1 p2p layer, offering crucial data for network health. These investments ensure that the backbone of Ethereum remains robust, secure, and prepared for the demands of a global, decentralized network.
For the Execution Layer, grants focus on performance, enterprise adoption, and rigorous testing. Besu, the Hyperledger Besu client, is a major beneficiary, with Kaleido maintaining and enhancing its enterprise capabilities and researching features for public network adoption by institutions. Thomas Zamojski is accelerating Besu EVM Performance by designing a specialized arithmetic library to enable future L1 gas limit increases. Consensys is exploring compiling Besu to RISC-V to evaluate its feasibility for proving in a zkEVM. The Erigon team is funded for their continued work on Ethereum mainnet, focusing on execution client development and applied R&D. Standardization efforts are also key, with acolytec3 updating the execution-apis OpenRPC documentation for easier spec updates. Paweł Bylica and Piotr Dobaczewski are improving ethereum/execution-specs reference test coverage against evmone, including new test cases for EIP-7212, and integrating automated coverage reporting. Louis Tsai’s work on the EF Internship Program Extension (EEST) continues to bolster testing for the Ethereum Execution Specification Tests. Innovative infrastructure projects like Fast Ethereum Storage Cache (FESCache) are experimenting with low-latency indexing of smart contract storage, aiming to publish a pre-print paper with performance benchmarks. Finally, Nethermind’s Gas Limit Performance Benchmarking is building tooling for Stateful EEST tests, benchmark runners, and repricing analysis to ensure a smooth gas limit increase in upcoming hardforks. These efforts are critical for enhancing the network’s throughput, reducing latency, and ensuring compatibility across client implementations.
"The core protocol grants reflect our unwavering commitment to technical excellence," noted a lead researcher involved in the initiative. "From optimizing client performance to exploring novel consensus mechanisms and rigorously testing every component, these projects are directly contributing to Ethereum’s long-term viability and ability to handle increasing demand. The focus on zkEVM integration and gas limit increases demonstrates a clear roadmap towards a more scalable and efficient network."
Advancing Cryptography and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs)
Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) are a cornerstone of Ethereum’s future, promising enhanced scalability, privacy, and computational efficiency. This funding round significantly bolsters ZKP research and development, addressing both theoretical foundations and practical implementations.
Projects like Automated Verification of ZK Circuits by Veridise are developing tools to verify consistency between witness generation and arithmetic constraints, crucial for security. Ethproofs contribution by Fara Woolf focuses on in-browser proof verification and benchmark visualization, making ZK more accessible. Recognizing a gap in educational resources, a Foundations of Probabilistic Proofs MOOC is being produced to provide high-quality pedagogical content on this essential aspect of SNARKs. The High-Performance ARithmetic for Polynomials (HARP) library aims to optimize polynomial arithmetic over prime fields.
Several initiatives focus on the burgeoning field of zkVMs. The Lita Foundation is working on multiple zkVM projects to clarify feasibility questions around compilers, precompiles, and distributed proving, aiming to reduce attack surfaces and improve interoperability. OpenVM is supported for its performant and modular zkVM framework, designed to meet L1 realtime proving requirements. Phantom Zone is advancing two complementary efforts: Phantom, an encrypted RISC-V virtual machine, and Poulpy, a fast and modular FHE library in Rust, both critical for secure, private, and decentralized computation.
Beyond core ZK development, privacy integration is also a focus. Privacy Features for Kohaku by Wonderland aims to integrate privacy-related features into the browser extension, supporting basic functionalities from the privacy pool SDK. Fundamental research includes Peter Sewell’s work on Sail to Lean & Lean/MLIR for LLZK, improving RISC-V specification in Lean and proof automation. Nethermind’s SP1 ALU Chip PoC Proofs verify the correct implementation of SP1’s ALU chip against the official Sail RISC-V specification. Galois is involved in Verifying the Jolt zkVM, refining the Sail RISC-V specification and integrating zkLean (a Lean DSL for R1CS/Jolt-ish lookups) with LLZK (an MLIR dialect for circuits). Finally, zkBugs by zkSecurity provides a comprehensive vulnerability corpus focused on zkVMs, a live advisory for critical ZK projects, and a benchmarking suite for ZK security tools.
These investments in ZKP technology are set to accelerate Ethereum’s transition to a ZK-centric future, enabling more private transactions, scalable computation, and a more secure ecosystem overall. "ZKPs are not just an academic pursuit; they are the future of blockchain technology," commented a cryptographer associated with the initiative. "By funding both fundamental research and practical applications, we are building the tools and knowledge base necessary to unlock unprecedented levels of privacy and scalability for Ethereum."
Enhancing Developer Experience & Tooling for Broader Adoption
A smooth and efficient developer experience is vital for attracting talent and accelerating innovation. This funding round includes several projects aimed at improving tooling, documentation, and infrastructure for developers.
ArkLib Contributions by Logical Intelligence leverage AI to formally verify ZK protocols, including theorems from the Ligero paper, enhancing security assurances. Nethermind’s Bluebell in Lean implements the Bluebell program logic to support reasoning about cryptographic protocols. EthereumJS Maintenance & Development by Gabriel Rocheleau ensures the ongoing reliability and security of core libraries (block, common, evm, mpt, tx, util, vm) that are foundational to the Ethereum developer tooling ecosystem.
For infrastructure, Free & Censorship-Resistant EIP-7702 Infrastructure by Etherspot is deploying freely accessible bundlers to promote decentralization and censorship resistance for wallets adopting EIP-7702. The IntelliJ Solidity plugin, maintained by Paul-Alexandre Tessier, is receiving improvements to enhance the developer experience for Solidity programmers. Oblivious Server for Kohaku by Oblivious Labs is developing a server to handle requests from a minimal execution client embedded in the Kohaku browser extension, aiding in privacy features.
Transparency and trust are also being addressed by the Open Labels Initiative, a project dedicated to developing transparent trust scoring and labeling infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem. This includes core research on trust algorithms, enhancing platform tooling, and growing ecosystem adoption. OpenRPC is receiving a documentation overhaul, specification upgrade, and improved conformance testing, critical for standardizing JSON-RPC APIs that underpin Ethereum infrastructure. These tools and initiatives streamline development, enhance security, and foster a more trustworthy and accessible ecosystem for builders.
Broader Impact, Strategic Collaborations, and Future Talent
Beyond the technical layers, the funding extends to initiatives that foster broader impact, strategic collaborations, and the development of future talent.
In the Layer 2 domain, Championing Native Rollups by L2BEAT is developing the concept of native rollups through progressive research, design, and implementation across execution specs, precompiles, fee markets, and sequencing strategies. growthepie provides vital data listing and maintenance for Ethereum Mainnet, including key data modules on fundamentals, economics, and application metrics, offering crucial insights into ecosystem growth.
The General Research category includes the Academic Grants Round, which funds formal research to create more knowledge about Ethereum, blockchain technology, and related domains, fostering a deeper understanding and innovation pipeline.
Several "Other" initiatives highlight strategic partnerships and ecosystem health. Continued collaborations with public figures like Audrey Tang and Gisele Chou aim to realize Ethereum’s public benefit potential and build bridges with groups outside the traditional Ethereum ecosystem. Academic institutions are also key partners, with the Columbia-Ethereum Research Center for Blockchain Protocol Design conducting advanced research and workforce training on critical infrastructure topics like consensus mechanisms and staking economics. The Decentralization Research Center advocates for decentralization as a fundamental characteristic of emerging technologies.
Nurturing future talent is a core theme. The Ethereum Season of Internships offers summer internships across the ecosystem, creating pathways for the next generation of contributors. The Ethereum Protocol Fellowship (EPF): Cohort 6 provides stipends for developers to onboard into the rigorous process of protocol development. Node Requirements for PeerDAS & Beyond by StereumLabs provides independent views of client performance and interoperability, helping node operators make informed infrastructure decisions. Finally, Walletbeat maintains an open-repository of EVM-compatible wallets, providing reviews to ensure a competitive, interoperable, and values-aligned wallet ecosystem.
These diverse investments, estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars over the coming year, collectively represent a robust strategy to not only address immediate technical needs but also to cultivate a sustainable, inclusive, and innovative future for the entire Ethereum network. By empowering communities, advancing cutting-edge research, and strengthening the core infrastructure, the initiative positions Ethereum for continued leadership in the global decentralized landscape.
