The Privateness & Scaling Explorations workforce is happy to announce the winners of the Layer 2 Group Grants 2022.
The Layer 2 Group 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 functions from all areas together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and training.
This chart exhibits share of preliminary candidates by class:
Because of the top quality of proposals, we raised the finances from an preliminary 750k USD to a complete of 948k USD.
The awarded functions 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 sensible contracts wallets, layer 2 targeted.
Quantstamp – Rollup Safety Framework
The venture will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They wish to set up a basis for fundamental finest practices and transparency for these options to help new builders of those programs 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 sensible contract improvement and the very high-level overviews of rollup safety like L2Beat.com. The framework will focus on considerations 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.
👨💻 Consumer Expertise
Spiro – zkWallet
Multi-party wallets (e.g. Gnosis secure multisigs) are a confirmed manner for a bunch of customers to share management over an account’s digital belongings 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 keep 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 functions that may have extra freedom over their execution selections.
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 gasoline prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 gasoline may be >25,000x dearer than Layer 2 gasoline, so paying for name information dominates L2 transaction prices. With customized router contracts that use much less name information than normal strategies, we are able to considerably scale back transaction prices to work together with fashionable protocols.
Testinprod – Layer1.5
Layer 1.5 allows anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering simple instruments. It offers a straightforward utility that launches your personal Layer 2 with crucial instruments—for instance, block explorer, token bridge, monitoring instruments, and so forth.
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 might vote from Layer 2, paying the cheaper gasoline costs accessible 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 assets (information and logic). It leverages a well-recognized spreadsheet to assist the person question and hyperlink on-chain assets. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and may be queried later-on from another dApp/contract
Kristof Gazso – Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler
The venture will embody 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 straight Geth-compatible chain (which incorporates most L2s) with little modifications. The bundler may also expose the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and keep an inside mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation will likely be developed.
Soul Pockets – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets
Straightforward-to-use browser pockets implementation powered by ERC-4337.
📚 Group and Schooling
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 completely different actions from publications to workshops without cost, whereas supporting the completely different tasks that innovate on this area, whereas sustaining additionally its core neutrality.
Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
This will likely be an open-source, community-driven, and academic venture. This will likely be an internet site for individuals interested by Layer2 however with out prior data about Layer2 or Blockchain. We intention to make use of well-designed diagrams and interactive animation to assist individuals get the concept behind Layer2 in 30mins. Afterward, we’ll information individuals to some real-world Layer2 apps step-by-step and allow them to really feel the advantages of Layer2.
🗄️ Information Evaluation
Blockscout – Blockscout Block Explorer
An open-source block explorer is at present wanted for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by many L2 tasks, and extra customizations particular to L2 information necessities will enhance 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 neglected when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make information accessible with the intention to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the tactic for this publication varies, and will embody compressed information. There may be 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 research the approaches which can be truly utilized in follow. Third, the venture will consider approaches proposed or used throughout comparable programs and try to establish why a specific strategy is used. Lastly, the venture will use the insights collected with the intention to counsel 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 judge the safety and efficiency of blockchain programs. The primary evaluations in contrast layer 1 blockchains resembling Algorand, Solana and Diem and will likely be revealed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This venture goals at including layer 2 blockchain programs to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to provide the primary intensive and sensible benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain programs on a worldwide deployment.
Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
By way of this venture, we intention to ship a high-quality set of Dashboards that assist allow information scientists, researchers, and all neighborhood members to higher perceive Layer 2 ActivityWe will combination information throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources resembling Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of circumstances, straight from the venture APIs/RPCs.We are going to clear and set up this information to supply a set of shows that may permit the neighborhood to visualise adjustments throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, hire paid to Ethereum, progress in TVL, each day energetic addresses, new addresses, whole addresses, charges paid, and developer exercise primarily based on GitHub affiliated repo commits).We intention to label sensible contracts (and in the end allow the neighborhood to label sensible contracts) by utilization classes (Native switch, DeFi DEX, DeFi different, NFT, CEX, Stablecoin, ERC20 different, L2 hire, Bridge, Arbitrage/MEV, Utility). This labeling will permit us to investigate and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive degree and likewise present the “hottest” sensible contracts within the completely 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 training.
📊 Information Visualization
Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Commonplace for L2 Block Exporers
This venture will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement with the intention to be thought of 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 tremendously simplify the event of a number of block explorers that may 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 could possibly be accomplished by an skilled workforce throughout a weekend hackathon. Our purpose will likely 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 person can visualize and navigate by in a straightforward manner, offering the required infrastructure to scale Ethereum.
🧮 Cryptography and Zero-knowledge proofs
Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Daybreak Track (College of California at Berkeley) – Specular
The most well-liked optimistic rollups (ORUs) in the present day, Arbitrum and Optimism, try to increase current Ethereum shopper software program (Geth) to assist interactive fraud proof (IFP) development, 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 applications, magnifying monocolture failure threat; (2) results in an unnecessarily giant and complicated trusted computing base (TCB) that’s tough 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 degree 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 development—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 programs (SNARKs, STARKs) that safe -rollups. We observe that some proof programs have safety analyzed within the interactive setting, whereas their safety after making use of the Fiat—Shamir transformation is barely conjectured. Moreover, we consider that in some circumstances extra environment friendly assaults are potential than the claimed safety degree 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 might construct an L2 storage community that reuses mainnet safety whereas extending Ethereum scalability dramatically.Additional analysis will try to reply the questions of the best way to construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are always modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the record or a BLOB of an index is modified); and the best way to construct incentivized/cost system to make sure desired replication issue utilizing ETH as cost; it’s potential to ask a storage node to retailer partial BLOBs whereas sustaining the identical degree of safety of Mainnet?
We had been extraordinarily proud of the standard of candidates for this grants spherical. The analysis and work they produce can have a optimistic affect on the ecosystem. We advise keeping track of them!