Layer 2 Community Grants Winners

The Privateness & Scaling Explorations staff is happy to announce the winners of the Layer 2 Community 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 challenge for taking the time to use.
The wishlist compiled sought purposes from all areas together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and schooling.

This chart exhibits share of preliminary candidates by class:

As a result of top quality of proposals, we raised the funds 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 challenge 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 centered.

• Quantstamp – Rollup Safety Framework

  • The challenge will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They wish to set up a basis for fundamental greatest practices and transparency for these options to help new builders of those programs and allow the group to evaluate the safety dangers of a selected rollup earlier than they use one. Comparable to people who can be found for good contract growth and the very high-level overviews of rollup safety like L2Beat.com. The framework will talk about issues and particulars of escape hatch growth 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 protected multisigs) are a confirmed means for a gaggle 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 objective of this challenge is to construct a personal multi-party pockets that shields finish customers by using account abstraction (EIP-4337) and zero-knowledge proofs.

• Kautak Kundan – Stackr Community

  • The challenge focuses on the core precept of a roll-up that runs a state machine off-chain – managing transactions in an off-chain state after which intimating the ultimate states and the inputs that modified the preliminary state to the bottom layer. Following these guidelines, you should use any device to construct a rollup. It might be general-purpose languages that keep the app state and supply an execution setting to alter that, or it might be a fork of an present EVM rollup during which present contracts may be deployed. It could actually even be an excel sheet that data transactions!

• ScopeLift – L2 Optimizors

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

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 permits anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering straightforward instruments. It offers a straightforward software that launches your individual 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 (knowledge and logic). It leverages a well-recognized spreadsheet to assist the consumer question and hyperlink on-chain sources. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and may be queried later-on from some other dApp/contract

• Kristof Gazso – Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler

  • The challenge 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 will even expose the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and keep an inside mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation shall be developed.

• Soul Wallet – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets

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

📚 Group and Training

• Jose Figueroa – L2 en Español
  
  • L2 en Español is an open group that goals to analysis, educate and drive the adoption in all these Ethereum’s scaling options. They concentrate on 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 free of charge, whereas supporting the completely 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 challenge. This shall be a web site for individuals interested in 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.

🗄️ Knowledge 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 initiatives, and extra customizations particular to L2 knowledge 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 group explorer.

• Quantstamp – Evaluating Rollup Compression
  
  • Compression is commonly missed when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make knowledge obtainable to be able to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the tactic for this publication varies, and will embody compressed knowledge. There’s additionally variability within the compression strategies used. This challenge will discover using compression within the rollup setting. First, the challenge will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the strategies which may be used. Second, the challenge will survey present rollups to analyze the approaches which are truly utilized in follow. Third, the challenge will consider approaches proposed or used throughout comparable programs and try to determine why a selected method is used. Lastly, the challenge will use the insights collected to be able to recommend new approaches for compression of rollup knowledge and pose open issues to the group.

• Diablobench – Efficiency and Safety Analysis of Layer 2 Blockchain Programs
  
  • 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 equivalent to Algorand, Solana and Diem and shall be revealed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This challenge goals at including layer 2 blockchain programs to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to supply the primary in depth and life like benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain programs on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • By means of this challenge, we intention to ship a high-quality set of Dashboards that assist allow knowledge scientists, researchers, and all group members to higher perceive Layer 2 Exercise
  • We’ll combination knowledge throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources equivalent to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of instances, straight from the challenge APIs/RPCs.
  • We’ll clear and manage this knowledge to offer a collection of shows that can enable the group to visualise adjustments throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, lease paid to Ethereum, development in TVL, every day lively addresses, new addresses, whole addresses, charges paid, and developer exercise primarily based on GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We intention to label good contracts (and finally allow the group 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 enable us to investigate and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive stage and in addition present the “hottest” good contracts within the completely different utilization classes. We’re leveraging recognized 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 Normal for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This challenge will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement to be able to be thought of feature-complete within the common layer two setting. Moreover, our objective is to suggest and specify a regular API interface that the layer two networks ought to expose to common block explorers. We envision that such a standardized interface will allow and vastly simplify the event of a number of block explorers that can plug-and-play reusable with all of the layer 2 networks that help the usual. Within the best situation, the usual would flip the event of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a challenge that might be accomplished by an skilled staff throughout a weekend hackathon. Our objective shall be to additionally outline a regular 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 challenge pays particular consideration to what distinctive layer two knowledge 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 straightforward means, offering the required infrastructure to scale Ethereum.

🧮 Cryptography and Zero-knowledge proofs

• Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Daybreak Tune (College of California at Berkeley) – Specular
  
  • The most well-liked optimistic rollups (ORUs) immediately, Arbitrum and Optimism, attempt to increase present Ethereum shopper software program (Geth) to help 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 particular shopper program binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This method (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of a number of Ethereum shopper applications, magnifying monocolture failure threat; (2) results in an unnecessarily massive and complicated 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 subsequently centered on constructing a safe, trust-minimized ORU that addresses these issues, whereas preserving scalability and dispute decision effectivity. To take action, now we have 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 help IFP development—demonstrating the practicality, extensibility and trust-minimal nature of our method.

• Nethermind, Justin Thaler (Georgetown College), Matthew Inexperienced (Johns Hopkins College), and Pratyush Tiwari (Georgetown College) – Concrete Safety Evaluation for L2 Deployed Proof Programs
  
  • 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 imagine that in some instances extra environment friendly assaults are doable than the claimed safety stage asserts.

• Ethstorage – Proof of Storage on L2 Dynamic Datasets with an Ethereum L1 Contract
  
  • Given a listing of commitments of BLOBs (e.g., KZG commitments from EIP-4844/Danksharding, listed from 0…n-1) in an L1 contract, the challenge is to check 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 the way to construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are continuously modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the listing or a BLOB of an index is modified); and the way to construct incentivized/fee system to make sure desired replication issue utilizing ETH as fee; it’s doable to ask a storage node to retailer partial BLOBs whereas sustaining the identical stage of safety of Mainnet?

We had been extraordinarily pleased with the standard of candidates for this grants spherical. The analysis and work they produce can have a optimistic impression on the ecosystem. We advise keeping track of them!