Layer 2 Neighborhood Grants Winners

The Privateness & Scaling Explorations crew is happy 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 complete we acquired 130+ proposals and thank every challenge for taking the time to use.
The wishlist compiled sought functions from all areas together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and training.

This chart reveals 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 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 sensible contracts wallets, layer 2 centered.

• Quantstamp – Rollup Safety Framework

  • The challenge 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 techniques and allow the group to evaluate the safety dangers of a selected rollup earlier than they use one. Related to people who can be found for sensible 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.

👨‍💻 Person Expertise

• Spiro – zkWallet

  • Multi-party wallets (e.g. Gnosis secure multisigs) are a confirmed means 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 complete variety of operators and their related externally owned accounts. The aim of this challenge 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 knowledge to Layer 1. Consequently, Layer 2 customers pay their portion of the main-net gasoline prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 gasoline might be >25,000x dearer than Layer 2 gasoline, so paying for name knowledge dominates L2 transaction prices. With customized router contracts that use much less name knowledge than normal strategies, we are able to considerably cut back transaction prices to work together with widespread protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 allows anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering simple instruments. It offers a simple utility that launches your personal Layer 2 with crucial instruments—for instance, block explorer, token bridge, monitoring instruments, and so on.

• 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 gasoline costs out there there. These votes can 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 person question and hyperlink on-chain sources. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and might be queried later-on from every 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 may also expose the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and keep an inner mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation shall be developed.

• Soul Pockets – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets

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

📚 Neighborhood 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 deal with 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 tasks that innovate on this area, whereas sustaining additionally its core neutrality.

• Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
  
  • This shall be an open-source, community-driven, and academic challenge. This shall be an internet site for folks inquisitive about Layer2 however with out prior data about Layer2 or Blockchain. We goal 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 at the moment wanted for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by many L2 tasks, 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 usually missed when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make knowledge out there as a way to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the strategy for this publication varies, and should embody compressed knowledge. There’s additionally variability within the compression strategies used. This challenge will discover the usage of compression within the rollup setting. First, the challenge will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the strategies that could be used. Second, the challenge will survey current rollups to analyze the approaches which can be truly utilized in apply. Third, the challenge will consider approaches proposed or used throughout related techniques and try to determine why a selected method is used. Lastly, the challenge will use the insights collected as a way 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 techniques. The primary evaluations in contrast layer 1 blockchains reminiscent of Algorand, Solana and Diem and shall be printed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This challenge goals at including layer 2 blockchain techniques to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to supply the primary intensive and practical benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain techniques on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • By way of this challenge, we goal 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 are going to mixture knowledge throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources reminiscent of Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of circumstances, straight from the challenge APIs/RPCs.
  • We are going to clear and set up this knowledge to supply a collection of shows that may enable the group to visualise modifications throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, hire paid to Ethereum, progress in TVL, each day energetic addresses, new addresses, complete addresses, charges paid, and developer exercise primarily based on GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We goal to label sensible contracts (and finally allow the group 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 enable us to investigate and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive stage and likewise present the “hottest” sensible contracts within the totally 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 training.

📊 Knowledge Visualization

• Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Commonplace for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This challenge will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement as a way to be thought of feature-complete within the normal layer two setting. Moreover, our aim is to suggest and specify a typical API interface that the layer two networks ought to expose to normal 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 ultimate state of affairs, the usual would flip the event of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a challenge that may very well be accomplished by an skilled crew throughout a weekend hackathon. Our aim shall be to additionally outline a typical that’s consumer-agnostic. As such, it is not going to matter whether or not it’s consumed by a block explorer that’s offered commercially, is open supply, or probably 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 person can visualize and navigate by in a simple means, 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 preferred optimistic rollups (ORUs) in the present day, Arbitrum and Optimism, attempt 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 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 giant 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 growing 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, we’ve 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 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 techniques (SNARKs, STARKs) that safe -rollups. We observe that some proof techniques have safety analyzed within the interactive setting, whereas their safety after making use of the Fiat—Shamir transformation is just conjectured. Moreover, we imagine that in some circumstances extra environment friendly assaults are potential 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 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 methods to construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are always modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the checklist or a BLOB of an index is modified); and methods 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 stage of safety of Mainnet?

We have been extraordinarily pleased with the standard of candidates for this grants spherical. The analysis and work they produce could have a optimistic affect on the ecosystem. We recommend maintaining a tally of them!