Layer 2 Group Grants Winners

The Privateness & Scaling Explorations staff 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 mission for taking the time to use.
The wishlist compiled sought purposes from all areas together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and training.

This chart reveals proportion of preliminary candidates by class:

Because of the prime quality of proposals, we raised the finances from an preliminary 750k USD to a complete of 948k USD.

The awarded purposes proportion per class:

Grantees

We congratulate the 22 grantees awarded and current their mission 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 mission will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They need to set up a basis for primary 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 selected rollup earlier than they use one. Related to those 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 considerations 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 approach 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 objective of this mission is to construct a personal 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 appearing 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 knowledge to Layer 1. In consequence, Layer 2 customers pay their portion of the main-net fuel prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 fuel could be >25,000x costlier than Layer 2 fuel, 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 fashionable protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 permits anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering simple instruments. It supplies a straightforward software 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 fuel costs out there 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 person question and hyperlink on-chain sources. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and could be queried later-on from another dApp/contract

• Kristof Gazso – Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler

  • The mission 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 preserve an inside mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation will likely be developed.

• Soul Pockets – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets

  • Simple-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 totally different actions from publications to workshops without cost, whereas supporting the totally different tasks that innovate on this house, whereas sustaining additionally its core neutrality.

• Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
  
  • This will likely be an open-source, community-driven, and academic mission. This will likely be a web 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 thought behind Layer2 in 30mins. Afterward, we are going to 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 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 neighborhood explorer.

• Quantstamp – Evaluating Rollup Compression
  
  • Compression is usually neglected when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make knowledge out there with a purpose to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the strategy for this publication varies, and will embody compressed knowledge. There’s additionally variability within the compression methods used. This mission will discover using compression within the rollup setting. First, the mission will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the methods which may be used. Second, the mission will survey current rollups to analyze the approaches which might be truly utilized in follow. Third, the mission will consider approaches proposed or used throughout comparable programs and try to establish why a selected strategy is used. Lastly, the mission will use the insights collected with a purpose to counsel new approaches for compression of rollup knowledge 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 equivalent to Algorand, Solana and Diem and will likely be printed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This mission goals at including layer 2 blockchain programs to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to provide the primary in depth and practical benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain programs on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • By way of this mission, we intention to ship a high-quality set of Dashboards that assist allow knowledge scientists, researchers, and all neighborhood members to higher perceive Layer 2 Exercise
  • We are going to mixture knowledge throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources equivalent to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of circumstances, straight from the mission APIs/RPCs.
  • We are going to clear and set up this knowledge to supply a collection of shows that can permit the neighborhood to visualise adjustments 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 based mostly on GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We intention to label sensible contracts (and finally allow the neighborhood to label sensible 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 research and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive degree and likewise present the “hottest” sensible 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 training.

📊 Knowledge Visualization

• Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Normal for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This mission will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement with a purpose to be thought-about feature-complete within the common layer two setting. Moreover, our objective is to suggest and specify an ordinary API interface that the layer two networks ought to expose to common block explorers. We envision that such a standardized interface will allow and tremendously 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 splendid state of affairs, the usual would flip the event of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a mission that could possibly be accomplished by an skilled staff throughout a weekend hackathon. Our objective will likely be to additionally outline an ordinary that’s consumer-agnostic. As such, it is not going to matter whether or not it’s consumed by a block explorer that’s supplied commercially, is open supply, or probably even decentralized. The mission 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 via in a straightforward approach, 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) right this moment, Arbitrum and Optimism, try to increase current Ethereum consumer 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 consumer program binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This strategy (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of a number of Ethereum consumer applications, magnifying monocolture failure threat; (2) results in an unnecessarily massive 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 centered on constructing a safe, trust-minimized ORU that addresses these issues, whereas preserving scalability and dispute decision effectivity. To take action, we have now 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 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 research 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 simply 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 mission 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 sincere, 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 right way to construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are consistently modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the record or a BLOB of an index is modified); and the right 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 have 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 maintaining a tally of them!