Layer 2 Neighborhood Grants Winners

The Privateness & Scaling Explorations staff is worked up 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 whole we obtained 130+ proposals and thank every undertaking 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 proportion of preliminary candidates by class:

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

The awarded functions proportion per class:

Grantees

We congratulate the 22 grantees awarded and current their undertaking 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 undertaking will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They wish to set up a basis for primary 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 specific 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 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 method 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 undertaking 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. In consequence, Layer 2 customers pay their portion of the main-net fuel prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 fuel could 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 normal strategies, we will considerably cut back transaction prices to work together with in style protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 allows anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering straightforward instruments. It supplies a straightforward software that launches your individual Layer 2 with mandatory 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 might vote from Layer 2, paying the cheaper fuel 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 assets (knowledge and logic). It leverages a well-known spreadsheet to assist the consumer question and hyperlink on-chain assets. 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 undertaking will embrace 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 can even expose the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and keep an inside mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation might 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 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 totally free, whereas supporting the completely different tasks that innovate on this area, whereas sustaining additionally its core neutrality.

• Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
  
  • This might be an open-source, community-driven, and academic undertaking. This might be a web site for folks inquisitive about Layer2 however with out prior data about Layer2 or Blockchain. We intention to make use of well-designed diagrams and interactive animation to assist folks get the concept behind Layer2 in 30mins. Afterward, we are going to information folks 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 knowledge necessities will improve 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 ignored when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make knowledge out there in an effort to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the strategy for this publication varies, and will embrace compressed knowledge. There may be additionally variability within the compression strategies used. This undertaking will discover the usage of compression within the rollup setting. First, the undertaking will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the strategies which may be used. Second, the undertaking will survey present rollups to research the approaches which are truly utilized in apply. Third, the undertaking will consider approaches proposed or used throughout related programs and try to determine why a specific method is used. Lastly, the undertaking will use the insights collected in an effort 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 corresponding to Algorand, Solana and Diem and might be revealed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This undertaking goals at including layer 2 blockchain programs to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to supply the primary in depth and lifelike benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain programs on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • By way of this undertaking, 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 corresponding to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of instances, straight from the undertaking APIs/RPCs.
  • We’ll clear and manage this knowledge to supply a collection of shows that may permit the group to visualise modifications throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, lease paid to Ethereum, progress in TVL, day by day energetic 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 group 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 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 training.

📊 Information Visualization

• Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Customary for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This undertaking will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement in an effort to be thought of feature-complete within the normal layer two setting. Moreover, our objective 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 enormously 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 excellent state of affairs, the usual would flip the event of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a undertaking that could possibly be accomplished by an skilled staff throughout a weekend hackathon. Our objective might be to additionally outline a typical 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 undertaking 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 means of in a straightforward method, offering the mandatory infrastructure to scale Ethereum.

🧮 Cryptography and Zero-knowledge proofs

• Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Daybreak Music (College of California at Berkeley) – Specular
  
  • The most well-liked optimistic rollups (ORUs) in the present day, Arbitrum and Optimism, attempt to increase present 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 massive 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 rising auditing overhead, and complicating on-chain entry management within the long-term.
  • We’re subsequently targeted 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 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 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 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 imagine that in some instances extra environment friendly assaults are attainable than the claimed safety degree 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 undertaking 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 find out how to construct the proof/verification system if the BLOBs and the commitments are consistently modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the listing or a BLOB of an index is modified); and find out how to construct incentivized/cost system to make sure desired replication issue utilizing ETH as cost; it’s attainable 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 could have a constructive affect on the ecosystem. We advise keeping track of them!