The Privateness & Scaling Explorations group is worked up 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 complete 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 schooling.

This chart reveals 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 techniques and allow the group to evaluate the safety dangers of a selected rollup earlier than they use one. Comparable to those who can be found for sensible contract improvement and the very high-level overviews of rollup safety like L2Beat.com. The framework will talk about issues 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 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 complete 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 can 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. In consequence, Layer 2 customers pay their portion of the main-net gasoline prices when executing transactions. Layer 1 gasoline will 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 commonplace strategies, we will considerably cut back transaction prices to work together with common protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 allows anybody to launch their very own Layer 2 by offering straightforward instruments. It gives a straightforward software that launches your personal 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 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 consumer question and hyperlink on-chain assets. The work is saved on-chain as NFTs and will be queried later-on from some other 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 will 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

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

📚 Group and Schooling

• 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 at no cost, whereas supporting the completely different tasks that innovate on this house, 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 individuals interested by Layer2 however with out prior information about Layer2 or Blockchain. We purpose 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 presently wanted for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by many L2 tasks, and extra customizations particular to L2 information 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 commonly missed when discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to make information accessible with a purpose to confirm state transitions or state roots; nevertheless, the tactic for this publication varies, and should embrace compressed information. There may be additionally variability within the compression methods used. This undertaking will discover using compression within the rollup setting. First, the undertaking will explicate locations the place compression is used and doc the methods that could be used. Second, the undertaking will survey present rollups to research the approaches which are truly utilized in observe. Third, the undertaking will consider approaches proposed or used throughout comparable techniques and try to establish why a selected strategy is used. Lastly, the undertaking will use the insights collected with a purpose to recommend new approaches for compression of rollup information 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 corresponding to Algorand, Solana and Diem and might be printed quickly in a peer reviewed worldwide convention (Eurosys). This undertaking goals at including layer 2 blockchain techniques to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to supply the primary in depth and practical benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain techniques on a worldwide deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Exercise Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • Via this undertaking, we purpose to ship a high-quality set of Dashboards that assist allow information scientists, researchers, and all group members to raised perceive Layer 2 Exercise
  • We’ll mixture information throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging sources corresponding to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of circumstances, straight from the undertaking APIs/RPCs.
  • We’ll clear and arrange this information to supply a collection of shows that can 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 purpose 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 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 Commonplace for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This undertaking will clearly outline properties {that a} block explorer ought to implement with a purpose to be thought-about 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 can plug-and-play reusable with all of the layer 2 networks that assist the usual. Within the preferrred situation, 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 group 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 probably even decentralized. The undertaking 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 consumer can visualize and navigate via in a straightforward manner, 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 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 shopper program binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This strategy (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of a number of Ethereum shopper packages, magnifying monocolture failure threat; (2) results in an unnecessarily giant and sophisticated 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 subsequently 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 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 strategy.

• 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 barely conjectured. Moreover, we consider that in some circumstances extra environment friendly assaults are attainable 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 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 how one can 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 how one can 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 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 affect on the ecosystem. We advise keeping track of them!