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 once open for six weeks. In overall we won 130+ proposals and thank every venture for taking the time to use.
The wishlist compiled sought packages from all spaces together with Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and schooling.

This chart presentations proportion of preliminary candidates through 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 packages proportion in keeping with class:

Grantees

We congratulate the 22 grantees awarded and provide their venture descriptions damaged down through class:

🔒 Cybersecurity

• Candidelabs – ERC-4337 Public Infrastructure

  • An open supply bundler and a paymaster provider as public just right infrastructure for ERC-4337 sensible contracts wallets, layer 2 targeted.

• Quantstamp – Rollup Safety Framework

  • The venture will create an in depth safety framework for distinctive options of rollups. They wish to identify a basis for fundamental highest practices and transparency for those options to lend a hand new builders of those programs and permit the network to evaluate the protection dangers of a selected rollup sooner than they use one. Very similar to the ones which might be to be had for sensible contract construction and the very high-level overviews of rollup safety like L2Beat.com. The framework will talk about issues and main points of break out hatch construction and operational dangers for end-users and builders and identify a constant language for those and different options.

👨‍💻 Person Enjoy

• Spiro – zkWallet

  • Multi-party wallets (e.g. Gnosis secure multisigs) are a confirmed manner for a gaggle of customers to proportion regulate over an account’s virtual belongings and behaviors. Sadly, present implementations of multi-party wallets divulge the privateness in their overall selection of operators and their related externally owned accounts. The function of this venture is to construct a personal multi-party pockets that shields finish customers through 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 the usage of acquainted web2-like tooling. It makes a speciality of the core theory of a roll-up, this is, to run a state device off-chain and use L1 to retailer transaction main points. This may also be accomplished through general-purpose languages that may take care of the app-state off-chain and supply an interface to have interaction with it, thus performing as a standalone L2. It permits development a brand new magnificence of packages that can have extra freedom over their execution alternatives.

• ScopeLift – L2 Optimizors

  • Layer 2 networks proportion safety with main-net through 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 may also be >25,000x costlier than Layer 2 gasoline, so paying for name information dominates L2 transaction prices. With customized router contracts that use much less name information than usual strategies, we will be able to considerably scale back transaction prices to have interaction with fashionable protocols.

• Testinprod – Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 permits someone to release their very own Layer 2 through offering simple equipment. It supplies a very simple utility that launches your personal Layer 2 with essential equipment—as an example, block explorer, token bridge, tracking equipment, and many others.

• ScopeLift – Layer 2 Governance with Versatile Balloting

  • Versatile Balloting is an extension of the preferred Governor gadget utilized by many DAOs. It permits new forms of delegation contracts to be written, making it more straightforward for governance token holders to take part in on-chain votes. One such use case is the topic of this grant: Layer 2 governance balloting. Holders of bridged governance tokens may just vote from Layer 2, paying the inexpensive gasoline costs to be had there. Those votes could be trustlessly mirrored on L1 the place the DAO’s Governor gadget is deployed.

• Clement Walter – Starksheet

  • Starksheet objectives to democratize the get entry to and utilization of on-chain sources (information and common sense). It leverages a well-known spreadsheet to lend a hand the consumer question and hyperlink on-chain sources. The paintings is stored on-chain as NFTs and may also be queried later-on from another dApp/contract

• Kristof Gazso – Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler

  • The venture will come with the improvement of an ERC-4337 bundler in Typescript and the related adjustments to a Geth node for simulation functions in order that the bundler can run on any at once Geth-compatible chain (which incorporates maximum L2s) with little adjustments. The bundler may even divulge the RPC calls outlined within the specification, and take care of an interior mempool to be future-proof when P2P propagation might be advanced.

• Soul Pockets – Open-source ERC-4337 pockets

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

📚 Group and Schooling

• Jose Figueroa – L2 en Español
  
  • L2 en Español is an open network that objectives to investigate, teach and force the adoption in a lot of these Ethereum’s scaling answers. They center of attention on each builders and new customers of their quest to stick up to the moment with those applied sciences and their application. We create content material and perform other actions from publications to workshops without spending a dime, whilst supporting the other initiatives that innovate on this house, whilst keeping up additionally its core neutrality.

• Bruce Xu – MyFirstLayer2
  

  • This might be an open-source, community-driven, and academic venture. This might be a web site for folks considering Layer2 however with out prior data about Layer2 or Blockchain. We intention to make use of well-designed diagrams and interactive animation to lend a hand folks get the theory at the back of Layer2 in 30mins. Later on, we will be able to information folks to a couple real-world Layer2 apps step by step and allow them to really feel some great benefits of Layer2.

🗄️ Knowledge Research

• Blockscout – Blockscout Block Explorer
  
  • An open-source block explorer is recently wanted for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by many L2 initiatives, and extra customizations particular to L2 information necessities will build up usability. As well as, a brand new interface, options, analytics and developer pleasant enhancements will lend a hand create a extra clear and usable network explorer.

• Quantstamp – Comparing Rollup Compression
  
  • Compression is incessantly lost sight of when discussing rollups. By way of design, rollups are required to make information to be had so as to examine state transitions or state roots; then again, the process for this newsletter varies, and would possibly come with compressed information. There may be variability within the compression ways used. This venture will discover using compression within the rollup atmosphere. First, the venture will explicate puts the place compression is used and report the ways that can be used. 2nd, the venture will survey current rollups to research the approaches which might be if truth be told utilized in observe. 3rd, the venture will overview approaches proposed or used throughout identical programs and try to determine why a selected means is used. In spite of everything, the venture will use the insights gathered so as to recommend new approaches for compression of rollup information and pose open issues to the network.

• Diablobench – Efficiency and Safety Analysis of Layer 2 Blockchain Techniques
  
  • The College of Sydney and the EPFL have designed a benchmark suite to guage the protection and function of blockchain programs. The primary critiques when compared layer 1 blockchains akin to Algorand, Solana and Diem and might be revealed quickly in a peer reviewed global convention (Eurosys). This venture objectives at including layer 2 blockchain programs to the Diablo benchmark and to make use of it to provide the primary in depth and sensible benchmark analysis of layer 2 blockchain programs on a global deployment.

• Web3-data – Layer 2 Process Monitoring & Comparability Suite
  
  • Via this venture, we intention to ship a top of the range set of Dashboards that lend a hand permit information scientists, researchers, and all network individuals to higher perceive Layer 2 Process
  • We will be able to mixture information throughout Layer 2 networks leveraging assets akin to Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, in lots of instances, at once from the venture APIs/RPCs.
  • We will be able to blank and arrange this knowledge to supply a collection of shows that can permit the network to visualise adjustments throughout key L2 metrics (e.g. tps, hire paid to Ethereum, enlargement in TVL, day by day lively addresses, new addresses, overall addresses, charges paid, and developer process in accordance with GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We intention to label sensible contracts (and in the end permit the network to label sensible contracts) through utilization classes (Local switch, DeFi DEX, DeFi different, NFT, CEX, Stablecoin, ERC20 different, L2 hire, Bridge, Arbitrage/MEV, Software). This labeling will permit us to research and visualize the utilization patterns on a excessive point and in addition display the “freshest” sensible contracts within the other utilization classes. We’re leveraging recognized labels from Dune, Arbiscan, Etherscan, and others.

• L2 Beat – L2 Beat
  
  • Proceed to paintings on clear and verifiable insights into rising layer two (L2) applied sciences with expanded metrics and schooling.

📊 Knowledge Visualization

• Quantstamp – Again-Finish API Usual for L2 Block Exporers
  
  • This venture will obviously outline homes {that a} block explorer must put into effect so as to be thought to be feature-complete within the total layer two atmosphere. Moreover, our function is to suggest and specify a regular API interface that the layer two networks must divulge to total block explorers. We envision that any such standardized interface will permit and very much simplify the improvement of a couple of block explorers that can plug-and-play reusable with the entire layer 2 networks that make stronger the usual. Within the best situation, the usual would flip the improvement of the core of a brand new block explorer right into a venture that may be finished through an skilled staff right through a weekend hackathon. Our function might be to additionally outline a regular this is consumer-agnostic. As such, it is going to no longer topic if it is fed on through a block explorer this is equipped commercially, is open supply, or probably even decentralized. The venture pays particular consideration to what distinctive layer two information a block explorer must supply, with an emphasis on the ones associated with safety of the chains monitored through it.

• Blossom Labs – Blobscan
  
  • The primary explorer for the EIP-4844 shard blob transactions. It indexes and items them in a searchable layout that the consumer can visualize and navigate via in a very simple manner, offering the essential infrastructure to scale Ethereum.

🧮 Cryptography and 0-knowledge proofs

• Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Break of day Tune (College of California at Berkeley) – Specular
  
  • The preferred constructive rollups (ORUs) as of late, Arbitrum and Optimism, attempt to increase current Ethereum shopper tool (Geth) to make stronger interactive fraud evidence (IFP) building, aiming to reuse prior L1 engineering efforts and mirror 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 means (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless participation of a couple of Ethereum shopper techniques, magnifying monocolture failure chance; (2) ends up in an unnecessarily massive and sophisticated relied on computing base (TCB) this is tricky to independently audit; and, (3) suffers from a frequently-triggered, but opaque improve procedure—each additional expanding auditing overhead, and complicating on-chain get entry to regulate within the long-term.
  • We’re due to this fact excited about development a protected, trust-minimized ORU that addresses those issues, whilst maintaining scalability and dispute answer potency. To take action, we have now designed an IFP gadget local to the EVM, that enforces Ethereum’s semi-formally specified semantics [5] exactly on the point of a unmarried EVM instruction. As part of this paintings, we constructed Specular, an ORU which leverages Geth—changed minimally with best 99 lines-of-code to make stronger IFP building—demonstrating the practicality, extensibility and trust-minimal nature of our means.

• Nethermind, Justin Thaler (Georgetown College), Matthew Inexperienced (Johns Hopkins College), and Pratyush Tiwari (Georgetown College) – Concrete Safety Research for L2 Deployed Evidence Techniques
  
  • We recommend to research the concrete safety of the evidence programs (SNARKs, STARKs) that protected -rollups. We follow that some evidence programs have safety analyzed within the interactive atmosphere, whilst their safety after making use of the Fiat—Shamir transformation is best conjectured. Moreover, we imagine that during some instances extra environment friendly assaults are imaginable than the claimed safety point asserts.

• Ethstorage – Evidence of Garage 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 venture is to check an effective evidence gadget to successfully examine on L1 that the BLOBs are saved off-chain with the required redundancy (e.g., 30~50 bodily replicas). By way of placing those garage nodes in an L2 community and assuming 1/m of nodes is fair, lets construct an L2 garage community that reuses mainnet safety whilst extending Ethereum scalability dramatically.
  • Additional analysis will try to respond to the questions of learn how to construct the evidence/verification gadget if the BLOBs and the commitments are continuously modified (e.g., new BLOBs are appended to the record or a BLOB of an index is modified); and learn how to construct incentivized/fee gadget to verify desired replication issue the usage of ETH as fee; it’s imaginable to invite a garage node to retailer partial BLOBs whilst keeping up the similar point of safety of Mainnet?

We have been extraordinarily pleased with the standard of candidates for this grants spherical. The analysis and paintings they produce can have a good have an effect on at the ecosystem. We propose maintaining a tally of them!