Layer 2 Community Grants Winners

The Privacy & Scaling Explorations squad is excited to denote the winners of the Layer 2 Community Grants 2022.

The Layer 2 Community Grants circular started connected October 24th, 2022 and was unfastened for 6 weeks. In full we received 130+ proposals and convey each task for taking the clip to apply. The wishlist compiled sought applications from each areas including Layer 2 explorers, cryptography, and education.

This illustration shows percent of archetypal applicants by category:

Due to the precocious prime of proposals, we raised the fund from an archetypal 750k USD to a full of 948k USD.

The awarded applications percent per category:

Grantees

We congratulate the 22 grantees awarded and contiguous their task descriptions breached down by category:

🔒 Cybersecurity

• Candidelabs - ERC-4337 Public Infrastructure

  • An unfastened root bundler and a paymaster work arsenic nationalist bully infrastructure for ERC-4337 astute contracts wallets, furniture 2 focused.

• Quantstamp - Rollup Security Framework

  • The task volition make a elaborate information model for unsocial features of rollups. They privation to found a instauration for basal champion practices and transparency for these features to assistance caller developers of these systems and alteration the assemblage to measure the information risks of a peculiar rollup earlier they usage one. Similar to those that are disposable for astute declaration improvement and the precise high-level overviews of rollup information similar L2Beat.com. The model volition sermon concerns and details of flight hatch improvement and operational risks for end-users and developers and found a accordant connection for these and different features.

👨‍💻 User Experience

• Spiro - zkWallet

  • Multi-party wallets (e.g. Gnosis harmless multisigs) are a proven mode for a radical of users to stock power implicit an account’s integer assets and behaviors. Unfortunately, existent implementations of multi-party wallets exposure the privateness of their full fig of operators and their associated externally owned accounts. The extremity of this task is to physique a backstage multi-party wallet that shields extremity users by employing relationship abstraction (EIP-4337) and zero-knowledge proofs.

• Kautuk Kundan - Stackr Network

  • Stackr web is an SDK for launching standalone customizable app-specific rollups utilizing acquainted web2-like tooling. It focuses connected the halfway rule of a roll-up, that is, to tally a authorities instrumentality off-chain and usage L1 to store transaction details. This tin beryllium achieved by general-purpose languages that tin support the app-state off-chain and supply an interface to interact with it, frankincense acting arsenic a standalone L2. It allows gathering a caller people of applications that volition person much state implicit their execution choices.

• ScopeLift - L2 Optimizors

  • Layer 2 networks stock information with main-net by posting transaction telephone information to Layer 1. As a result, Layer 2 users wage their information of the main-net state costs erstwhile executing transactions. Layer 1 state tin beryllium >25,000x much costly than Layer 2 gas, truthful paying for telephone information dominates L2 transaction costs. With customized router contracts that usage little telephone information than modular methods, we tin importantly trim transaction costs to interact with fashionable protocols.

• Testinprod - Layer1.5

  • Layer 1.5 enables anyone to motorboat their ain Layer 2 by providing casual tools. It provides an casual exertion that launches your ain Layer 2 with indispensable tools—for example, artifact explorer, token bridge, monitoring tools, etc.

• ScopeLift - Layer 2 Governance with Flexible Voting

  • Flexible Voting is an hold of the fashionable Governor strategy utilized by galore DAOs. It allows caller kinds of delegation contracts to beryllium written, making it easier for governance token holders to enactment successful on-chain votes. One specified usage lawsuit is the taxable of this grant: Layer 2 governance voting. Holders of bridged governance tokens could ballot from Layer 2, paying the cheaper state prices disposable there. These votes would beryllium trustlessly reflected connected L1 wherever the DAO's Governor strategy is deployed.

• Clement Walter - Starksheet

  • Starksheet aims to democratize the entree and usage of on-chain resources (data and logic). It leverages a acquainted spreadsheet to assistance the idiosyncratic query and nexus on-chain resources. The enactment is saved on-chain arsenic NFTs and tin beryllium queried later-on from immoderate different dApp/contract

• Kristof Gazso - Typescript ERC-4337 Bundler

  • The task volition see the improvement of an ERC-4337 bundler successful Typescript and the applicable modifications to a Geth node for simulation purposes truthful that the bundler tin tally connected immoderate straight Geth-compatible concatenation (which includes astir L2s) with small modifications. The bundler volition besides exposure the RPC calls defined successful the specification, and support an interior mempool to beryllium future-proof erstwhile P2P propagation volition beryllium developed.

• Soul Wallet - Open-source ERC-4337 wallet

  • Easy-to-use browser wallet implementation powered by ERC-4337.

📚 Community and Education

• Jose Figueroa - L2 en Español
  • L2 en Español is an unfastened assemblage that aims to research, amended and thrust the adoption successful each these Ethereum's scaling solutions. They absorption connected some developers and caller users successful their quest to enactment up to day with these technologies and their utility. We make contented and transportation retired antithetic activities from publications to workshops for free, portion supporting the antithetic projects that innovate successful this space, portion maintaining besides its halfway neutrality.
• Bruce Xu - MyFirstLayer2
  • This volition beryllium an open-source, community-driven, and acquisition project. This volition beryllium a website for radical funny astir Layer2 but without anterior cognition astir Layer2 oregon Blockchain. We purpose to usage well-designed diagrams and interactive animation to assistance radical get the thought down Layer2 successful 30mins. Afterward, we volition usher radical to immoderate real-world Layer2 apps step-by-step and fto them consciousness the benefits of Layer2.

🗄️ Data Analysis

• Blockscout - Blockscout Block Explorer
  • An open-source artifact explorer is presently needed for the L2 ecosystem. Blockscout is already utilized by galore L2 projects, and further customizations circumstantial to L2 information requirements volition summation usability. In addition, a caller interface, features, analytics and developer affable improvements volition assistance make a much transparent and usable assemblage explorer.
• Quantstamp - Evaluating Rollup Compression
  • Compression is often overlooked erstwhile discussing rollups. By design, rollups are required to marque information disposable successful bid to verify authorities transitions oregon authorities roots; however, the method for this work varies, and whitethorn see compressed data. There is besides variability successful the compression techniques used. This task volition research the usage of compression successful the rollup setting. First, the task volition explicate places wherever compression is utilized and papers the techniques that whitethorn beryllium used. Second, the task volition survey existing rollups to analyse the approaches that are really utilized successful practice. Third, the task volition measure approaches projected oregon utilized crossed akin systems and effort to place wherefore a peculiar attack is used. Finally, the task volition usage the insights collected successful bid to suggest caller approaches for compression of rollup information and airs unfastened problems to the community.
• Diablobench - Performance and Security Evaluation of Layer 2 Blockchain Systems
  • The University of Sydney and the EPFL person designed a benchmark suite to measure the information and show of blockchain systems. The archetypal evaluations compared furniture 1 blockchains specified arsenic Algorand, Solana and Diem and volition beryllium published soon successful a adjacent reviewed planetary league (Eurosys). This task aims astatine adding furniture 2 blockchain systems to the Diablo benchmark and to usage it to nutrient the archetypal extended and realistic benchmark valuation of furniture 2 blockchain systems connected a worldwide deployment.
• Web3-data - Layer 2 Activity Tracking & Comparison Suite
  • Through this project, we purpose to present a high-quality acceptable of Dashboards that assistance alteration information scientists, researchers, and each assemblage members to amended recognize Layer 2 Activity
  • We volition aggregate information crossed Layer 2 networks leveraging sources specified arsenic Dune, L2Beats, Santiment, CoinGecko, Github, Discord, and, successful galore cases, straight from the task APIs/RPCs.
  • We volition cleanable and signifier this information to supply a suite of displays that volition let the assemblage to visualize changes crossed cardinal L2 metrics (e.g. tps, rent paid to Ethereum, maturation successful TVL, regular progressive addresses, caller addresses, full addresses, fees paid, and developer enactment based connected GitHub affiliated repo commits).
  • We purpose to statement astute contracts (and yet alteration the assemblage to statement astute contracts) by usage categories (Native transfer, DeFi DEX, DeFi other, NFT, CEX, Stablecoin, ERC20 other, L2 rent, Bridge, Arbitrage/MEV, Utility). This labeling volition let america to analyse and visualize the usage patterns connected a precocious level and besides amusement the “hottest” astute contracts successful the antithetic usage categories. We are leveraging known labels from Dune, Arbiscan, Etherscan, and others.
• L2 Beat - L2 Beat
  • Continue to enactment connected transparent and verifiable insights into emerging furniture 2 (L2) technologies with expanded metrics and education.

📊 Data Visualization

• Quantstamp - Back-End API Standard for L2 Block Exporers
  • This task volition intelligibly specify properties that a artifact explorer should instrumentality successful bid to beryllium considered feature-complete successful the wide furniture 2 setting. Additionally, our extremity is to suggest and specify a modular API interface that the furniture 2 networks should exposure to wide artifact explorers. We envision that specified a standardized interface volition alteration and greatly simplify the improvement of aggregate artifact explorers that volition plug-and-play reusable with each the furniture 2 networks that enactment the standard. In the perfect scenario, the modular would crook the improvement of the halfway of a caller artifact explorer into a task that could beryllium completed by an experienced squad during a play hackathon. Our extremity volition beryllium to besides specify a modular that is consumer-agnostic. As such, it volition not substance whether it is consumed by a artifact explorer that is provided commercially, is unfastened source, oregon perchance adjacent decentralized. The task volition wage peculiar attraction to what unsocial furniture 2 information a artifact explorer should provide, with an accent connected those related to information of the chains monitored by it.
• Blossom Labs - Blobscan
  • The archetypal explorer for the EIP-4844 shard blob transactions. It indexes and presents them successful a searchable format that the idiosyncratic tin visualize and navigate done successful an casual way, providing the indispensable infrastructure to standard Ethereum.

🧮 Cryptography and Zero-knowledge proofs

• Zhe Ye, Ujval Misra, and Dawn Song (University of California astatine Berkeley) - Specular
  • The astir fashionable optimistic rollups (ORUs) today, Arbitrum and Optimism, strive to widen existing Ethereum lawsuit bundle (Geth) to enactment interactive fraud impervious (IFP) construction, aiming to reuse anterior L1 engineering efforts and replicate EVM semantics astatine L2. Unfortunately, to bash truthful they tightly mates their on-chain IFP verifier with a circumstantial lawsuit programme binary—oblivious to its higher-level semantics. This attack (1) precludes the trust-minimized, permissionless information of aggregate Ethereum lawsuit programs, magnifying monocolture nonaccomplishment risk; (2) leads to an unnecessarily ample and analyzable trusted computing basal (TCB) that is hard to independently audit; and, (3) suffers from a frequently-triggered, yet opaque upgrade process—both further expanding auditing overhead, and complicating on-chain entree power successful the long-term.
  • We are truthful focused connected gathering a secure, trust-minimized ORU that addresses these problems, portion preserving scalability and quality solution efficiency. To bash so, we person designed an IFP strategy autochthonal to the EVM, that enforces Ethereum’s semi-formally specified semantics [5] precisely astatine the level of a azygous EVM instruction. As a portion of this work, we built Specular, an ORU which leverages Geth—modified minimally with lone 99 lines-of-code to enactment IFP construction—demonstrating the practicality, extensibility and trust-minimal quality of our approach.
• Nethermind, Justin Thaler (Georgetown University), Matthew Green (Johns Hopkins University), and Pratyush Tiwari (Georgetown University) - Concrete Security Analysis for L2 Deployed Proof Systems
  • We suggest to analyse the factual information of the impervious systems (SNARKs, STARKs) that unafraid -rollups. We observe that immoderate impervious systems person information analyzed successful the interactive setting, portion their information aft applying the Fiat—Shamir translation is lone conjectured. Furthermore, we judge that successful immoderate cases much businesslike attacks are imaginable than the claimed information level asserts.
• Ethstorage - Proof of Storage connected L2 Dynamic Datasets with an Ethereum L1 Contract
  • Given a database of commitments of BLOBs (e.g., KZG commitments from EIP-4844/Danksharding, indexed from 0...n-1) successful an L1 contract, the task is to survey an businesslike impervious strategy to efficiently verify connected L1 that the BLOBs are stored off-chain with the desired redundancy (e.g., 30~50 carnal replicas). By putting these retention nodes successful an L2 web and assuming 1/m of nodes is honest, we could physique an L2 retention web that reuses mainnet information portion extending Ethereum scalability dramatically.
  • Further probe volition effort to reply the questions of however to physique the proof/verification strategy if the BLOBs and the commitments are perpetually changed (e.g., caller BLOBs are appended to the database oregon a BLOB of an scale is changed); and however to physique incentivized/payment strategy to guarantee desired replication origin utilizing ETH arsenic payment; it is imaginable to inquire a retention node to store partial BLOBs portion maintaining the aforesaid level of information of Mainnet?

We were highly blessed with the prime of applicants for this grants round. The probe and enactment they nutrient volition person a affirmative interaction connected the ecosystem. We suggest keeping an oculus connected them!