Ethereum Foundation awards $3m in new grants

The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organisation that promotes and supports the Ethereum platform, has awarded $3.16 million (£2.4 million) in new grants to Ethereum projects.

The latest phase of the programme, Wave IV, has provided a total of 20 grants to projects that are dedicated to advancing the Ethereum ecosystem.

It takes the total value of grants issued to date to around $14 million across 72 projects, predominantly ones focusing on scalability.

“The grants programme today is vastly improved from just earlier this year, thanks to all the helpful feedback from the community, allowing us to provide better public tools and infrastructure,” the Ethereum Foundation says.

The largest two grants in Wave IV were for $500,000 for Prysmatic Labs’ Eth 2.0 Prysm client and Status’ Eth 2.0 sharding client Nimbus. Spankchain, Kyokan and Connext were awarded a combined $420,000 for their non-custodial payment channel hub, which was unveiled at Devcon 4.

The third largest grant, at $375,000, was given to Prototypal​​ for its front-end state channel research and development. Meanwhile, Finality Labs​​, which is developing forward-time locked contracts, and Kyoka​​n, which is developing a production ready mainnet, were each awarded $250,000.

The Ethereum Foundation says it is now accepting applications for Wave V of the grants programme. Its “wish list” includes a call for more payment and/or state channel implementations; improving private key management and transacting in Ethereum; smart contract audits; and community groups and conferences for underrepresented and underserved communities.