Ethereum Foundation looks to standardize zero knowledge-based scaling solutions through research grants

The Ethereum Foundation opened the first-ever grants program focused on zero-knowledge (ZK) technology within Layer 2 scaling solutions.

The program will allocate $900,000 towards research and development efforts aimed at advancing zero-knowledge proofs and creating code standards for ZK-based scaling solutions.

The Ethereum Foundation website says it’s “a proactive grants round to improve the ZK Layer 2 ecosystem.”

This round of ZK grants was announced in collaboration with Ethereum Layer 2 projects such as Aztec, Polygon, Scroll, Taiko, and zkSync, which all utilize ZK proofs to scale their solutions. Along with the foundation, each team contributed $150,000 to the grants pool — amounting to a total of $900,000.

Researchers and developers have been asked to submit proposals that focus on benchmarking the performance of proof systems within zero-knowledge rollups, improving the integration of ZK proofs with the Solidity programming language, developing systems for multi-proofs, and advancing hardware acceleration for chips used in proof generation.

Submissions need to be open source 

The deadline for submitting applications is March 18. The foundation emphasized the requirement for projects to be open source, bearing a free and permissive license targeting “public goods that support the growth and development of the Ethereum ZK L2 ecosystem.”

The Ethereum Foundation routinely allocates various research grants to support the network’s development. These grants, targeting areas such as scaling, security, and interoperability, are given to individuals and teams whose projects align with the goals of the foundation and the core developers.

Past grants have played a crucial role in the development of pivotal technologies like optimistic rollups, which are now a crucial tech component of Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem. In the last research grant, the foundation has shifted its interest to ZK scaling.

Zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic proofs that enable the verification of the validity of a claim. In the case of Ethereum, it has been used to prove the validity of a batch of transactions, which allows for the computation of batched transactions to be handled off-chain, thereby reducing the transaction costs and improving transaction throughput.

This technology is vital in ZK rollups, a prevalent Layer 2 scaling solution within the blockchain domain.