Q2 Spending $8.47 Million Supporting Ecosystem, Ethereum Foundation Funds Which Projects? Taiwan's UniRep Social Taiwan Also Selected

The Ethereum Foundation recently announced the Ecosystem Support Program EFESP for the second quarter of this year. This program was created by the Ethereum Foundation to encourage continuous innovation within the developer community and to support promising new projects with ideals.

In the second quarter of 2024, the Ethereum Foundation allocated approximately $8.47 million and funded 98 projects. It is noted that besides supporting offline gatherings (such as ETH Dublin), the focus of the Ethereum Foundation's intensive grants in the second quarter of this year was in the fields of cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs, which aligns with the vision of Vitalik Buterin himself. From a developer's perspective, we can anticipate the future development of the blockchain industry will emphasize on which topics.

Recruiting More Developers, Ethereum's Second Quarter Keywords: Account Abstraction, Privacy, Zero-Knowledge Proofs

The second quarter saw the Ethereum Foundation funding 41 community and education-related projects, including events like the ETH Global Conference and various local meetups. Activities flourished in countries such as Czech Republic, Kenya, Honduras, Croatia, Ukraine, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Ghana, and Ecuador. Each event had its own theme and mission, such as the Digital Democracy Day in Croatia, which aimed to delve into the future of collaborative technology and diverse democracy, like digital voting.

The hackathon held in Kenya encouraged participants to create projects that could impact the real world and explore topics like zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, account abstraction, and privacy. Events like the one in collaboration with Kyiv Federal Institute of Technology and ETH Roma focused on discussions around zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and privacy.

In addition to themed discussions, the Ethereum Foundation actively recruited more developers through educational activities, such as the IBF Blockchain Week training camp at Bennett University in India, which spanned six days and introduced students to Solidity programming through hands-on experience. Ethereum Kyiv also organized a series of meetups and seminars to promote Ethereum to a wider audience and nurture more developers.

Initiatives like the Road to Devcon Grants Round provided monetary support for the development of the Ethereum community, advocacy, and projects in Southeast Asia.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs Focus on Identity Authentication Applications, Taiwan Project Also Selected

The second-largest theme on the list was cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs, such as Anon Aadhaar, a protocol supported by ZKP on the Ethereum blockchain to prove ownership of Aadhaar identity (an Indian residency ID) in a privacy-preserving manner.

Another notable project is MACI Anonymized Poll Signup, an electronic voting solution. By redesigning the authentication of eligible voters on the blockchain, it ensures they can vote securely and anonymously, mitigating attacks that compromise anonymity through collusion between malicious actors and external bribers.

Other popular keywords include FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) and MPC (Multi-Party Computation).

Notably, a project related to Taiwan on the list is UniRep Social Taiwan, a completely anonymous social media platform that protects users' identities from surveillance, catering to the Taiwanese community. It is also sponsored by the Ethereum Foundation in the field of cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs.