The Ethereum Foundation is sponsoring a wave of grants to support Ethereum-related academic work. This grants round has up to $1M in total available funds. Proposals are due 23:59 UTC February 27th, 2023. All of the details you'll need to apply can be found below.
If you're still interested in pursuing grants for a project, you can still go through our standard applications.
In the first Academic Grants Round the Ethereum Foundation awarded 39 grants from 18 countries. You can see all of the winners listed in the grantee announcement. We're renewing our support of academic research throughout the Ethereum ecosystem with the Academic Grants Round 2023!
With this grants round, the Ethereum Foundation welcomes more academics to the table to push forward formal academic research in related domains. Such domains include theoretical and applied cryptography, mathematics, zero-knowledge proofs, economics, computation, cybersecurity, protocol and consensus mechanisms, formal verification, P2P networking, society and regulation, and hardware.
Submit proposal
Individual researchers with academic backgrounds, research centers, universities, think-tanks, educators and other stakeholders interested in research on matters related to Ethereum and its ecosystem are encouraged to apply.
Anyone is free to participate in this grants round, as an individual or with a team.
Research outputs are encouraged but not limited to the following wishlist.
We welcome research at any stage, whether it's a new idea based on the wishlist, a project that furthers Ethereum-related research you've already undertaken, or a lab experiment.
Grants will be awarded on a case by case basis and will be reviewed after the deadline. You may enter more than one proposal as long as each proposal is unique and meets the requirements.
Deadline
The deadline for proposals is Monday, February 27th, 2023. We will follow-up regarding your submission by email.
Requirements
Proposals must be in English.
Work must be free and open source.
Reports must be accessible by a url.
Proposal must include the topics in the template, but you can expand on these.
Selection criteria
Surprise us with your creativity! Here are a few selection criteria considerations:
Impact of the proposed research output.
Quality of work and experience of the research team.
Clarity, conciseness and organization of the proposal.
Contribution to the wishlist areas.
Potential of long-term involvement in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Analyses or visualizations that help a non-technical audience gain insight into the research.
Wishlist
The Ethereum Foundation is interested in research and academic output in the following domain areas, but don't let this restrict your creativity. Check out our wishlist.
ESP has an indirect costs policy for Academic Grants. If you would like a copy of the policy, please email academic-grants@ethereum.org.
Academic institutions, consortia of universities, research centres, universities, think-tanks and individuals with prior research experience.
In short, we need enough information to understand your goals, the research problem you're aiming to tackle, the academic output, information on previous research work, who's involved and estimation regarding time and budget. The more details you provide, the more likely we'll be able to help.
For example:
Clearly showing the research area you're digging into.
Outlining the output. Is it a research paper or lab work that will culminate in an experimental report?
Clearly stating the impact your research will have and how you foresee your findings being used by the Ethereum community.
Detailed description of your project, milestones, the people involved and how much time you think it will take to complete.
If you have a follow-up idea of a previous research you conducted or if your research is aligned with the wishlist domains, we want to hear about it! The goal is to advance knowledge that pushes the Ethereum ecosystem forward.
We are aiming to receive academic and formal research outputs, be it a research paper, an experimental report or some sort of comprehensive research output. Whatever the output, the information should be open-source and available for the broader community to use. The Intellectual Property can still be owned by the research team, but it is key that the output is open source.
This grants round has up to $1 Million in total, which is to be distributed among selected projects.
We envision projects to take between 6 to 12 months, however, we are open to some flexibility depending on the project proposal.
This is the second time the Ethereum Foundation is launching a specific grant round to support Ethereum related academic research. We also have an ongoing support program - the Ecosystem Support Program - which supports Ethereum related projects in various scopes.
Project submission will be evaluated after the deadline, and contact will be made with each applicant to inform them about the evaluation outcome.
You should submit one application per project idea/ wishlist area. Multiple applications per institution are accepted for the Academic Grants Round. Submitting duplicates or variants of the same application will not improve your chances of selection.
During the first Academic Grants Round, the Ethereum Foundation received over 150 applications and issued 39 grants for academic research in 18 countries.
We encourage you to submit an inquiry for support through the Ecosystem Support Program.
If you miss the deadline for this dedicated round of grants, but have a proposal that advances the Ethereum ecosystem, we encourage you to book an appointment for ESP's Office Hours.
