PhD Fellowship Program
The Ethereum Foundation is launching a fellowship-style grant program to support Ethereum-related academic work led by current PhD students. Selected Fellows will receive $24,000 USD over one year, intended as a supplement to their existing stipend, with 7-8 Fellowships awarded in total. Proposals are due 23:59 AoE April 1st, 2026.
PhD Fellowship Program
The Ethereum Foundation is launching a fellowship-style grant program to support Ethereum-related academic work led by current PhD students. Selected Fellows will receive $24,000 USD over one year, intended as a supplement to their existing stipend, with 7-8 Fellowships awarded in total. Proposals are due 23:59 AoE April 1st, 2026.
Settlement, Reconciliation, and Compliance Efficiency in Programmable Financial
This RFP seeks research proposals that rigorously examine where, how, and under what conditions programmable settlement infrastructure can reduce operational, reconciliation, and compliance frictions relative to traditional financial market plumbing. Rather than assuming inherent efficiency gains, this track invites work that disentangles which inefficiencies are structural, which are regulatory, and which are genuinely addressable through cryptographic finality and shared state. We are interested in how programmable systems enable predictable, enforceable, and selectively controllable governance structures, and what this implies for firms, collectives, and public institutions.
Tags
- Research
- Enterprise Readiness
- PhDFP
Ecosystem Need
Post-trade financial infrastructure is often characterized by: - Fragmented ledgers across multiple intermediaries - Heavy reliance on reconciliation, messaging, and exception handling - Settlement delays driven not only by technology, but by credit risk management, netting, liquidity constraints, and regulation - Compliance processes that are ex post, document-driven, and institution-specific While blockchain-based systems are frequently described as enabling “instant settlement” or “real-time finality,” it is not obvious: - Which inefficiencies stem from technical limitations versus institutional or regulatory design - Whether faster finality meaningfully reduces costs, risks, or capital requirements - Why some market participants appear sensitive to seconds-level finality, even when legacy systems operate on T+1 or longer cycles This RFP seeks to clarify what economic and operational problems can be solved meaningfully through public, permissionless blockchains.
Hard Requirements
Proposals must adhere to this template: https://notes.ethereum.org/@s_VsCoN-RHCQdMf6bFLJ8g/H1Tsh8sSWx Proposals Requirements: 1. Be grounded in real financial market workflows, not abstract claims about efficiency 2. Clearly identify which parts of the post-trade stack are being analyzed (e.g., clearing, settlement, custody, collateral, compliance) 3. Distinguish between: -- Technological constraints -- Regulatory constraints -- Economic or risk-management constraints 4. Explain why faster or deterministic finality matters (or does not) for the specific use case Engage with existing literature or practitioner knowledge from market infrastructure or operations
Soft Requirements
Preference will be given to proposals that: 1. Use empirical data, detailed process mapping, or practitioner interviews 2. Analyze trade-offs between gross vs. net settlement, liquidity usage, and risk 3. Examine compliance-by-design (e.g., shared ledgers, real-time reporting, programmable controls) rather than post-hoc compliance 4. Compare blockchain-based systems against modernized traditional infrastructure, not outdated baselines
Resources
Timeline
Opens: Feb 2, 2026
Closes: Apr 1, 2026
Estimated Project Duration: 1 Year
