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.
Intelligent Capital Formation
This RFP invites research into how capital formation is evolving onchain and how Ethereum-based mechanisms can enable more efficient, transparent, and aligned ways to fund projects, organizations, and collective endeavors. Applicants should study how capital is raised, allocated, and governed today across crypto-native and hybrid contexts, and where existing mechanisms succeed or fail in practice. Research should focus on the design and performance of onchain fundraising mechanisms and tooling, including how incentives are structured, how participants behave over time, and how different mechanisms perform under real-world conditions. The objective is to generate empirically grounded insights that inform the design of more robust, context-sensitive capital formation primitives, taking into account both technical constraints and institutional realities.
Tags
- Research
- PhDFP
- Ethereum Use Cases
Ecosystem Need
Onchain capital formation has unlocked new ways to fund software, organizations, and public goods, yet we still lack robust, well-understood mechanisms that align incentives over long time horizons. Many existing designs optimize for short-term price discovery rather than durable value creation, leading to volatility, adverse selection, and repeated erosion of trust. Without new approaches to reputation, accountability, and investor protection, fundraising outcomes will continue to hinge on speculative dynamics instead of sustained performance, limiting the range of use cases that can be credibly financed onchain.
Hard Requirements
Proposals must adhere to this template: https://notes.ethereum.org/@s_VsCoN-RHCQdMf6bFLJ8g/H1Tsh8sSWx Proposals Requirements: 1. Study and compare multiple onchain capital formation mechanisms (e.g. ICOs, reverse dutch auctions, bonding curves, DAICOs, liquidity bootstrapping pools) 2. Analyze incentive dynamics and participant behavior using empirical data, simulations, or case studies. 3. Examine the role of intermediaries such as launchpads, fundraising platforms, exchanges, and market makers. 4. Address legal, regulatory, and jurisdictional considerations affecting mechanism viability.
Soft Requirements
- Connection between crypto-native mechanisms and historical or offchain capital formation models. - Design of new capital formation primitives, proposals, or real-world pilots.
Resources
Timeline
Opens: Feb 2, 2026
Closes: Apr 1, 2026
Estimated Project Duration: 1 Year
