Results from the Academic Grants Round 2022

The Ethereum Foundation’s 2022 Academic Grants Round aimed to support academic research advancing Ethereum and blockchain technology. The initiative awarded 39 grants to researchers worldwide, funding diverse projects across consensus mechanisms, security, privacy, economic modeling, cross-chain communication, and more. The post outlines the results achieved by each grantee, with several projects still ongoing, and provides resources for deeper exploration. The Ethereum Foundation emphasizes its commitment to open knowledge and public goods, sharing these findings with the broader community.

Key Ideas

The funded research spans a wide range of topics crucial for Ethereum’s evolution, including enhanced consensus finality, MEV (Miner Extractable Value) mitigation, efficient transaction broadcasting, formal verification of smart contracts, privacy-enhanced P2P routing, and the economic impact of transaction fees.
Notable completed projects include proposals for slashable quorum systems to improve slot finality, new models for MEV settlement, cross-chain authenticated queries, and privacy-preserving routing algorithms. Several studies focus on improving Ethereum’s security (e.g., ransomware attack mitigation, mempool DoS security) and economic mechanisms (e.g., equilibrium staking rewards, Sybil-proof reward sharing, and NFT market analysis). Some research, such as on rollup dynamics and validator exit modeling, remains in progress, with ongoing updates promised.