The Ethereum Foundation announces millions in grants for scaling research

The non-profit organization that oversees the development of Ethereum has officially submitted two grant programs that will support research on how to increase the number of transactions that its block chain can process.

In a blog post published on Tuesday, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin described how the network is beginning to reach 1 million transactions per day. In his opinion, scaling the network is "the most important key technical challenge" in which developers must work before Blockchain applications can be widely used.

As such, the subsidy programs are being launched to encourage developers to implement two proposed solutions to scale: sharding and layer two protocols that would be built on the blockchain today.

Sharding is a process that requires only a few nodes in the block chain to verify a transaction, instead of each node doing so. Currently, the developers of Ether are finalizing the specifications for their fragmentation protocol, and are looking for equipment to build implementations and execute them on the Ethereum testnet.

Layer two protocols, on the other hand, take a different approach when taking transactions from the main Ethereum Blockchain. The network would allow transactions to move in and out of the blockchain to be processed, but would not be used to process transactions.

According to the publication of the blog, the subsidies for each program will range between USD 50,000 and USD 1 million and are intended to cover development costs. For both solutions, the successful teams will also have a hand in implementing the protocols in the Ethereum mainnet as a next phase.

In addition to the research that Ethereum developers are doing, the foundation is looking for third parties to analyze the scaling problems.

In his publication, Buterin wrote :

"Independent teams of developers, companies and university and academic groups are welcome to apply, we recognize that different types of applicants may require different formats and processes and we are willing to be flexible to meet the needs of individual teams."

Source: CoinDesk