The Ethereum Foundation’s Ecosystem Support Program

Transcript

France program and you know if they're in foundation in general and then the question that I get asked a lot I'll just do like this the question I get asked is you know well these are a bunch of questions but these are the rumors that I hear I get on calls with people too and this is what I hear I hear you know I heard someone tells me that the grants program shut down which is which is weird because when you get an invite for me it actually says Iike some zapper program so that's that's cool and then EF have stopped funding any eath one word there's zero of that happening I see you don't Twitter all the time which is cool and apparently all we do is fund e - not great but I guess you know it's weird to hear from community members who

work on eath one tell me that eath one is not funded because their work is being funded by us it's hot Corona is hitting me and then the last thing I hear is that the EF is out of funds or we're just stockpiling funds we're just like it's like crazy bankers standing in the s and the back just like hoarding all the money that also is not happening and I'll get into that so what does a custom support program I like to talk about the grants program and the customs program as sort of an evolution of the grants program right the grants program isn't gone it's still here but we like to think about eco some support in a more holistic level so over the past two years almost sixty million dollar has

sixty million dollars has been awarded to or over 200 projects a lot of what drove this narrative is you know from the grants program it was always this question of what should or shouldn't the e F fund and that's just insufficient right we want to know more about what does the community need it doesn't come from this top-down entity that's stockpiling money it actually comes from the community that we're serving what is it that the community actually needs one of the challenges are facing how do we actually address these challenges how do we identify what's not out there yet and we can't do that it is solely on the community to kind of upend those for us

to really identify and then try to attack so with the old grants program we knew that financial support works right we give teams money they're able to build a team they're able to have runway and do what they need to do have a home shelter feed their kids family but that's not it there's so much more past financial support right there's so many different challenges that you face as a team as a project really trying to build open source infrastructure that's just not financial there's so much more in that support and so the question was how do we how do we address these issues how do we service it and how do we actually

tackle it so ecosan is a program for us support we want to really kind of exemplify that it doesn't mean just funding right it's actually proactive instead of reactive we're looking out for challenges that we can help address we're looking for needs of the community for projects that haven't you know raised their hand to say this is a problem because a lot of times in the community can be open and charming borden not always that embracing you know newcomers often feel scared to kind of raise their hand and ask for help but that's where you that's what we're here for and that's what we

want ESP to be it allows the opportune to leverage more than just what's immediately in front of you right we have developers all across the globe and they all have individual challenges so the question is how do we actually use where the EF sits as this neutral party and if we take AI as example of constellations right we're just one star and everyone else is their own star how do we make sure the gravitational pull is continually kind of going around and we can connect all these constellations together who do you need to talk to do you know who that person is if not maybe we know and if I don't know maybe someone else knows we know so many other people within the space so it's not just one connection right it's interweaving

this giant web of the theorem community but that doesn't mean that we are kind of skirting the responsibility of open source funding we're going to continue doing that as you saw 16 million dollars over two years is pretty good we continue to do recurring research funding we do local grants so in local communities we do smaller grant programs mmm targeted coordination so we bring teams together whether it's a hackathons at events like this it's really kind of making sure that people meet and can mesh we try to help find mentorship right new developers coming into the space what is it that they need help with how do we best make sure that they have the right track to be successful and moreover

identifying what that success is right we have technical feedback we have security audits we can connect you to others who do security audits introductions and there's so much more that I'll get to in a bit so this is the juicy stuff this in the next slide I think it is probably when people want to take pictures the 20 of us here so not financial support it's as I said right identifying needs challenges and kind of unpacking that there's project guidance it's really doing technical due diligence idea validation what is that you're working on how can how can we actually define what a road map looks like what does a budget look like these are all challenges that I think you know we're afraid to speak up and say we

don't know how did it actually do this but that's okay there's connections as I said before making sure that we're all connected leveraging each person's individual network to make a giant rolodex for lack of better terms community feedback right how do we how do we address some of these research questions on e3 search how do we do it magician's rings right how do we actually have a conversation and dialogue about some of the tougher research challenges and questions that we can't answer but also appropriate funding resources and what that means is we might not necessarily be the right foundation to fund your project but that's okay right you want to work in a theory and we can also connect you to

other government grants to VCS if that's something that you're looking for to other foundation funding sources like open tech fund there's so much more out there that we might know of that the rest of Khmers might not we do exposure whether it's you know putting you at Keith global events maybe we're connecting with organizers of BCC maybe it's Def Con there's so many things that they're out there to provide signaling that I think people really crave and cloud services credit so we're a part of the AWS activate program as well as some other programs that allow that provide I think a couple thousand dollars of AWS credits GCS credits but that's just the

beginning we don't know what we don't know we don't know what other challenges are out there we want to know more so part of this is an open call to have everyone submit requests maybe that'll inundate our team but that's okay we want to know what else is out there that we can help with okay 20:19 you're in review what did we fund this is juicy this will be out really soon in a nice little post each of one we gave money to this includes you know stateless client work testing elliptic curve research this is all part of this whole bucket that is eath one and it's not fair to

kind of bucket all of that into one little thing but also we do layer two research right layer to work implementation that that's all part of this this giant thing that we're making sure we can achieve scalability and usability right so yeah you guys know II - we've done that cryptography research Maisie zk but works what's interesting is the developer experience and the community education this is something that people always ask about why haven't we funded more tooling why havin fun did more ways for they're enhancing developer experience when we have we funded a bit earlier we funded you know a lot of

onboarding choose to make sure that people actually have the required testing right white block is part of that and then community education how do we make sure that different regions around the globe actually have the resources to have these communities and really kickstart what New York Hatter's SF had in the early days of aetherium or sorry Berlin as a mere eccentric of me I apologize and I forgot to put this but there's also Moloch Dow there's other alternative funding resources like dick coin clr bounties France so now how do we apply that's a good question guys so this is what the application process looks like I know it like it actually didn't look as bad on the computer but the the fonts

black so you start by getting in touch and that is just applying on our website which is ecosystem dot support really easy that was a nice website that was available and you meet a guide we have you know a person a point of contact to really walk you through the process if you have any issues if you want to follow up if you need a status check your guide will be there for you there's a peer review internally we'll talk about you know what is it that you need how do we address these needs and challenges and how do we move forward with that and then we'll contact you we won't just leave you dry and just say peace you'll actually hear from us you'll actually get a you know an email at least phonecall and really try to find out you know what is it that's

missing from this application what more is what more do you need to actually find the right resources and that's something that we want in cover I like to say we're it were yes men right but also we're a diverse crew so yes people so it's yes let's try to address that let's not saying no first find their appropriate resources so if it's financial support if it's other funding other resources that we are providing let's figure out how we can actually collaborate how we can showcase this let's figure out what are the higher-level goals and how do we inform these priorities for the ecosystem and then why is this important for us to fund or have provided the resources for and then there's technical interviews that works and then a decision so pretty

simple right it's not too daunting so what are we looking for this is a I guess most people say it's a mystery but it's kind of weird because we try to articulate this and almost everything we we do we like to ask ourselves you know what are the what are the overarching goals that we want to accomplish right and what more precisely are we trying to do here what does the equal somesort program actually providing here how do we hope to accomplish this and what it is what are the desired outcomes for this right how do we make sure that every step of the way we're always marching towards goal so some of the high-level allocation categories we've grow you suggesting

holing any team or project ourselves five minutes okay so grow usage grow community grow developer base research capabilities improve developer output support resource development that makes aetherium tomorrow a reality let's make sure we can actually get to that point and then just general upkeep let's make sure that this alidium actually has their support right let's make sure all the resources are out there today can continue to provide the valuable services that they do we not looking for this is a joke but I can skip that we're not gonna sell your token not we don't do i SEOs guess anymore because we did it the theory my co items we don't invest in your new fund unfortunately we don't do that and we

don't know where DEFCON 6 is gonna be sorry you guys so tell us what you're working on it because misses support there's simple inquiry form it's super short I think five or six questions we have office hours at Yves Paris the unhak death on this weekend or starting to there's a blog post from the DoD announced today that it's a TS GI and blast yes QA I have three minutes what do have questions for minutes nice yes hey do you remember if you covered is do

you also look at like acceleration and incubation for teams so it depends right we do a light version of that we try to make sure that they have the right resources but we don't formally incubate teams yeah it's not it's not it wouldn't be like a traditional YC type model but it would be making sure that you have the right resources in place too if that's what you weren't a good that's where you want to go we can provide you that path towards there sure no no it's just you know having seen this myself and getting grant funding is great it's like a first step but generally teams are very creative and great quarters don't tend to be the best business people absolutely and often they do need that extra bit support but it's it seems

tricky to find that yeah it is so we try to at least if we don't know the answer right because I think web 3 spaces is extremely interesting because we don't know what the right business model is going to be yeah if you kind of just preach out there like this is it we're just gonna take fees you just essentially become a rent acre again so what's what's the point but you know that's not wrong right so profitability sustainability these are all hard questions that I don't think we have answered yet cool yeah I agree any more questions no all right let's see some grant or ESP applications [Applause]