The Foundation has made a significant grant to Sigma Prime for continued scientific research and development related to Ethereum 2. This will fund critical efforts, with all findings open to the public in the form of a research paper to be published later. We are committed to a decentralized future, including pushing the envelope of necessary core technologies such as Ethereum 2 forward through support of innovative efforts and teams.
Ethereum 2 is a long-planned upgrade focusing on scalability and proof-of-stake. Phase 0 is implementation of the beacon chain which lays the ground for shard chains and staked ETH. The Foundation believes that continued research on Ethereum 2 and development of associated open-source clients will benefit the Ethereum community as well as other blockchains.
Sigma Prime has implemented Phase 0 of Ethereum 2 in the Lighthouse client. This is one of the leading implementations; we are very happy to support Sigma Primes’ work. Here is a quote from our grant agreement (with some legalese removed):
Sigma Prime will perform scientific research geared towards a) analysis of the appropriate mechanism for implementing an environmentally sustainable proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in an Ethereum 2 client; b) preliminary implementation of sharding to allow transaction scalability. … Sigma Prime will engage with the Ethereum community in order to educate and disseminate the fruits of the supported research.
Sigma Prime will deliver a scientific report that will include a) an executive summary aimed at a non-technical audience, b) an introduction to Ethereum 2, c) a summary of Ethereum 2 research and engineering challenges, d) a Lighthouse architecture overview, e) a review of the Lighthouse development process, f) key takeaways, and g) a roadmap for further scientific research and education.
We look forward to the report from Sigma Prime!