{"id":18162,"date":"2026-03-11T00:55:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptoted.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/11\/ef-supported-teams-research-development-update\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T00:55:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:55:44","slug":"ef-supported-teams-research-development-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoted.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/11\/ef-supported-teams-research-development-update\/","title":{"rendered":"EF-Supported Teams: Research & Development Update"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Friends,<\/p>\n

The year ahead will be filled with upgrades and big ideas from across the Ethereum ecosystem. Since our last Supported Teams<\/em> post (which followed the launch of the beacon chain), the network has seen 3.8+ million Ether staked, and 120K+ active validators online across multiple clients.<\/p>\n

In recent days, the launch of the Berlin network upgrade was completed, and since there\u2019s always progress being made by other EF-supported projects, these updates are an opportunity to highlight more efforts to grow and improve Ethereum as a whole. Included in this edition are updates from many teams highlighted in the previous Supported Teams update<\/a>, and more.<\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Applied ZKP<\/h2>\n

Authored by Thore Hildebrandt<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Zkopru<\/h3>\n

Wanseob, Chance, Geoff, Rachel, Jin<\/em><\/p>\n

Zkopru<\/a> is an optimistic rollup that is private. It supports transfers and atomic swaps. We have completed an audit with Least Authority and started a trusted setup<\/a> which will end on April 16th. As a next step we are starting a testnet and building a wallet and block explorer.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Hubble<\/h3>\n

CC, Vaibhav, Jake<\/em><\/p>\n

Hubble<\/a> is an optimistic rollup that is transfer specific. We have completed an audit and are now working on client improvements and are onboarding an additional engineer to expedite development.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>BLS Global Wallet<\/h3>\n

James<\/em><\/p>\n

Optimistic rollups (like Optimism) that use ecdsa signatures as default have an upper limit of ~500 tps because the signatures need to go on-chain. We use BLS signatures to reduce the on-chain storage, which can increase throughput to ~3000 tps. Learn more here<\/a>. The original contracts have been updated to smart contract wallets with meta transactions, and the aggregator is in the process of being updated to match. Further work includes adding token rewards, speccing out social recovery features and to organise an audit. You can catch James at the upcoming Scaling Ethereum Hackathon<\/a> where he will act as a tech mentor.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Blind find<\/h3>\n

Kevin<\/em><\/p>\n

Use MPC to privately search for peers in a social graph and use ZKP to prove that the path exists. The first version<\/a> has been completed, we are defining features for the next iteration and starting to grow the team to build a user interface.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>MACI<\/h3>\n

WeiJie, Corey, Han<\/em><\/p>\n

The goal of MACI<\/a> is to make collusion among participants difficult, while retaining the censorship resistance and correct-execution benefits of smart contracts. We are currently applying it in the context of clr.fund. MACI has evolved beyond a minimal viable product, and version 1.0 will be launched soon. New features include reusable voting contracts, lower gas usage, and higher capacity, which can support a greater range of quadratic voting use cases.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>MicroMix v2<\/h3>\n

Jerome<\/em><\/p>\n

MicroMix<\/a> is a mixer for ETH and ERC20 tokens. It is built on Semaphore<\/a>, a base layer for privacy dApps. We are now supporting the latest version of node and ethers, and handling multiple networks and tokens. We updated Surrogeth for multiple networks and tokens with simplified configuration. We are finalizing work on the UI, fixing last bugs and working on arbitrum compatibility. Future improvements include removing the need for a surrogate for transaction fees, faster zkp generation in the browser, increasing security for private keys and automatically setting fee values.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Social Media Platform on Unirep<\/h3>\n

Ya-wen (Vivian), Doris, Rachel<\/em><\/p>\n

We use Unirep<\/a> to build a private decentralised social network like reddit. It allows the user to privately accumulate and prove reputation. Contract spec has been defined and we have completed contract functions including upvote, downvote, post, and comment. We added a reputation nullifier scheme to prevent double a spending issue. Next step is to start work on the front end with the help of a designer.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>MPC Phase 2 User Interface<\/h3>\n

Goeff, Rachel<\/em><\/p>\n

The goal of the MPC Phase 2 UI<\/a> project is to provide an user-friendly way for everyone to perform a trusted setup. The website is done and we are currently using it to run a trusted setup for the Zkopru. We are collecting feedback and learnings from the live ceremony and exploring features for the next iteration.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Forum Moderation with Prediction Markets<\/h3>\n

Liam<\/em><\/p>\n

Use the prediction market for moderation. Every post creates a prediction market over whether the mods will mark it as a violation of community standards. Liam is leaving the project and we are looking for someone to take it over, see the \u201ccuratem\u201d repos on Liam\u2019s Github<\/a> if this sounds interesting to you.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Reputation Proving Service<\/h3>\n

Jay, Raphael<\/em><\/p>\n

Export cryptographic proofs of user attributes from existing sites where users have accrued reputation (i.e. Github, Twitter, etc.). These proofs can then be verified by sites or decentralized applications.
\nA first basic version is deployed and the service can now be queried directly through an API to check the reputation of a Twitter account. The next milestone will allow users to connect with an Ethereum account and authenticate with Twitter.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>QDHP Quadratic Dollar Homepage<\/h3>\n

Raman<\/em><\/p>\n

The Quadratic Dollar Homepage is a spin on the Million Dollar Homepage. While it also features a space for images on a webpage, it allows users to vote on how much space each image takes up. Moreover, it employs a quadratic and collusion-resistant voting mechanism on Ethereum called Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure (MACI) to prevent bribery and scale images quadratically https:\/\/quadratic.page\/<\/a>. Implementation is finished and we are planning to do some test rounds soon.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Data Publishing Marketplace<\/h3>\n

Jacksoom<\/em><\/p>\n

The project<\/a> creates a place to trustlessly publish data after crowdsourcing funds. The user shares an encrypted dataset (e.g. picture our audiofile) that is trustlessly revealed under the condition that a certain crowdfunding goal has been reached. The project is moving quickly, contracts have been implemented and a first version of the website is live, next up is circuit implementation.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Rollup Diff Compression<\/h3>\n

Blagoj<\/em><\/p>\n

Rollups require you to publish a diff between the state before and state after. This project investigates ways of reducing that diff in order to reduce rollup costs for the case of airdrops specifically. Currently we are at the final stages of experimenting with different data compression approaches\/algorithms and benchmarking their performance. Next steps are choosing the optimal data compression approach for an iterative multi-stage retrospective airdrop and implementing the algorithm so it can be tested and used in practice on L2. The implementation will be on top of the BLS Global Wallet project above.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>CLR.Fund Deployer<\/h3>\n

Spencer Graham, anonymous contributor<\/em><\/p>\n

The goal of the clr fund-deployer is to make it as easy as possible for anybody (project, protocol, community, etc.) to create their own instance of clr.fund to fund public goods for their domain. Clrfund-deployer has 3 planned releases:<\/p>\n

Foggy<\/em> – basically, a web UI from which to deploy all the dependencies and then configure the contracts<\/p>\n

Translucent<\/em> – extending that web UI to deploy and configure the user and recipient registries and also start a funding round!<\/p>\n

Transparent<\/em> – from that same web UI, deploy (and customize!) a new web UI to host their instance of clrfund<\/p>\n

We just released Foggy, and are getting started on Translucent, and also starting on some UX design.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Ecosystem Support Program<\/h2>\n

Authored by ESP Team<\/em><\/p>\n

We recently published our Q4 Allocation Update<\/a> with details on the grants awarded in the last quarter of 2020, with over $4 million distributed across all categories.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile on the support side, we’ve mixed things up a bit! We’re processing inquiries<\/a> through our website as always, but over the past few months we’ve explored some different ways of delivering support:<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Office hours<\/h4>\n

We’ve found that an informal conversation can be a surprisingly powerful tool. Starting in February we piloted “office hours”, where teams or individuals can sign up for one-on-one calls with the ESP team on topics like project feedback, exploring whether ESP is a good fit, or help navigating the Ethereum ecosystem. We held our first rounds with a limited time window, but we’ve been happy with the outcome and we’ll be keeping signups open consistently from now on! If you’re interested to chat with us, you can submit a request here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/a>Focused grant rounds<\/h4>\n

We have also recently hosted two grant waves targeting specific areas for R&D. These rounds let us spotlight areas that are particularly timely or high priority, and might also have slightly different goals or selection criteria from ESP’s standard grants.<\/p>\n