rewrite this title Allocation Update – Q4 2025 | Ethereum Foundation Blog

Community & educationCal Hacks 12.0Collegiate hackathon organized at the University of California, Berkeley covering themes such as AI and web3.Community & educationDestino DevconnectGrants round focused on supporting community-led events and initiatives that help bring Argentina and the broader Latin America region onchain.Community & educationETH Latam Hackathon Brasil 2025ETHSambaHackathon hosted in São Paulo, Brazil prioritizing real-world Ethereum and onboarding new builders.EmailCommunity & educationFunding the Commons: Buenos Aires 2025Conference hosted in Buenos Aires, Argentina revolving around RealFi: financial infrastructure designed for real-world coordination, access, and public goods funding.Community & educationHigh Assurance Crypto Software (HACS) Workshop 2026Workshop organized in Taipei, Taiwan bringing together cryptographers, cryptographic software engineers, and formal verification experts to improve the security and correctness of real-world cryptographic software.Community & educationHong Kong Polytechnic University Research Center for Blockchain TechnologyCollaborating on and supporting a range of academic activities, such as scholarships for the MSc in Blockchain Technology program, the Asiacrypt 2026 conference, guest lectures, and joint research activities.Community & educationInvisible GardenDeveloper pop-up city focused on Ethereum, ZKPs, AI, and cybersecurity organized in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Community & educationLanceriumProviding travel assistance to enable the two founders to fly to and attend Devconnect ARG.Community & educationLocal Meetups LATAM Grant RoundLocalism FundCollaborative grant round with Localism Fund designed to sustain post-Devconnect momentum across Latin America by empowering local Ethereum communities to host consistent, educational, and inclusive monthly meetups for one year.Community & educationStablecoin (JPYC) Innovation ChallengeCrypto Asset CommunityCross-industry ideathon designed to surface and accelerate solutions that employ stablecoins—specifically JPYC—to solve real business challenges across sectors such as e-commerce, logistics, real estate, and accounting.Community & education2025 ethereum.org TranslatathonTranslation contest that aims to incentivize translation contributions in less-active languages, increase the number of languages and amount of content available on ethereum.org, and onboard new contributors while rewarding existing ones.Consensus layerReamReam LabsContinued development of the modular, contributor-friendly, and fast implementation of the Lean Consensus specification.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsAVAZAR: Automatic Verification Tools for zkVM ArithmetizationAlbert RubioSupporting work on the verification (and tooling to do so) of circuits in LLZK.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEPFL Laboratory for Computation SecuritySupporting PhD students in the research lab working on foundational and applied cryptography research, which addresses core limitations in current SNARK designs including recursion security and the exploration of tradeoffs between proof size and security.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsEvolution of the LLZK IRVeridiseContinued development of LLZK to strengthen it as shared, verification-oriented infrastructure for the ZK compiler ecosystem, enabling more robust tooling, interoperability across ZK DSLs, and improved correctness guarantees for ZK circuits.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsFiat-Shamir SpecificationSpecification and formalization in Lean of Fiat-Shamir based on the Fiat-Shamir transformation from duplex sponges/spongefish construction.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsLean Backend for HaxCryspenContinued development of a Lean backend for Hax, allowing Rust code to be formally verified in Lean.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsOpenVM Formal VerificationAxiomFormal verification of OpenVM focused on establishing the functional correctness of all RV32IM opcode circuits, with the goal of reducing the risk of soundness or completeness issues in OpenVM’s circuit design and contributing reusable formal verification infrastructure to the broader zkVM ecosystem.X (Twitter)Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPrivate Payments L2Vienhage Cybersecurity UGCreating a prototype of a minimal, open-source app-specific L2 rollup for private stablecoin transfers, using lightweight ZK circuits and a simplified sequencing model.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPrivoteShashank TrivediPrivate on-chain voting protocol powered by MACI that is hosting the frontend for the Gitcoin Grants 24: Privacy domain.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsThe Recursive Extraction ProblemNicholas SpoonerResearching the security of recursive composition in SNARKs, focusing on the recursive extraction problem that arises when security proofs require repeated application of knowledge extractors.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsRust Verification Through Lean 4 Tooling InvestigationRuntime VerificationInvestigating Lean 4-based formal verification of Rust components used in zkEVM and zkVM stacks, with a focus on establishing a practical Rust to Lean verification pipeline using the hax toolchain.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsSTIR & WHIR in ArkLibNethermindFormalizing key theorems for STIR and WHIR in Lean and supplementing them with an executable specification.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsPoseidon Cryptanalysis Bounty ProgramJintai Ding & Ziyu ZhaoSolving bounties listed in the Poseidon Cryptanalysis Bounty Program, which has the twin goals of ensuring that the interpolation attack is the fastest preimage attack on Poseidon, and verifying that the complexity of the interpolation attack on the reduced round versions matches the theoretical estimates.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTechnical Review of Fiat–Shamir from Duplex SpongesKasra AbbaszadehTechnical review of the recent analysis of the Fiat–Shamir transformation instantiated via duplex sponges, focusing on carefully auditing the underlying security arguments, identifying any gaps or ambiguities, and clarifying the key abstractions needed for rigorous reasoning.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsTightening the Hash Size in Round-by-Round Sound IOPsNethermindInvestigating whether multi-round, round-by-round sound SNARKs can safely use smaller hash digests, beginning with a feasibility study in both the Random Oracle Model and the Quantum Random Oracle Model.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsVerifying Autoprecompilespowdr labs & CertoraFormally verifying powdr’s autoprecompiles to help improve performance and speed up adoption.Cryptography & zero knowledge proofsWHIROnur KılıçAccelerate WHIR and upstream it into Plonky3, to contribute to the low-level stack of proving system for Ethereum post-quantum signatures.Developer experience & toolingEthereum Developer Ecosystem DatasetOpen Source ObserverDelivering an improved, reproducible, and publicly auditable view of Ethereum developer ecosystem data along with a sustainable mechanism to keep it updated.Developer experience & toolingsolc-mlir Middle End Optimization Layer for SolidityWalnutFocused research effort to add an MLIR middle-end to the Solidity compiler, with the aim of yielding measurable gas savings and enabling richer correctness and safety analyses.Execution layerHelios Integration in KohakuKaren SarkisyanIntegrating Helios with the Kohaku browser extension, improving performance, and ensuring it is a portable and easily integrable part of the Kohaku SDK.General growth & supportDeep Funding MarketsSeerMultiscalar prediction market where model builders bet on the value an open-source repository would receive if it were to be professionally evaluated, used in Gitcoin Grants 24.General growth & supportEuropean Crypto Initiative (EUCI)Conducting EU-focused policy advocacy and education campaigns aimed at key regulators and policymakers.General growth & supportGitcoin Grants 24: Privacy DomainCo-funding for the Privacy domain, which supports privacy solutions for a secure onchain Ethereum ecosystem.General growth & supportGitcoin Grants 24: Public Goods R&D DomainCo-funding for the GG24 Public Goods R&D Domain. The grant supports concrete academic and other forms of research that advance the insights and knowledge on Ethereum public goods and their funding, while supporting the development of neutral, open-source solutions rooted in these insights, with a focus on interoperability between tools.General growth & supportJuror Voting for Deep FundingAllan NiemergEstablishing a juror evaluation process, creating an app for collecting data from jurors, and integrating the results into the Deep Funding voting app.OtherAnti-Crypto-Drainer OperationsSecurity Alliance (SEAL)Tracking, discovering, and blocking crypto drainers attacking EVM-based chains.OtherBuidlGuidl’s Builder Bootcamp Capture the FlagCapture the Flag (CTF) competition where participants tackle 12 increasingly challenging Solidity puzzles to hunt for vulnerabilities, exploit smart contract weaknesses, and solve cryptographic challenges.OtherCapture the FundsCertoraSolidity based CTF-style security competition, where participants compete against one another to exploit vulnerable DeFi protocols and earn the highest score.OtherClear Signing LibraryWalletConnectBuilding a library and PoC wallet that aims to solve the issue of blind signing.OtherKaggle Competition for LLM Identification of Smart Contract VulnerabilitiesOneSavie LabHosting a Kaggle competition for LLM-based smart contract vulnerability detection built on the Bastet dataset, with the goal of attracting both crypto security talent and non-crypto AI/LLM talent.OtherNodeCoredRPCIncorporating network-level privacy into a high-performance, self-hosted RPC load-balancer that distributes requests across multiple blockchain providers or nodes, optimizing for latency, error rate, and cost.OtherOpen Creator RailsChainSafeMinimal, verifiable on-chain runtime for managing time-bound access to digital resources using deterministic entitlements.Protocol growth & supportLLM-Enabled Differential Testing on Ethereum ClientsChiachih WuDesigning and implementing LLM-enabled differential testing on Ethereum clients to speed up the ability to find vulnerabilities on the Ethereum protocol.Protocol growth & supportProtocol FellowshipMike NeuderDoctoral work focused on using tools from economics and computation to deepen the understanding of blockchain mechanism design, generating high-impact academic research and educational content such as public explainers on protocol changes and teaching a new blockchain course at Princeton University.Protocol growth & supportSmart Contract Vulnerability DatabaseTruscovaBuilding a system that accepts a wide variety of different vulnerability reports in various formats from multiple sources, massaging them into a schema, and then outputting it into a publicly available dataset.Protocol growth & supportSummer of Protocols (SoP) Program ManagementTimber Stinson-SchroffManaging SoP by overseeing the 2025 program logistics, supporting community management, and helping to shape SoP’s longer-term roadmap.Protocol growth & supportThe Tor ProjectProviding technical support to the Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy Cluster to overcome technical barriers of integrating Tor at the edge and the infrastructure of the Ethereum ecosystem. Work includes improving scalability of bridging to Tor, and adapting Arti Tor client into wasm such that it can be integrated in wallets[sdks] and frontends. The collaboration aims to unlock Tor particularly in constrained environments like browser wallets, bringing privacy to RPC calls like transaction broadcasting (eth_sendRawTx).Protocol growth & supportWomen in Ethereum Protocol (WiEP) Cohort 4 FacilitatorMercy Boma Naps-Nkari & Arunima ChaudhuriFacilitating WiEP Cohort 4 through activities such as developing workflows, coordinating mentors, tracking participant contributions, and supporting the organization of the WiEP Brunch at Devconnect.Protocol growth & supportWiEP Cohort 4 Marketing CoordinatorMeenakshi SinghSupporting WiEP Cohort 4 by coordinating communications with mentors, students, and speakers, managing social media posts, and assisting with the organization and publication of session recordings.Protocol growth & supportDivya Ranjan PattanaikInformal 2-month internship to work on Ethereum protocol R&D.