Ethereum Foundation Discloses Q1 2026 Ecosystem Grant List, Totaling Nearly $10 Million
According to the Ethereum Foundation’s official website, its Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) allocated a total of $9.856 million in Q1 2026, with funding concentrated on core infrastructure areas including cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security audits, and protocol research.
Key funded projects this quarter include:
- In the ZK domain: formal verification of zkVMs, GPU-accelerated R1CS witness generation, and intermediate representation optimization for LLZK;
- In security: cryptanalysis of Poseidon, cross-platform canonical signing libraries for ERC-7730, and specification-compliance testing for ePBS;
- In node and client development: Erigon zkEVM extensions, Besu HSM compliance integration, and the multi-node validator Vero;
- Additionally, privacy tools (Kohaku SDK, Tor bridge extensions), continued operations of the Layer 2 transparency platform L2BEAT, and R&D for the Lighthouse client’s transition to the Fusaka fork.
On ecosystem development, ESP simultaneously supported Ethereum developer events in Seoul, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Buenos Aires, advanced updates to the Ethereum climate impact assessment, and backed policy research initiatives by the European Decentralization Institute (EDI).
