Ethereum Foundation Announces $9.85M Q1 2026 Ecosystem Funding

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Ethereum ecosystem news: The Ethereum Foundation has announced $9.856 million in Q1 2026 Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) funding. Grants focus on core infrastructure, including cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security audits, and protocol research. Supported projects include zkVM formal verification, GPU acceleration for R1CS witness generation, Poseidon analysis, and Erigon zkEVM expansion. The ESP also funds Ethereum developer events in Seoul, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Buenos Aires, as well as climate impact assessments and policy research conducted with the European Decentralized Institute (EDI).

According to the official website of the Ethereum Foundation, its Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) allocated $9.856 million in the first quarter of 2026, focusing on core infrastructure areas such as cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security audits, and protocol research. Key funded projects this quarter include: in the ZK space—formal verification of zkVM, GPU-accelerated R1CS witness generation, and optimization of the LLZK intermediate representation; in security—Poseidon cryptographic analysis, the ERC-7730 cross-platform signature library, and compliance testing for the ePBS specification; in node and client development—Erigon zkEVM expansion, Besu HSM compliance integration, and the multi-node validator Vero; additionally covering privacy tools (Kohaku SDK, Tor bridge extensions), ongoing operations of the Layer 2 transparency platform L2BEAT, and development work transitioning the Lighthouse client to the Fusaka fork. In ecosystem building, ESP also supported Ethereum developer events in Seoul, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Buenos Aires, while advancing updates to Ethereum’s climate impact assessment and policy research initiatives with the European Decentralized Institute (EDI).

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