EF Grants Just $2 Million to Ethereum 2.0, Are They Financially Struggling?

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced four grants to development teams working on the client implementation of ethereum 2.0.

Harmony has received the least at $189,000 presumably because this is only for the “beacon chain development.”

Prysmatic Labs has received the most at $725,000 for Prysm eth2.0 client development even though this team launched a client testnet some weeks after the other two grant receivers.

Status has received $500,000 for the Nimbus eth2.0 client development with Status itself raising nearly $100 million in an ICO in 2017.

You’d think therefore they wouldn’t need such grant, but they received $15,000 more than Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse eth2.0 client development grant of $485,000.

That small difference is perhaps because Nimbus “beat” Lighthouse by one day in launching the client only testnet for the Beacon chain.

Both teams seem to be on par and ahead of the rest as far as getting the code out goes, with Lighthouse arguably needing this grant a lot more than Nimbus, yet ConsenSys had to chip in for Lighthouse, while Status didn’t have to chip in for Nimbus as far as this grant is concerned.

Status instead got another $150,000 on top for nim-libp2p development, with Protocol Labs chipping in on that one, with it unclear just which Protocol Labs this is, but it may be the IPFS one where they too would benefit from this p2p networking work.

Why Nimbus applied, let alone received more, is unclear because Status has millions. Likewise why EF gave them a penny, from a “need” perspective, is also unclear.

Just as it is unclear why Prysmatic gets more. From appearance, they seem to be behind both Nimbus and Lighthouse in code shipping, but we’re not in the business of code auditing and quality assessment so that hopefully is the reason.

However, from what we have seen they also seem to be more “connected.” So a slightly longer description of why they granted as much as they did, rather than a one sentence statement of for client development, may have been very helpful.

Not least because some ethereum developers have been making noise regarding funding. Some coding teams have apparently been told three months and out according to sources.

In addition, all of these recently announced grants are less than half of what just Parity received this January , ostensibly to code an eth2.0 client, but now they can’t finish some “simple” eth1.0 EIPs.

Plus, the grants list looks a bit incomplete, with it somewhat unclear just what exactly they consider a grant. Work on eth1x, for example, is being funded as far as we know.

These grants seem to be made in fiat, so one can’t quite see how all this money is being spent, with it unclear too whether others chipping in suggests they are running low on fiat “reserves.”

Understandably, they’d rather not sell eth, of which they have about $100 million worth, so this round of funding is a bit lower than previous ones and is mainly focused on the four eth 2.0 clients.

That could raise questions about other projects, like eWASM development, as well as questions regarding who is making all these decisions.

As far as we understand, Aya Miyaguchi has considerable influence as the Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation.

Very interestingly, she is a graduate of English and American Literature from Nanzan University, which Google says has a country rank of 114 within Japan.

Her background suggests she has no clue about coding, not even as a dabbling thing or maybe not even as knowing what if and then means.

Instead she appears to be from a marketing background, with her capability in that area not quite showing for the past two years.

No wonder she has developed some philosophy of subtraction, as in doing nothing, because presumably she has no clue of what on earth should be done.

As far as we understand, however, the board/management has a say too, but who exactly is on the board or management is completely unclear with the Ethereum Foundation website having not one name on it.

That said, sometime they do fund very cool projects, like potential zk-snarks scalability with a grant of $4 million, but they have Hudson Jameson as some sort of spokesperson (community support guy with little influence we’re told) who himself says has no clue about PR, and we have some literature graduate in charge of just what code should be funded.

With the blame then necessarily going to the board since they, presumably, are in charge in what may well be mismanagement of funds in giving a rich ICO-ed project – which we do like, we gave them 4.5 out of 5 in review – close to one million dollars when not one eth 1.0 client was given a penny despite an alternative to Parity obviously needed as they’re kind of not hiding it anymore and despite there being quite a few eth1.0 clients, beyond geth, that seem to be competent because some of them have finished all the EIPs while Parity needs two weeks.

“What they decide to finance is where the direction of the technology will go. If some teams don’t have funding, they can’t develop something and others who do get funding, can develop, so naturally the direction of the technology shifts where there is monetary support,” – sources.

“If the kleptocracy controls technology and the means of distribution, then they simply accumulate more wealth at the expense of their citizens, draining wealth in cryptocurrencies rather than dollars or euros,” CFTC Commissioner.

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