Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, donated $300,000 in Ethereum (ETH) to 3 blockchain startups in a spur-of-the-moment decision brought on by a Twitter thread.
The 3 lucky projects are Prysmatic Labs, ChainSafe Systems and Sigma Prime. Each of them are building scaling solutions for the Ethereum blockchain that go inline with the network’s next iteration, Ethereum 2.0.
To help these projects achieve their goals, Buterin sent each of them 1,000 ETH, which equates to roughly $100,000. The decision to donate to these promising projects originated from a Twitter thread in which prominent members of the Ethereum community discussed the development of Ethereum.
Preston Van Loon, co-founder of Prysmatic Labs and a software engineer at Google was the first to receive Buterin’s generous donation. The Twitter thread which kicked off Buterin’s donation spree is below.
Just sent 1000 eth. Yolo.https://t.co/s1q8K5Wlhs
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) December 19, 2018
Vitalik Buterin: “Non-Giver of Ether”….
Ironically enough, Buterin’s Twitter handle is “Non-Giver of Ether” which he implemented to help prevent Ethereum scam bots posing as himself from scamming his followers into sending them ETH with the promise to receive more in return.
With Buterin’s recent donations, people on crypto twitter have joked that he should now change his Twitter handle to “Giver of Ether.” But all jokes aside, the 3 startups receiving his donation potentially have a big role to play in growing Ethereum.
Prysmatic Labs
The first grant was received by Prysmatic Labs after Van Loon reached out to Buterin as seen in the Twitter thread above. Prysmatic Labs is an open source team of blockchain engineers committed to scaling Ethereum.
The team is working to implement sharding for the Ethereum blockchain because they believe the protocol desperately needs it ASAP. Anyone can contribute to the development Prysmatic Labs is working on by contributing to their GitHub page.
Sigma Prime
Buterin awarded the second grant to Sigma Prime, who received the grant when Paul Hauner, the projects co-founder tweeted:
Hey, we’re building #lighthouse and have been knocked back for a couple of grants recently. We can certainly turn 1k ETH into more developers! 0x25c4a76E7d118705e7Ea2e9b7d8C59930d8aCD3b
— Paul Hauner (@paulhauner) December 19, 2018
Sigma Prime is a company specializing in blockchain technology and information security. They are building an Ethereum 2.0 client called Lighthouse. The project includes groundbreaking technology including proof-of-stake consensus, parallel transaction execution and state separation.
ChainSafe Systems
As for the third grant, it went to Canada-based ChainSafe Systems after the project lead Mikerah Quintyne-Collins tweeted:
I will quite literally drop out if we got $100k in ETH.
— Mikerah (@badcryptobitch) December 19, 2018
ChainSafe Systems is blockchain research and development company that builds intuitive, user-centric blockchain solutions. They are building an Ethereum 2.0 client, similar to what Sigma Prime is doing.
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see how these projects progress in the coming months as the grants received should help fund developers and other areas of the projects.
Both Prysmatic Labs and Sigma Prime are on everyone’s radar with expectations to do well and have something to show for themselves because they’ve both received recent grants from the Ethereum Foundation.
Prysmatic Labs received a $500,000 grant in October and a $100,000 grant in March, and Sigma Prime received a $150,000 grant in October.
These two projects have a little added pressure to do well and deliver on the Ethereum 2.0 scaling solutions as promised. However, these developments take time and care as security of the network remains a top priority.
Do you think these projects will deliver Ethereum 2.0 scaling solutions soon? Should they receive even more grants from the Buterin or the Ethereum foundation? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
