Grantee Roundup: March 2021

It’s always fun to hear about new grants as they’re awarded, but what happens after the announcement? In this series, we’ll check in on projects that are well underway - or already at the finish line. Read on to learn about some recent milestones and achievements by grantees!

Baseline

The Baseline project is defining a protocol that allows businesses to synchronize their systems of record and reduce costly errors in B2B transactions. It uses the Ethereum Mainnet as a common frame of reference, while keeping confidential business logic and data private using zero-knowledge proofs. The project is housed under the Ethereum OASIS. First launched in March 2020 by a group of 15 teams, Baseline is now overseen by representatives from over 30 companies and organizations. Currently in v0.1.0, released in August 2020, Baseline already offers many tools for enterprise users including:

Core protocols for API access, messaging, privacy, persistence, and Solidity contracts

A v.0.1.0 reference implementation contributed by Provide

Extensive documentation

Implementations in the wild including a proof of concept baselining SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics and a Salesforce integration via DappSuite

The funding awarded to Baseline was allocated for the recently announced Baseline Protocol Grants program, administered by Baseline's governing bodies via Open Collective to support continued research, development and adoption.

Follow Baseline's progress on Twitter @baselineproto, contribute on Github or join the conversation on Discord, Slack and Telegram.

Aztec for PLONK

The Aztec team are blazing trails in the zero knowledge realm as the creators of PLONK, an efficient and universal SNARK construction, and its successors TurboPlonk and UltraPlonk. Aztec received a grant in August 2020 toward their work on PLONK and the Rust-based Noir language for programmable privacy inside a PLONK rollup. Aztec has reached some major milestones recently with PLONK and Noir as key elements, including:

Released Aztec 2.0 Rollup and zk.money using TurboPlonk for recursive zk-SNARKS

Introduced the alpha version of Noir

Published Aztec’s ZK-ZK-Rollup, looking behind the cryptocurtain explaining the architecture of the "ZK-ZK-Rollup" used in zk.money

There's plenty more in the Aztec pipeline - follow their progress on Twitter @aztecnetwork, Github AztecProtocol, or join the Discord.

Source: https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2021/04/01/esp-grantee-roundup-march-2021