TechFlow News: On April 29, according to disclosure on the Ethereum Foundation’s official website, its Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) allocated a total of $9.856 million in Q1 2026, with funding focused on core infrastructure areas including cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security audits, and protocol research.
Key funded projects this quarter include: - Zero-knowledge (ZK) initiatives such as formal verification of zkVMs, GPU-accelerated R1CS witness generation, and intermediate representation optimization for LLZK; - Security initiatives including cryptographic analysis of Poseidon, cross-platform “clean signing” libraries for ERC-7730, and compliance testing for the ePBS specification; - Node and client initiatives including Erigon zkEVM extension, Besu HSM-compliant integration, and multi-node validator Vero; - Additional support for privacy tools (Kohaku SDK, Tor bridge extension), ongoing operations of the Layer 2 transparency platform L2BEAT, and R&D for transitioning the Lighthouse client to the Fusaka fork.
Regarding 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 the policy research project of the European Decentralization Institute (EDI).
