The Ethereum Foundation Ecosystem Support Program runs this grant round for formal research related to Ethereum. The 2025 round followed editions in 2023 and 2024 and is now closed.
Individuals, teams, universities, research centres, think tanks, educators and other research stakeholders could propose work across technical, economic and humanities topics. Projects could be developed wherever the applicants are based and had to make their research outputs openly available under a permissive licence.
Benefits & funding
- Funding was awarded as project grants, with each proposal assessed case by case.
- The page is internally inconsistent about the total pool: its introduction states $2 million, while its FAQ states up to $1.5 million.
- Projects were expected to run for 6–12 months, with flexibility depending on the proposal.
- Intellectual property could remain with the research team, but the resulting work had to be open source and available for public use.
Eligibility
- Individuals, teams and organisations could apply; the page says participation was open to everyone.
- Eligible applicants included academic institutions, university consortia, research centres, universities, think tanks, educators and individual researchers with prior research experience.
- Undergraduate researchers needed a postdoctoral adviser. No nationality, residency, gender or age restriction was stated.
- Projects had to produce formal academic research released as open-access work under a free and permissive licence.
- Retroactive funding, planned token launches or public funding rounds, financial products and services, unlawful work, and out-of-scope art or social-impact projects were ineligible.
Can you apply?
Open to all applicants
No nationality, residency, education, or experience limits are listed.
Circlebreaker is a free database of global fellowships, scholarships and programs — every one decoded like this.
We only check the criteria we have data for. Always confirm full eligibility on the official page before applying.
Application process
- 1Review the round scope and wishlist, then define a research project related to Ethereum.
- 2Prepare an English PDF proposal covering the work, budget and timeline, an applicant profile, and a public repository or link to published work.
- 3Submit a separate application for each distinct proposal during the application window.
- 4Await the funding decision, which the page said would be emailed six weeks after the deadline.
Program timeline
Application window opened.
Jan 20, 2025
Application deadline.
Mar 24, 2025 at 23:59 AoE
About six weeks after the deadline
Funding decisions emailed.
Future cycle
No reopening date is published.