Batch Two Token Grant Applications from Prysmatic, Counterfactual, Plasma Group, and More

Applications for Batch Two close on Friday, April 5.

3 min readApr 3, 2019

Panvala is a donor-driven system that runs on its own currency. We gave out our first batch of token grants on February 1 to teams including Gnosis, Status, and Aragon One. For Batch Two, we’re excited to have applications from seven teams so far. These teams make the Ethereum vision safer by scaling the network and making it easier to write code that does what we intended. That’s the only way Ethereum can truly be the hub of our decentralized, open financial system.

Applications for Batch Two close on Friday, April 5. Send us an email, and we’ll help you put an application together.

Here’s a quick overview of the applications so far:

Runtime Verification: KWASM Semantics

Runtime Verification has been working closely with Rikard Hjort of Chalmers University on the KWasm semantics, which will allow Web Assembly contracts to be formally verified using the K framework. The core computational opcodes are finished, what remains are memories, tables, and modules. Memories are almost done, awaiting final review and approval, and tables will follow shortly.

Sigma Prime: Lighthouse Ethereum 2.0 Single-Client Testnet

Lighthouse will be a production-ready Ethereum Serenity client written in Rust, with a focus on efficiency and security. We believe in the vision behind Ethereum and its community, and we intend to make significant contributions in building a stable backbone for the decentralised web.
We will launch a single-client testnet that allows the public to run a set of validators on a Beacon Chain test network of Lighthouse clients.

Prysmatic Labs: Prysm Ethereum 2.0 Single-Client Testnet

Prysmatic Labs is developing Prysm, a full featured sharding client for Ethereum 2.0, that can process transactions faster than ever before. Prysm is written in Go, and aims to be a counterpart to geth, the Go implementation of Ethereum 1.x.
We will launch a single-client testnet that allows the public to run a set of validators on a Beacon Chain test network of Prysm clients.

Connext: Generalized State Channels for Connext

To support use cases beyond payments, we will add support for Generalized State Channels to Connext using counterfactual instantiation. State is passed into the generalized framework once at the onset and can be manipulated according to a contract specified (but not deployed) when the channel is opened. Dispute cases are adjudicated by the contract as well. Because participants have the ability to go on-chain and invoke the contract, though, all are incentivized to behave as though it exists.

L4: Counterfactual Developer Experience

Now that we have demonstrated what is possible with generalized state channels with a full stack MVP, our focus is on making it accessible to developers. We will simplify documentation, demonstrate more example use cases, and garner support from neighboring communities who are excited about generalized state channels.

Plasma Group: Predicate Contract Framework

We’ve devised a new architecture for building Plasma apps on one generalized plasma chain. It establishes a clean separation between the plasma layer and the application layer. We will publish a generalized Plasma predicate contract framework, which allows for upgradeability and composability of plasma contracts. Since plasma research moves so quickly, we realized we needed to develop an architecture that allowed for maximal modularity, to prevent vast chunks of code from being thrown away with each new research discovery.

Batch Two has 2,034,798 PAN tokens available for grant recipients. The Panvala Awards Committee will meet later this month to decide which grant applications to recommend. When Panvala is live on the mainnet in August, anyone can recommend a slate of grants for future batches, but only one slate can win each quarter. The tokens staked on losing slates are lost, so each recommender has to make sure they are truly representing the consensus of the Panvala community.

We encourage you to apply before Friday, April 5.