Grant Report #5: Aeternity Foundation announces new round of grants

The blockchain doesn’t sleep; development never stops.

The aeternity foundation is happy to announce this round of grants. It’s absolutely pleasing to see thriving development activity throughout the different facets of the platform, ensuring the continued growth of the ecosystem to propel æternity into mainstream use.

After thorough deliberations, the following have been awarded funding for their efforts towards the growth of the platform.

1. Stoyan Vasilev

Stoyan’s track record as a programmer stretches way back before æternity came into existence. This has made him highly adept in designing and anticipating the navigation process for the user. A specialist in usability, Stoyan is working on the main æternity Wallet and æpps Browser, and making sure that both mobile and desktop implementations work seamlessly. These applications are integral tools for the æternity ecosystem, serving as a bridge between users and the æternity blockchain, and are critical in opening the floodgates for mainstream use. Follow his updates on the Forum.

2. Philipp Piwowarsky

Piwo has been active in different aspects of the æternity engine and will focus his efforts on supporting the Elixir SDK management. He’s also working in the governance aepp, graffiti aepp, tools and infrastructure development. Follow updates from Piwo on the Forum.

3. Keno Dressel

Keno has been active in the aepp ecosystem since December 2018, having worked with the graffiti aepp mainly as a UX and frontend developer and the BRI voting aepp. He will continue to be active in development and is now working on the governance aepp.

4. The Graffiti æpp

The Graffiti aepp enables the general public to experience first-hand interaction with the æternity blockchain, allowing hundreds of artists from all over the world to pool their works in to create a unified, crowdsourced artwork that is immortalized on the æternity blockchain.

The Graffiti aepp has graced the Ars Electronica Festival last September 5–9 in POSTCITY Linz, Austria, and of course, the æternity Universe One conference, held last September 20–21 in Prague, Czech Republic. If you want to try out the graffiti æpp, there’s a guide here.

5. YAIR Ars Electronica

The YAIR (Your Art Is Reality) project uses blockchain enabled technology to unleash the power of digital art for artists, collectors, and art lovers. YAIR enables shared ownership of artworks by different members of the public through PaRTs tokens.

The tokens are a soft form of “ownership” of the artworks comparable to the traditional form of “editions” although far more numerous. In the future, when licensing deals are struck for use of the artworks, profits will be collected and distributed according to proportional ownership of the PaRTs.

YAIR is using æternity blockchain to create scarcity of ownership (via tokens) for digital artworks while creating free access to art lovers all over the world.

A grant has been allocated to promote aeternity foundation and the ecosystem during YAIR’s installation at Ars Electronica 2019 in Post City Linz, Austria. æternity team members participated in this event and had the opportunity to speak at a panel discussion.

aeternity foundation will receive art token, in the Bit Tower artwork, an architectural installation created by digital artist Wu Juehui at the St Mary’s Cathedral in Linz — the biggest cathedral in Austria.

The Bit Tower installation is one of the artworks from YAIR’s portfolio that was showcased in Ars Electronica 2019.

Check out the BitTower at Ars Electronica 2019 through the video below.

6. LIMA Security Audit — CNLAB Security Review

The purpose of this review included Smart Contracts and related topics. This covered the following items:

• Sophia smart contract language and related components (compiler, runtime environment)
• Execution of contracts on nodes, AEVM and FateVM
• Sophia development tools
• Smart Contract operations within State Channels
• Generalized Accounts in the context of Smart Contracts

The final output for this grant will be a review that provides statements on the following areas:

• The security of the language-related components: their robustness against specially engineered malicious contracts that intend to derail the correct function of æternity nodes and the æternity blockchain as a whole.
• The correctness of the contract handling in connection with State Channels, including the robustness of the concept against errors and against hostile actions of blockchain users.

You can read CNLAB’s full security audit of æternity here.

7. blox.io

Blox.io will allow the cryptocurrency investors to track and manage AE wallet balances and transactions using their platform on Web and mobile. Users can track their cryptocurrency portfolio with pro tools and advanced management features like auto-sync for exchanges and wallets, and daily snapshots of their balance and activity.

This wraps up the fifth round of grants from the æternity crypto foundation. If you think you or someone you know has some really good ideas and skills that would be beneficial in the progress of the æternity platform, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

You can reach out to the community through the Forum with any questions you might have. Our main website is also full of information that can help you get started with your proposal. And as soon as you are ready, just fill up this form to apply for a grant.