Ethereum Foundation Drops $32M Bomb on Q1 2025—Ecosystem Devs Scramble for Grants

Ethereum just fueled its builder ecosystem with a $32 million rocket booster. The Foundation’s Q1 2025 grants target core protocol teams, L2 scaling solutions, and—because even crypto can’t escape bureaucracy—’governance infrastructure.’

Where’s the money flowing? Expect wallet UX overhauls, MEV-resistant tooling, and yet another attempt to make account abstraction mainstream. TradFi bankers meanwhile whisper: ’Still cheaper than our quarterly champagne budget.’

Bullish signal or desperate bid to stay relevant? Either way, the smart contract wars just got hotter.

Ethereum Foundation grants focus on community and education

The largest share of grants went to projects under the Community and Education category, with 32 initiatives receiving funding. These included research, workshops, conferences, and bootcamps to promote learning and network engagement.

The Foundation’s focus on educational outreach and community development demonstrates its effort to enhance Ethereum users’ understanding and ecosystem participation.

Meanwhile, the Foundation allocated 16 grants to Developer Experience and Tooling. CertiK, a blockchain security firm, received two grants among the beneficiaries in this category.

CertiK is working on simplifying the verification process for zkVM (Zero-Knowledge VIRTUAL Machine) circuits. The firm’s efforts include improving modular arithmetic operations and optimizing scenarios where multiple values are stored in a single field element.

Other significant grant categories included Cryptography and Zero-Knowledge Proofs, with 14 projects supported.

The Consensus LAYER received seven grants, while both Execution Layers and Protocol Growth and Support categories were each backed by five initiatives. General Growth and Support secured four grants, with an additional two awarded under indirect funding.

The remaining 10 projects were awarded under the “Others” category. This category funded entities focused on advocating for decentralization, in-depth research on stablecoins, and those working on integrating the traditional financial system with Ethereum.

Notably, L2Beat, a prominent Layer-2 data aggregator, also received a grant. This award forms part of the Ethereum Foundation’s ongoing financial support for the platform’s data provision activities, which are seen as essential to the transparency and scalability of Ethereum’s layer-2 solutions.