$19 Million: Ethereum Foundation to Fund Work on 2.0 Upgrade, Plasma and More

The Ethereum Foundation detailed Tuesday how an estimated $30 million will be spent by the organization on key projects within the ethereum ecosystem.

The group said that $19 million has been earmarked over the next 12 months to be put towards "building the ethereum of tomorrow."

Namely, this includes an ambitious scaling upgrade dubbed ethereum 2.0, "layer 2" scaling projects such as Plasma, among other research and development projects.

Another $8 million is detailed to be spent over the next 12 months on supporting the current ethereum mainnet through initiatives such as ethereum 1x.

"Ethereum is used in production today to secure billions of dollars of assets and as a base layer for many hundreds of live applications. We believe that it is vital to continue supporting these efforts to ensure that 'Ethereum 1.0' continues to be the world’s dominant smart-contract platform," the Foundation said in a blog post released Tuesday.

The final $3 million is earmarked for developer growth and awareness. As stated in the post, the money will be put towards: developer education and on-boarding, organizing the yearly ethereum conference Devcon, supporting "regional ethereum community organizations," and the like.

Over the last year, the Ethereum Foundation spent a reported total of $27 million awarding monetary grants to 90 different projects. The highest number of grants, 23 in total, went towards ethereum projects focussed on scalability.

All together, the Ethereum Foundation holds approximately 0.6 percent of all ether, equivalent to roughly $160 million, as well as some reserves of cash. As stated in today's blog post, resources "are intended to decrease over time" and other third-party actors such as the MolochDAO are encouraged to take a larger role in supporting development in the ethereum ecosystem.

"Efforts like these give us better leverage from our existing resources, and help build a sustainable path for funding vital projects far into the future," the blog post detailed.

Speaking to CoinDesk, executive director of the Ethereum Foundation Aya Miyaguchi added:

"I understand that many look to the [Ethereum] Foundation as an important voice even if our intention is to empower other important contributors to ethereum...We'll continue to release many different types of updates, including the latest from more supported teams very soon."

Ethereum Foundation executive director Aya Miyaguchi. Image taken by Christine Kim.