{"signature": "0x588d7bbb3800c6cc1e8e2ba3c164c18a59ffc1b310e7d46c1d5a91992647989326f99b7e19042b6bddd3e590802b97dc0ed4d64d71c1621ccb15fc91585f16401b", "application": {"round": "0x6142eedc06d80f3b362ce43b4ac52fad679dc850", "answers": [{"type": "email", "hidden": true, "question": "Email Address", "questionId": 0, "encryptedAnswer": {"ciphertext": "pRUZnpdByI2m6KgSQgRykNOfbfxE6Ysg/ck8sTTnqsg=", "encryptedSymmetricKey": "9303cf5b6303e57bcc8bc078140f345500b25066efb15b572fdca62613198688d9ebafd22a39057f87b2fffed9a6e303e80ceb7a5907584752e63b04b96dcefba64e68b8ad99b79761b0903a1fa77c1f24e9ed793d8880ccaf9bfc890b72bda6fa9f6b4cf14ece11466e5a14576bc2d107b9b6e1e5842851f3edf8a4bcbde7e20000000000000020c7ce1a6b5dde98618af7dd335f4f7e03df60f9ee992eef2b885141cda79769844b0accfc1655a687be4983d59f80df93"}}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "In Q1/2024 EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding) is planned to go live on Ethereum. This will have substantial impact on the whole ecosystem, particularly L2/rollup scaling and DEXes on the according networks. With this proposal we will bring some light into the jungle of expected effects, outline our research paths and technical implementations. This will bring more clarity and enhance future outcomes for Arbitrum and Uniswap. Particularly regarding scaling, TX per second and usability of the Uniswap deployments (v3 and v4 with hooks, UniswapX) for smoother trading and AMM functioning on advanced L2 infrastructure.\n\nEven though EIP-4844 will be a leap forward for the ecosystem we see several issues that need to be solved for a successful adaption of Proto-Danksharding. With an initial block size of ~125 kilobytes most consumers will not fill up a complete blob while with only three to six blobs per block the space will be limited. Hence, it will make sense to combine the data of several market participants (L2s / rollups) into one blob and align this efficiently. Further, with an exponential pricing function blob price volatility is a major concern that needs to be tackled early on.\n\nOur solution space for this expands across technical implementation factors, economical incentive aspects and governmental alignment. Firstly, to identify and continuously monitor the requirements, we plan to implement a Uniswap and Arbitrum TX and mempool data dashboard. To tackle the issue of efficient blob space allocation we will explore prototypes of a blob merging solution. For the issue of blob price volatility we see economic market making mechanisms such as a derivatives market as suitable. The third pathway will be in collaboration with L2s to explore the possibilities of governance-based approaches to deal with the effects of EIP-4844.\n\nFor better readability we have outlined the more extensive application details on the following Notion page: https://ephema.notion.site/UAGP-Application-049e3ef3ed8c4da68316181ce00cd563", "hidden": false, "question": "Application detail", "questionId": 1}, {"type": "number", "answer": "186000", "hidden": true, "question": "Amount requested (in $)", "questionId": 2}, {"type": "dropdown", "answer": "ARB", "hidden": true, "question": "Payout token", "questionId": 3}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "The EIP-4844 is the biggest update to the Ethereum mainnet in years. It will dramatically increase the scalability of the Ethereum ecosystem. For Arbitrum being Ethereum-based and for Uniswap heavily depending on the Ethereum ecosystem we see this as a major change on an infrastructure-level. We believe it is vital for Uniswap and Arbitrum to be well prepared for the upcoming changes to adapt them and utilize their full potential. This will also ensure they don\u2019t fall behind compared to other L2 chains. To ensure this, we see our research outlined above as a vital contribution. Given the research-heavy nature of the planned project it needs to pre-financed. However, we believe it can be a valuable contribution to the further development of Uniswap and Arbitrum. To conduct the project optimally we deem a multidisciplinary team of experts from different areas necessary for a planned project period of four months. We have gathered the team and it is motivated to work on the project, only the financing is the missing piece of the puzzle. The detailed costs are outlined in the following.", "hidden": true, "question": "How do you account for this fund request?", "questionId": 4}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "To conduct the project costs occur. Our project costs are largely driven by personnel costs. The team is in place and motivated to start, however living expenses have to be covered. In more detail the costs consist of:\n\nFor personnel expenses we have budgeted a total of $172,800 including ancillary wage costs. This consists of a total team size of 5.5 FTE (full time equivalent) for a project period of four months. This includes in detail: 1.0 FTE Project Lead ($7,500/m), 1.0 FTE Research Lead ($7,500/m), 2.0 FTE Senior Software/Blockchain Engineers ($6,000/m per FTE) and 1.5 FTE Research Specialists ($6,000/m). \n\nFurther, the project requires technical infrastructure costs of $6,400 for the four months period. This includes $3,200 for servers and hosting, $2,400 for technical tooling and an estimate of $800 for domains. \n\nAdditionally, for some team members office space is necessary to allow for efficient work and collaboration. To keep these expenses at a minimum, when feasible team members will work from home. However, we estimate to have a need of four office seats at an estimated full cost of $300 per month. This totals to $4,800. Additionally, we estimate that miscellaneous costs of $500 per month will occur. \n\nIn total this adds up to a total cost of $186,000 for the project.\n", "hidden": false, "question": "How will you use these funds? Please make a detailed plan for expenditures.", "questionId": 5}, {"type": "dropdown", "answer": "Open Contribution", "hidden": false, "question": "Which RFP is this project covering? ", "questionId": 6}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Uniswap aims to create a more open and fair ecosystem for automated trading on decentralized infrastructure. This has been an amazing step forward from monopolizing, intransparent CEXes. However, it brought forward a whole additional set of problems based on the challenges of distributed systems. The latency of block times, transaction bottlenecks and more specifically the economic inefficiencies of LVR and impermanent loss have given birth to issues of unattractive profit margins (or even losses) for LPs and unfair trading for retail users. This is based on sandwiching (frontrunning and backrunning) and large CEX-DEX arbitrage trading dominated by searchers. There\u2019s a range of approaches to solve these problems close to the application layer e.g. new McAMM (MEV capturing AMM) or LVR-minimizing Uni v4 hooks, but in the end the application layer will always be constrained by block times and available TX data through-put. Uniswap v4 and UniswapX introduce novel possibilities with hooks and intent/filler models but there\u2019s further, deeper improvements which can and will happen. The Uniswap v3 deployment on Arbitrum has surpassed $500 million daily volume and it\u2019s clear that L2/rollups will be the future for more economic trading in the ecosystem. This is where the novel upgrades with blobspace come into play. With the upgrade to EIP-4844 and if efficient allocation of blobspace is achieved, this will yield the potential to function as an accelerator for decentralized trading with more efficiency, reduced costs, faster finality and a flattened price curve. Uniswap is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this. Given the constant improvements in Uniswap v4, it can directly tackle the possibilities with blobspace and quickly launch on L2s including hooks to take advantage of fast preconfirmations with blobs to be used with LVR minimizing solutions in the making, such as Sorella. In addition, UniswapX can allow fillers to better compete with lower latency of tx settling and add the time component to further improve overall trading efficiency. With the introduction of hooks and fillers the diversity of custom trading solutions adapted to high tx throughput will drastically increase. Uniswap will be in a unique position to take advantage of such with its current research edge and innovation speed, but requires the necessary fundamentals, knowledge and data. The prototypes and data-transparency with this proposal will enable Uniswap to further cement its positioning as the leading DEX provider and infrastructure with the emerging L2/rollup world advancement due to blobspace, EIP-4844 and TX throughput scaling with DA (Data Availability) layer improvements.", "hidden": false, "question": "How do you think this project fits in with Uniswap?", "questionId": 7}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "For Arbitrum as one of the major optimistic L2s on Ethereum efficient usage of blobspace will be key in the future. With the implementation of EIP-4844 new formats of data allocation, aggregation with calldata from other L2s and potentially new pricing mechanics need to be implemented.\nThis will help Arbitrum with lower execution fees that will in turn for lower fees for users and higher transaction volume. Given that with Arbitrum Nova already first steps have been made into that direction, Arbitrum will be well positioned to utilize this fully. Further, efficient blob merging solutions will increase the time to finality for end-users, since the data can be more efficiently and hence faster be included in the blobs. This will significantly impact the adoption and usability of the whole Arbitrum ecosystem to continue its lead as L2 frontrunner.", "hidden": false, "question": "What benefits will this project bring to Uniswap in the Arbitrum ecosystem?", "questionId": 8}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "No security audit has been done so far since it is not yet necessary. It will be done in later stages before any deployments critical for user funds based on the setup of the infrastructure. The team has extensive experience and knowledge in the auditing space. The core team has gone through four audits in previous projects (Code4rena, Quantstamp, 2x Spearbit) and clear preference to go with the high quality of Spearbit for any future audits.", "hidden": true, "question": "Has this project undergone a security audit? If not, are you planning to undergo it?", "questionId": 9}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Not yet, but planning to open source the technical parts once finalized. ", "hidden": false, "question": "Is this project open-source? (If yes, share the repository link).", "questionId": 10}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "For general tooling we work with:\n- Google - General Workspace, Email\n- Notion - Note taking, knowledge sharing & task management\n- Discord - Communication\n- Miro - Visual brainstorming and note taking\n- Mendeley - Literature management\n\nFor development we work with:\n- Fullstack Web Dev: TypeScript, Node.js, React, Next.js, Tailwind, etc.\n- Blockchain Dev: Solidity, Foundry, ether.js, etc.\n- GitHub - Code Repositories\n- Namecheap - Domains\n- Netlify - Website\n- Cloudflare - DNS, Security\n- Gitbook - Documentation\n", "hidden": true, "question": "What is the workflow chosen for this project? (You can mention development practices, tools, programming languages, etc.)", "questionId": 11}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Please see the link to our current homepage: ephema.io.  This is not a demo yet, just a brief overview of what we are doing.", "hidden": true, "question": "Does this project have a demo? If yes, share a public link.", "questionId": 12}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Main audience for the project will be the blobspace ecosystem: L2 chains: as consumers of blobspace the solution will help for a more efficient allocation of blobspace. Developer Community: The developer community can profit from the envisioned dashboard and the research findings that we plan to publish. Proposers: Block producers will benefit from a more efficient process for blobspace allocation with higher fees and income. Trader: As liquidity providers, the derivatives market can be interesting for traders as well. DEXes: DEXes will benefit from the implementation of EIP-4844 and from the more efficient allocation of blobspace. End Users: End users will benefit from cheaper transaction costs and faster finality.  We plan to launch the data dashboard in early Q1/2024. For the blob merging prototype we are currently on a timeline to launch it as well in Q1/2024. For the gas price futures market we plan for a launch in Q2/2024.", "hidden": true, "question": "What is the target audience for this project? (Mention if there is a market launch plan).", "questionId": 13}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Christian Haug - Project & Research Lead\nPascal Stichler - Project & Research Lead\nMarc Nitzsche - Senior Fullstack Engineer\nGabriel Fior - Senior Blockchain Engineer\nNicolas De Luz - Blockchain Engineer\nJason Chaskin - Researcher\n\n\nAdvisors:\nAkaki Mamageishvili - Chief Researcher at Offchain Labs (Arbitrum)\nConor McMenamin - Senior Researcher at Nethermind (Ethereum, PBS, based rollups)\nKydo - Protocol Designer at Eigenlayer (DA layer, scaling, AVS)\n", "hidden": false, "question": "Who are the members of the team?", "questionId": 14}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Christian Haug - Project & Research Lead: https://twitter.com/cshg0x\nChris successfully enabled LI.FI to become one of the most prevalent cross-chain projects in the crypto space together with the co-founders Max and Philipp. During his time there LI.FI\u2019s volume grew to over $2.1 billion within 1.5 years and he was key to closing the $17.5M Series A in 2023.\nBefore that he was VP Engineering at the bootstrapped startup flowkey, growing it into a very profitable company (8-digit ARR) with >10 million users over 6 years. He built the initial product as one of the first engineers, grew the engineering team and built a sophisticated cross-platform UI layer for GPU-based rendering of iOS code on Android, which is still in production today: https://github.com/flowkey/UIKit-cross-platform/. He completed his B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) within 5 semesters and his M.Sc. at London School of Economics and Duke University with distinction (740 GMAT, top 3% worldwide).\nIn the project he will use his extensive knowledge and network in the crypto ecosystem and experience in growing successful tech products to steer the project and research forward.\n\n\nPascal Stichler - Project & Research Lead: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalstichler/\nPascal has recently successfully co-founded CARL (carlfinance.com) and over the last seven years has driven it to be the leading SME M&A transaction platform in the DACH region. They have raised \u20ac6mn+ in Venture Capital funding from leading European fintech investors such as Project A, Scope Hanson, Saarbr\u00fccker21 etc. Trusted by partners such as Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and UniCredit, CARL has executed 50+ M&A deals with a team of more than 40 professionals. Leading the development, product and marketing team he gained significant insights on how to design high-value marketplaces. He is now on the Advisory Board of CARL. Previous work experience includes McKinsey and Freudenberg. He holds a M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He wrote his master thesis on combining economics research with data science to use hidden correlations to identify stock market inefficiencies. During his time at KIT he worked at the Research Center for Information Technology (FZI) applying data science to solve the knapsack problem. He is a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree.\nIn the project he will use his experience in building successful companies and building multi-sided marketplaces to steer the project and research.\n\n\nMarc Nitzsche - Senior Fullstack Engineer: https://www.marcnitzsche.de/\nMarc is an experienced senior software engineer who's been building impressive software products for more than seven years. He\u2019s particularly good at building full-stack applications with beautiful and seamless UI/UX, while ensuring outstanding performance both in the front- and backend. He studied Computer Science and Music in parallel while working as a senior software engineer at flowkey, leading various efforts around implementing and maintaining the main API and spearheading several projects, before quitting to found his own business and pursue his own projects. He has a deep passion for the complex and beautiful, for science, and learning (languages in particular).\nIn the project he will be responsible for setting up the development infrastructure and especially driving the blob merging prototype forward.\n\n\nGabriel Fior - Senior Blockchain Engineer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielfior/\nGabriel is a deeply technical founder and software engineer with a background in studying Physics in Brazil and Germany and Software Engineering at the University of Oxford. He has worked in Data Science since 2016 and went deep into crypto as a founder and on the blockchain engineering side (Solidity, Foundry, ether.js, etc.).\nIn the project he will be responsible for overseeing and building the smart contracts, especially for the blob merging prototype.\n\n\nNicolas De Luz - Blockchain Engineer: https://twitter.com/nicolasdeluz\nNicolas has been actively involved in the crypto space as an engineer since 2017. He\u2019s done a lot of Solidity development using modern tooling such as Foundry and Hardhat, focusing on diverse areas including staking, DeFi, enhancing UX with AA, and bolstering the resilience of NFTs. He graduated with a Computer Science degree in France.\nIn the project he will be responsible for building smart contracts, especially for the gas prices futures marketplace.\n\n\nJason Chaskin - Researcher: https://paragraph.xyz/@chaskinonchain\nJason is an active researcher in the crypto space with a background in investment banking and solidity development / technical research. He has been publishing a good amount of his in-depth on PBS (proposer-builder separation), EIP-4337 (account abstraction), rollups, EAS and proto-danksharding, etc. on his paragraph account.\nIn the project he will be responsible for steering the research forward in several directions and support publishing our work.\n", "hidden": true, "question": "Describe team members' experience and current roles for this project.", "questionId": 15}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "We will split the main milestones for the project into the following four main deliverables.\n\n1. Uniswap & Arbitrum TX and mempool Data Dashboard: \n\nWe plan to implement a real-time data transparency dashboard and make it publicly available. The dashboard will include the information about transactions on Uniswap and Arbitrum, their inclusion into blocks (prospectively blobs). This will give first predictions of future blobspace utilization over time. Further other L2s / rollups can be added for more comparative data.\n\n2. Blob Merging Protocol Prototype:\n\nWe will develop a prototype for a blob merging solution. The solution will include the functionality outlined above with a specific focus on solving the NP-hard space allocation problem and implementing a pareto-efficient pricing mechanism. It will allow different consumers of blobspace to combine their requests and have them stored in the blobspace. This prototype will be open sourced and publicly available.\n\n3. Gas Prices Discovery Mechanism Prototype:\n\nBased on the previously conducted research we will implement a prototype demonstrating that it is feasible to implement an economic gas prices discovery mechanism, most likely a futures / derivatives market for block / blobspace. The v1 will include the functionality documented above. We will build the prototype in a way that it is scalable towards a fully fledged solution in the future.\n\n4. Blog post / Whitepaper on general findings and blobspace market predictions:\n\nWe will publish the blog post / white paper on our combined research findings on how the blobspace can be best utilized. This will include especially how the blobspace can be most efficiently allocated and how the secondary pricing can be done and implemented. We will include the findings of our implementations of the prototypes including a thorough analysis of its strengths and weaknesses emphasizing on learnings for the future. We aim to as well answer the working hypotheses outlined above.", "hidden": false, "question": "What are the Project Milestones? (Be very specific and write a roadmap highlighting critical deliverables of the project; mention how you will ensure to supervise and track them).", "questionId": 16}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "To reach the milestones we plan to parallelize the research and implementation phase to already benefit from first findings in the implementation that reflect back to the research. As common in exploratory research we will work with an hypothesis driven approach to quickly gain quantifiable results.\n\nWe have already done extensive knowledge gathering, information aggregation and laid out the technical basis for prototypes. Following our philosophy of transparency we have shared the most relevant resources online under ephema.io. Furthermore we built-up the relationships with the most knowledgeable researchers and developers in the space. We have further defined the necessary research hypothesis that we aim to verify or falsify. This will be a continued process as we work in an adaptive approach given the fast-paced nature of the field and the high level of uncertainty.\n\nThe defined research hypothesis will be the foundation for the data dashboard of milestone 1. Defining the key elements of the data dashboard will be the responsibility of the research lead, as it will be the foundation for the future research and implementations. \n\nThe prototype for the blob merging is currently in development. We have one research scientist giving input on the theoretical side and a software engineer as well as a protocol engineer are working on the implementation. \n\nThe gas price futures marketplace is the main responsibility of the second protocol engineer together with a part-time research advisor. To ensure a timely delivery the team will receive support from the other protocol engineer after the finalization of the first version of the blob merging protocol as well as from the research lead.\n\nThe blog post / whitepaper on general findings, blobspace market predictions and price discovery will be a joint effort by the research team under the guidance of the research lead. It will include the findings from the different research areas as well as the implementations of the two prototypes and their ongoing development.\n\nFor software development, we will start with a minimum viable product (MVP), building a prototype and then continuously expanding on it. Our objective is learning as much as possible in as little time as possible about the problem and its implementation (lean method). The team has years of experience working with this process and it has proven to be most productive. For task management, the team will work with the agile methodology using Notion and GitHub as the main tools to avoid further system costs. \n\nTo ensure a strong focus on the project goals we have set-up internally a bi-weekly review meeting in which progress towards the addressed project goals is aligned and potential hurdles and bottlenecks are addressed in advance. Further, the bi-weekly meeting includes a team retrospective discussing the highlights and lowlights of the last two weeks. This ensures that we continuously optimize the working processes within the team. Overall, this approach has been proven successful for the team in the past to successfully complete larger and complex development projects.", "hidden": false, "question": "How do you plan to reach these milestones? (Explain the project feasibility).", "questionId": 17}, {"type": "multiple-choice", "answer": "No", "hidden": true, "question": "Has this project already been funded by other Grant Programs?", "questionId": 18}, {"type": "checkbox", "answer": ["I confirm."], "hidden": true, "question": "I confirm that I have read the Code of Conduct and that I have filled out this form correctly and truthfully.", "questionId": 19}, {"type": "checkbox", "answer": ["I understand."], "hidden": true, "question": "I understand that I will be required to provide KYC information by the UAGP team in case my application is accepted.", "questionId": 20}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "Previous involvement with Uniswap Gov based on MMA (Multi-Message Aggregation) development topics at LI.FI.", "hidden": true, "question": "How did you find out about UAGP?", "questionId": 21}, {"type": "paragraph", "answer": "Due partial availability during Christmas seasons iff a team call is to be scheduled it would be ideal if it can be done before the 18th of December / until 15th of December.", "hidden": true, "question": "Additional information", "questionId": 22}, {"type": "short-answer", "answer": "It would be great if we can have further access to the technical people working on implementing the blobspace changes within the Arbitrum and Uniswap ecosystem.", "hidden": true, "question": "Special requests", "questionId": 23}], "project": {"id": "42161:0x73AB205af1476Dc22104A6B8b3d4c273B58C6E27:393", "title": "ephema", "logoImg": "bafkreidlkucvero5wvs7v7vrhx7qkwffjenvqtlcxmj2c5dl5zb3i4okgy", "metaPtr": {"pointer": "bafkreiawamxd5lqpdjkpqallwzizu6qp2bao2ql7elj3ganyvd5wafryci", "protocol": "1"}, "website": "https://www.ephema.io/", "createdAt": 1702324802209, "credentials": {}, "description": "ephema is a research and development organization exploring the opportunities arising due to the introduction of blobspace in the Ethereum ecosystem with EIP-4844. \n\nOur focus is on developing solutions to address a variety of technical and economic challenges. Among these are:\n- protocol design approaches to manage blob price volatility\n- enabling blob merging with calldata aggregation from multiple L2s\n- optimizing data allocation between blob and block space for different rollups\n- analyzing the impact of blobspace on the higher-level DEX and AMM settlement layer\n- staying on top of emerging developments in the MEV landscape\n\nWe are positioning us as unique knowledge leader for the advancement of the Ethereum ecosystem, scalability and rollup/L2 landscape.", "lastUpdated": 0}, "recipient": "0xB1624722A895Cd06Ea7782f4B02f114a000fa657"}}