Kraken, Synthetix etc. donate $1.5M to fund Ethereum 2.0

Ethereum and its ecosystem have been seeing groundbreaking developments and innovations of late. In fact, many DeFi projects built on Ethereum have skyrocketed over the past year.

In what is a recent development, an announcement shared by the Ethereum Foundation revealed that six crypto-companies have donated $250,000 each. These donations will be used to aid efforts to upgrade the Ethereum blockchain.

That makes a total of $1.5 million in contributions. Further, as per the announcement,

“Ethereum’s diverse client ecosystem is at the foundation of all that we’re building together. This includes both execution-layer and consensus-layer clients, both of which are essential parts of Ethereum’s post-merger future.”

The Ethereum Foundation chose 5 of its client teams to receive the donations. Besu, Erigon, Geth, Nethermind, and Nimbus will provide “critical infrastructure for the network” post the ETH 1.0 and ETH 2.0 merge. However, the Foundation also assured the community that the additional grants will not affect its ongoing financial support efforts.

Meanwhile, the donations will strengthen and further innovations taking place on Ethereum. They will supplement the funding provided by the foundation earlier this year to support Ethereum’s execution layer teams.

According to Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi,

“… collaborative efforts and support are the most sustainable way to benefit Ethereum in the long-term. This joint effort to support teams and builders that maintain a diverse set of Ethereum clients is not only impactful but sets a great example.”

In addition to this, Kraken CEO and Co-founder Jesse Powell stated,

“We believe it’s our responsibility to give back to the open-source innovators who are building the next generation of cryptocurrency. That’s why we’re excited to work with the Ethereum Foundation to ensure developers receive funding from an increasingly diverse range of stakeholders.”

Execution layer developers played a crucial role in the development of Ethereum when the network incorporated its London hard fork. As stated in the blog, “Since January 2020, the Ethereum Foundation has spent more than $10M on execution-layer client R&D. Our steadfast support will continue as these teams adapt and scale along with the broader community…we believe it is healthy for Ethereum clients to receive funding and support from a broader range of community stakeholders…”