The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit that supports development across the Ethereum blockchain, distributed $32.6 million in grants in the first quarter of 2025. 

In an allocation update, the organization reported spending on various initiatives through its Ecosystem Support Program (ESP). 

Categories included community and educational grants, zero-knowledge and cryptography. Other allocations included execution layers, developer experience and tools, layer-2 networks and overall ecosystem growth and support. 

Ethereum Foundation focuses on education and community

Of the 101 grants awarded, 32 went to community and education-focused initiatives. Recipients included educational content creators, conference organizers, bootcamps and hackathons such as ETHPrague and ETHiopia.

Sixteen projects focused on improving the developer experience and tooling. Beneficiaries included projects focusing on creating software-development kits (SDKs), building analytics platforms and validator tooling. 

Several projects addressed Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) accessibility, ecosystem tools and language support libraries. 

In addition, 14 grants were awarded to projects in the cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) category. These projects focused on developing cryptographic techniques, building ZK-proof technology and researching security and post-quantum cryptography. 

Meanwhile, seven grant beneficiaries are focused on execution layer projects, while another seven are focused on the consensus layer. Nine grant beneficiaries were focused on protocol, general growth and support. 

An additional 13 grants fell under an “other” category, encompassing areas including decentralized finance, DApps, stablecoin infrastructure and business development.

Related: Vitalik Buterin outlines vision as Ethereum ecosystem addresses hit new high

Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade goes live on the mainnet

On May 7, Ethereum’s much-anticipated Pectra upgrade went live. The update went live on the mainnet at about 10:00 am UTC, starting on epoch 364032. The upgrade included three EIPs, which are EIP-7702, EIP-7251 and EIP-7691. 

The upgrade focuses on improving layer-2 scaling data storage, validator user experience improvements and smart account wallet user experience features. 

Since the upgrade, Ether (ETH) prices have recovered from a slump, reaching a 30-day high of $2,400 on May 9. At the time of writing, the crypto asset traded at $2,345. 

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