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Applicant Guide

Purpose

The purpose of this acceleration program is to help enable the potential of those who recently started their journey in the world of ZKP/FHE/lookup/etc. Specifically, our goal is to:

  1. Lower the entry barrier for ZKP/FHE/lookup/etc research

    For many people, it is not clear how to get started with ZKP research, and we want this program to be a menu of options for those interested in going deeper. We aim for this program to encourage people in the community to take on the challenge of attaining a deeper understanding of ZKP/FHE/lookup/etc.

  2. Encourage domain expertise development

    Many people go through a ZKP/FHE/lookup/etc-focused course or program (e.g. zkPlayground or PSE Summer Contribution Program) and may not have the resources to continue their learning in a specific direction after the program ends.

    With this program, we would like to support them to continue building deeper knowledge and skills into more specific areas of research and eventually become a domain expert.

Application Life Cycle

lifecycle.png

The diagram above illustrates the general life cycle of a program application from the formation of an idea as an Open Task RFP all the way to the execution of an initial milestone. Some of these details are clarified further here:

  1. Idea Sourcing and Open Task RFP
    1. PSE research team member can add their ideas as issue
    2. Acceleration program coordinator will collect them to Open Task List RFP
  2. Applicant Selection
    1. Applicants will be solicited to evaluate the list of available Open Task RFP and submit their proposal along with relevant milestones as an issue.
    2. In the case where multiple applicants are interested in the same Open Task RFP, we shall consider one of the following options:
      1. Evaluate them at the same time (i.e. round-style with a deadline for submission).
      2. Evaluate them on a first-come first-serve basis.
      3. Other. We might have to consider these proposals on a case-by-case basis.
        1. If all the applicants meet the criteria, we might consider grant multiple applicants.
  3. Grant Liaison Matching
    1. Internally we maintain a grant liaison availability list and their domain expertise alongside their names. EcoDev will work with leadership and project leads to determine the appropriate candidate to be an evaluator.
  4. Milestone Completion and Funding
    1. Grantee will receive a small amount of funding after the completion of the first milestone.
    2. Following milestones will be awarded larger amounts.
    3. Stale issues will be closed by grant liaison or a bot.

Round Based Application

  • Our program operates on a round-based application system, focusing on specific open tasks for each round.
  • You can see a round label on each open task issue.

Operational Platform

For the operation of this program, we will primarily utilize a Github repository for managing documents and staging of the grant proposals, grantees, and their progress. Stakeholders involved can utilize Github issues and pull requests to comment and collaborate.