Ecosystem Support Program(ESP) 2022 Merge Data Challenge(Up to $30,000)

Published: 17 Oct 2022

The Merge is coming, providing a more secure and sustainable home for Ethereum—as well as more data, lots and lots of data. And the Ethereum community needs your help to make sense of it all.

• What new visualizations help provide insight into proof-of-stake Ethereum?
• How do the consensus layer and execution layer interact? Are there differences across client pairs in communication patterns, efficiency, etc? Are there good places to optimize?
• What, if anything, changed on the network at the point of The Merge—block propagation times, p2p connections, transaction mempool performance, etc?
• Did The Merge affect core Beacon Chain activity—attestation performance, blocks missed, sync committees?
• Did user activity noticeably change after the Merge? What about MEV?
• What new tools can you build to collect and analyze data in the post-Merge network?

Document your best Merge data insights in the most readable blog post possible—for prizes!

The Ethereum Foundation is running this challenge because there’s a lot to learn and discover from the Merge mainnet activity. Your findings will give the Ethereum community – from beginners to researchers and client developers – important insight into the Merge.

ESP Merge Data Challenge

Application Deadline	October 31, 2022
Funding Type	Partially Funded
Type	Entrepreneurs
Sponsor	Ecosystem Support Program(ESP)
Gender	Men and Women

Benefits of ESP Merge Data Challenge

• Up to USD $30,000.

Requirements for ESP Merge Data Challenge

• Open to Ethereans, data scientists, data engineers, data visualizers and developers.
• Blog post must be in English.
  • There are no length requirements.
• Blog posts must be public and original.
• Data analysis or visualization must concern Merge network data.
• Tools and scripts used (and created) must be free and open source and referenced in the blog post.

Selection Process

Surprise the organisers with your creativity! But here are some judging criteria considerations:

• Overall quality and clarity of data analysis or data visualization
• Quality of insights into the Merge, clients, and Ethereum in general
• Insights that lead to substantive changes/improvements in client implementations or specifications
• Analyses or visualizations that help a non-technical audience gain insight into the network
• Quality of contribution to the Ethereum tooling ecosystem (if applicable)

Application Deadline

October 31, 2022

How to Apply