Grantee Roundup: April 2021 | Ethereum Foundation Blog

It’s always fun to hear about new grants as they’re awarded, but what happens after the announcement? In this series, we’ll check in on a couple of projects that are well underway – or already at the finish line. Read on to learn about some recent milestones and achievements by grantees!

Devfolio for Ethereum India Fellowship 2.0

Devfolio’s Ethereum India Fellowship 2.0 had two tracks, each targeting different groups for a rigorous 8 weeks of training and mentorship with the goal of onboarding talented developers into the Ethereum ecosystem.
Track 1 brought 20 talented Web2 developers with little or no experience with blockchain to:

• Learn building blocks for Ethereum development such as Solidity, Remix and Hardhat
• Explore a variety of use cases, from defi to DAOs, NFTs and decentralized storage
• Work on an Ethereum-based project of their choice

Track 2 targeted intermediate Web3 developers to focus more intensively on developing a project over the full 8 weeks. Projects ranged from novel L2 implentations to secure privacy infrastructure, with mentorship from industry veterans.

The EtherPunk online hackathon, which took place during the first half of the fellowship program, was a timely opportunity for fellows to submit their projects to the hackathon and connect with prominent developers for presentations and feedback sessions.

The fellows accomplished a lot both during and after the program – developers who started the program with little to no knowledge of Ethereum have already gone on to win thousands of dollars in hackathon prizes and land internships at leading companies in the ecosystem. You can see the fellows’ final project submissions here.

Keep up with ETHIndia on Twitter @ethindiaco, and watch the Devfolio blog for news about future events!

Web3 Labs for Web3j

Web3j is a JVM and Android integration library for Ethereum, created with the goal of making it easy for Java developers to work with Ethereum. Java is one of the most common languages used in enterprise settings, and JVM (Java Virtual Machine) is one of the most-used development platforms. Web3j, first released by Web3 Labs founder Conor Svensson in 2016 with the goal of supporting JVM developers, has been developed and maintained by Web3 Labs since 2017. Web3 Labs received a grant toward their continued work on Web3j, with recent work including:

• Updating the Web3j documentation
• Updating the Maven plugin
• Development on Solidity library dependency management
• Addition of smart contract migration support

The Web3 Labs team will continue to be the stewards of Web3j, with planned work including improvements to developer experience, eth2 client open API implementation, and making enhancements requested in a recent user survey as well as ongoing maintenance.

Follow Web3 Labs on Twitter @web3labs or contribute to Web3J on Github.

Are you working on something you think could change Ethereum for the better? Head to our grants page to learn more about what we look for in the projects we fund.