The Ethereum Foundation awards Nimbus with another $650k to continue development on Ethereum 2.0

The Ethereum Foundation awarded Ethereum infrastructure project Nimbus with a $650,000 grant to continues its work on a client implementation for Ethereum 2.0. The Nimbus team has now received $1.65 million in grants to date since Oct. 2018 thanks to previous donations made by the Ethereum Foundations as well as Protocol Labs, the creators of Filecoin. Nimbus, a project first founded by The Status Network in 2018, aims to help further scale Ethereum by designing a client that can operate on smaller devices like mobile phones. The project intends to use the grant to expand its development team and broaden the scope of its research as Nimbus prepares to launch a public multi-client Ethereum 2.0 testnet.

Why it matters:

• One of Ethereum’s growing problems is state growth. The storage requirements to run a full node on Ethereum increase alongside the number of smart contracts and transactions added to the network, which limits the breadth of possible node operators. Reducing the requirements for node operators makes running an Ethereum node more accessible and can preserve the network’s level of decentralization in the long run.
• The launch of the Beacon Chain, the first phase of the Ethereum 2.0 rollout, is making headway. Nimbus’ ETH 2.0 testnet will be the second such live testnet, the other being Prysmatic Lab’s Sapphire. While the initial projects for ETH 2.0's release have since passed, these recent developments (and insider sentiment) suggest the Beacon Chain could arrive sometime in Q2 this year.