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0xPARC: Program for Applied Research in Cryptography

We're excited to announce the 0xPARC Foundation.

0xPARC is a new organization dedicated to supporting decentralized application R&D. We aim to foster a budding community of researchers, developers, thinkers, and builders at the frontiers of decentralized application technology. You can think of the 0xPARC community as a "skunk works" for the Ethereum and decentralized technology ecosystems.

Background

We've spent the last two years working on experimental ZK applications, open-source crypto-native games, and educational initiatives. These include Dark Forest, a decentralized and crypto-native MMO game built on Ethereum and xDAI which has spawned a rich third-party developer ecosystem, and more recently a new strategy game implementing even more complex ZK- and interoperability-based game mechanics. Through grants to initiatives like Project Sophon and support for projects like ZK-ML and EthDataMarketplace, we've seeded work on crypto DX and experimental dapp primitives. And through ETHUniversity and support for communities like Reboot, we're cultivating a community of forward-thinking decentralized technology developers, thinkers, and writers.

All of these teams have helped to bootstrap a "proto-ecosystem" of community-supported and open-source projects that are exploring the frontiers of decentralized application development. The time is ripe to hit the gas pedal on next-generation application development, and to push the boundaries of what is possible to build on Ethereum and decentralized platforms. To do this, we've created the 0xPARC Foundation.

The 0xPARC Foundation

"A skunkworks project is a project developed by a relatively small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation."

The 0xPARC Foundation's mandate is to promote decentralized application R&D.

0xPARC has an intended lifespan of about two years. Our explicit goal is to use 0xPARC's resources during this period to accelerate development of an ecosystem of next-generation decentralized applications; after funds are fully used, 0xPARC will fold unless its charter is renewed by stakeholders. As a corollary, it is also an explicit goal for projects that 0xPARC funds and supports to be eventually spin out as independent entities, if they turn out to be viable. This creates urgency for projects to become self-sufficient and incentivizes the ecosystem we bootstrap to gradually decentralize.

0xPARC is intended to play a "support" role in this budding community. We provide grant funding for new projects, bring key individuals and teams together, and promote open ecosystem values, passing these values forwards to the initiatives that we support. Our hope is to foster a thriving and independent ecosystem of research projects, open-source infrastructure and tools, educational programs, and, perhaps even further into the future, DAOs and companies. 0xPARC is funded by grants and donations from values-aligned organizations, ensuring that it is maximally free to pursue its stated purpose.

What 0xPARC Supports

Our mandate can be broken down into three primary components: R&D, shared infrastructure, and education and community-building.

"R&D" includes explorations into novel cryptographic constructions for decentralized apps: for example, using new techniques in zero-knowledge cryptography to build MMO games, data markets, identity/reputation systems, and more. "Shared infrastructure" means open-source work on the developer tools, packages, and other public goods that make it possible to build these decentralized applications. "Education and community-building" means programs and events that activate new developers, writers, thinkers, and builders, and which bring contributors from different parts of the ecosystem together to share knowledge.

0xPARC supports this work through contracts and grant-giving. Here are a few of of the projects we're working on or are supporting at the outset:

  • Crypto-native games
    • Dark Forest: an open-source, "infinitely hackable" blockchain MMORTS, built with zkSNARKs.
    • New unnamed ZK game: a fully on-chain strategy game, which uses zkSNARKs for procedural world generation.
  • ZK Moonshots
  • DevEx
    • Projects and teams like Project Sophon, which has built developer tools for ZK applications and crypto-native games; and circom-dsl, a higher-level ZK circuit language.
  • Educational Projects
    • Educational programs for students like ETHWinter, ETHSummer, and ETHUniversity, which aim to bring talented undergraduate developers into the space.
    • Grants to Reboot, a publication and community of technologists and writers.

Funding and Acknowledgements

The 0xPARC Foundation is entirely funded by donations and grants. We're grateful for donations and donation commitments from an initial set of values-aligned organizations, which make our 2022 operations and grant-giving programs possible. Major donors include:

The Dark Forest team in particular would also like to express gratitude to everyone who has supported Dark Forest and related projects over the past two years. Dark Forest has received additional smaller grants and donations from sources including the Mozilla Builders program, zeuth.eth (the entity which manages official Three-Body Trilogy IP and collaborations!), and thousands of community and player donations via Gitcoin grants. The Dark Forest team is donating the majority of these funds to 0xPARC to support 0xPARC's initial operations as a one-time gift.

The 0xPARC Foundation is incorporated as a US-based PBC. To get in touch, contact hello@0xPARC.org.