As a measure in view of the urgent need to increase the scalability of the Ethereum platform, Vitalik Buterin announced the creation of two subsidy programs to train independent teams to join the research and development projects for solutions to this problem that afflicts various blockchain projects.

Buterin explained in an official publication that the programs are specifically aimed at developing scalability proposals in the base layer of the sharding or fragmentation blockchain (less nodes to verify transactions) and second layer solutions, considering that both can be complementary to each other.

Ethereum's young founder added that the Foundation will award from $50,000 to $1,000,000 (and even pointed out the possibility that it could be more than that) to community groups involved (both in the testing network and the core network) in developing protocols to increase Ethereum's scalability. Developers, businesses, university groups and academics are invited to participate.

Buterin said that the amount of subsidies will vary depending on the quality of the equipment, the scope of the proposal submitted and the progress of the project. There was a possibility that the highly successful projects would receive more than a million dollars. The money will be given to cover part of the expenses associated with the proposals but not as a form of profit, being the greatest reward to be able to work together with the main researchers of Ethereum in the creation of version 2.0.

He explained that sharding is a type of scalability solution to be applied in the base layer of the blockchain platform, where less nodes are required to verify transactions. This type of solution is based on the fact that if each node stores and processes all transactions, this can limit scalability and raises the possibility that operations may be verified by a small group of nodes, sufficient to guarantee security and at the same time be only a few to process more transactions in parallel.

With regard to second layer strategies, such as Raiden, Plasma and state channels, with which transactions can be sent out of the blockchain, Buterin explained that they will give the opportunity to present new proposals and that they will have priority with those projects that otherwise could not be financially sustained, which are also totally open source and generate a common good for the ecosystem.

As regards details of the subsidies, Buterin noted the following:

"Both programs are at a very early stage, and grants will initially be decided at the discretion of Ethereum's central leadership. Details, including the terms, conditions and schedules under which payments will be made may change as a result of our initial experience with program participants, and? we expect the program to solidify and expand throughout the year.

Please also note that while the payments for these collaborative programs are much higher than those we have made with our previous grant programs, these payments have a much higher expectation of focus and quality. We are targeting qualified teams with direct experience in Ethereum or blockchain space, or with experience in the broader fields of mechanism design, distributed systems or cryptography, as well as software engineering."

The issue of scalability has been discussed on numerous occasions by Buterin, who has also communicated the Ethereum roadmap, a project with which he has demonstrated his commitment beyond the money he can mobilize. In fact, he expressed his disagreement with some events and behaviours of the cryptocommunity and threatened to withdraw from the project if the latter does not reconsider, since they are giving more importance to economic gains than to the benefits that technology can give society.