gm folks <3
Epoch 8 ran from April 11 to July 24 2025. The theme was Design for Ethereum. Working together we managed to distribute a whopping 460 ETH (~$1.7M) to the Octant community!
Epoch 8 was about funding projects making Ethereum stronger. But we wanted to take it a step further. Instead of just funding grants, we wanted our cohort to look swankier.
That's why we decided to run the Design for Ethereum contest! Besides helping Ethereum's unsung heroes get a more polished look, winners also got ETH prizes if their submission was chosen.
What's was challenge? 🤔The challenge was to design a logo and brand guidelines for one (or more) of the projects below. Bonus points were given if you could share your why and reasoning behind your design decision!Who did we design for? 🤔
- DeFiScan
- Aestus Relay
- Open Source Observer (OSO)
- Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS)
- Act
- hevm
- Samba: A Portal Node What was the winning prize? 🤔4.33 ETH in total prizes.
Meet the Epoch 8 Cohort
- Act is a language and toolkit for formally verifying the behavior of EVM smart contracts.
- Aestus Relay is a neutral, non-censoring implementation of MEV-Boost, connecting Ethereum proof-of-stake validators and block builders via an auction.
- Blobscan is the first open-source blockchain explorer designed to navigate and visualize shard blob transactions introduced in EIP-4844.
- Blockscout is an open-source block explorer supporting Ethereum and the 1000s of EVM-based chains throughout the Ethereum universe.
- BuidlGuidl is a curated group of builders creating open-source tools and educational content primarily focused on Ethereum and EVM-compatible ecosystems.
- BundleBear is an opensource dataset and dashboard tracking the adoption of smart accounts in the Ethereum ecosystem.
- Circuitscan is a circuit verifier explorer which allows users to interact with applications directly if the frontend becomes unusable.
- Commit-Boost is a new validator sidecar designed to standardize and simplify the process for Ethereum L1 validators to opt into proposer commitments such as preconfirmation protocols.
- Dappnode is a Free Open Source Software project with the mission to make web3 infrastructure accessible to anyone through running validators and nodes.
- DeFiScan is a public good research framework and analytics dashboard that provides comprehensive, unbiased insights into the decentralization maturity of DeFi applications on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains.
- DefiLlama is the biggest and most comprehensive DeFi tracker.
- Ephemery Testnet - Client Implementation is a single network that rolls back to the genesis after a set period of time.
- Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) is an open-source public good infrastructure for making attestations onchain or offchain.
- Ethers.js is a simple, compact and complete JavaScript/TypeScriptlibrary for all your Ethereum needs.
- Fe is a statically typed language for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
- growthepie is a public goods data platform for the total Ethereum ecosystem, providing essential metrics, onchain data, and educational resources to empower developers and users in making informed decisions.
- hevm is an open-source, state-of-the-art EVM execution engine that uses a combination of symbolic and concrete execution to uncover bugs in smart contracts.
- Integrated Fuzzing for Ethereum CL & EL Networking will be an open-source tool which will plug straight into the three most-used clients, cover every known past network flaw, and aim to uncover at least five new high-severity bugs.
- L2BEAT is the leading transparency and research platform for Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions.
- Open Source Observer (OSO) is a free analytics platform designed to measure, track, and reward open source contributions.
- OrbitDB is a serverless, distributed, peer-to-peer database that uses IPFS as its data storage and Libp2p Pubsub.
- powdr provides state-of-the-art performance and security to zkVMs, enhancing them with compiler-based techniques including static analysis and formal verification.
- Protocol Guild is the leading independent funding organization for Ethereum core developers.
- Remix Project is a powerful, no-setup, Web3 development environment used globally as a platform for builders, educators, and researchers.
- Samba: A Portal Node in Java is a Java-based implementation of a Portal client for Ethereum following the Portal Network specifications.
- Shutter Network is building infrastructure for encrypted mempools in Ethereum, enabling information symmetry and protecting users from malicious MEV and real-time censorship.
- Solidity is a statically typed curly-braces programming language designed for developing smart contracts that run on Ethereum.
- Stablewatch is a data analytics platform focused on monitoring stablecoins within Ethereum and other ecosystems.
- Verifereum is an open-source project that brings mathematical rigour to Ethereum smart contract verification.
- Vyper is a contract-oriented, pythonic programming language that targets the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
