Detailed Plan
The Research DAO is a new and upcoming organization that plans to fund foundational research in the field of Blockchain Science, focusing on both theory and application. We are focused on high-impact, peer-reviewed research that is published in respected conferences and journals of our field, including specialized conferences of blockchain science (Financial Cryptography and the ACM Advances in Financial Technologies), security (ACM CCS and IEEE S&P), privacy (the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium), distributed computing (PODC and DISC) and cryptography (CRYPTO and EUROCRYPT).
Cardano has always been a research-first cryptocurrency, with all its partners putting research first. The innovations of Cardano are very strongly tied to its academic roots (the Ouroboros protocol, for instance), which continues to be its strength compared to other blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
Cardano has always been focused on diligence and getting things right, through the Research DAO, Cardano will reaffirm its commitment to open and transparent research. At the same time, any research funded by the Research DAO can be used to improve Cardano, as it will be open source and patent-free.
The subfields of focus that the Research DAO is funding – such as proof-of-stake consensus, on- and off-chain scalability, and DeFi – are all very relevant and much needed for the Cardano blockchain. A rigorous exploration of these topics would be of great benefit for Cardano. Lastly, all the researchers receiving funding through the Research DAO and Cardano as our funding partner will be encouraged to and likely will continue working towards improving the Cardano blockchain, implementing their papers and increasing the value of the ecosystem.
The Research DAO maintains addresses and holds funds in multiple blockchains (including Cardano) and receives funding from multiple partners. We envision Cardano, with its deep research roots and tradition, to become one of our funding partners.
All of our funding will be transparent and publicized on our website. Additionally, we require all research funded by the DAO to be published under an open license for both the papers and the code, making it reusable for the broader ecosystem.
Our research funding is focused on 13 specific subfields of blockchain science, which we see as the driving forces for future innovation: Bootstrapping, Interoperability, On- and off-chain scaling, Consensus (with a focus on Proof-of-Stake), Formal Verification, Decentralized Finance, Networking, Economics, Privacy, Usable Security, Community, and Transparency.
Our team of governors consists of 9 members from the academic and industry communities, including PhD candidates, post-docs and professors in the field in leading universities, institutions, open source projects, and companies worldwide, with representatives in Europe, US, and Asia. All of us have accumulated significant experience in conducting research, publishing, and reviewing papers in the field.
In the first stage of our operations, we will begin by funding travel grants to undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students who have been accepted to present their research papers in rigorously peer-reviewed conferences of the field. The first conference we will supply travel grants for is the Financial Cryptography 2022 conference.
At a later time, we will continue our operations by providing larger grants to support the development of new research in universities and other institutions. One of our areas of focus is to ensure that institutions that are conducting high-quality, rigorous research and institutions that are traditionally disadvantaged (such as underfunded institutions in developing countries) have an equal chance of participation and representation in the international research community.
We have already launched our website and published our first call for proposals. Within the first three months of our operation, our goal is to complete funding of the Financial Cryptography 2022 travel grants for students.
Within six months, we plan to supply grants and funding for other conferences, and to fund small-scale research projects directly. Within twelve months, we plan to establish a continuous stream of grants from our funding partners and members so as to ensure continuous operations and to set forth goals for large-scale research funding in collaboration with laboratories in universities and institutions.
For more information about our processes, please refer to our documentation at https://docs.researchdao.io/.
