Driving Ethereum Security R&D Forward

Status has applied for the initial batch of Panvala Token (PAN) grants. This new grant fund creates a governed approach to security R&D and enables focused work without detracting from whitepaper deliverables. Panvala is a decentralized system that organizes people who want to make Ethereum safer.

We at Status take security seriously. Not just for us, but also for all the things we interact with and rely upon. In this past year, Ethereum has seen a drastic increase in attention to security throughout the ecosystem. This is fantastic as this helps bring more reliable and secure systems into production.

In an attempt to keep this trend moving forward, we have submitted an application for the initial batch of Panvala token, PAN, to help drive the continued security research and development. It behooves us to clarify our views and reasoning up front:

• PANVALA IS
  • A way for project teams to influence the security efforts on behalf of the ecosystem.
  • A way to enable us to govern the efforts on security outside of the immediate scope of the status whitepaper
• PANVALA IS NOT
  • A method of funding Status development. Anything that PAN will be used for is outside of the immediate scope of the Status whitepaper.
  • A token sale for profit. We will use all tokens to fund security R&D

The previous methodology of funding this kind of work was through large funding committees that are donated to by various previously successful entities. For instance, we at Status (along with other previously successful projects) have donated to the Ethereum Community Fund (ECF) to help bolster projects that need to be done but don’t fall directly under our goals as described by the whitepaper. The success of those grants gives us intrinsic value, similar to the saying “a rising tide raises all ships.”

While this is great for the community, the process has room for improvements. For one, the decision on where money flows is relegated to a relatively small group of individuals. Also, the lifecycle of funds has no feedback loop. Once a project is funded, its success does not bolster the next rounds of funding.

Panvala is an experiment to bolt-on token incentives around the existing community funding infrastructure to improve it in a myriad of ways: governance and decision making, continual influence based in previous success, signaling around what we think should be prioritized, among more.

If our application is approved, we plan to use these tokens to further incentivize development in what we think is important but is outside our whitepaper scope of development. The security of the Ethereum and broader ecosystems is paramount to our success, and we think participating in projects that try and push it forward in an equitable and distributed way is worthwhile.

For more information, join the status public channel #status-security