Coindesk | Nikhilesh De | Jan 2, 2018

The non-profit that oversees development of ethereum has officially unveiled two subsidy programs that will support research on how to grow the number of transactions its blockchain can process.

In a blog post published Tuesday, ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin described how the network is beginning to reach 1 million transactions per day. In his view, scaling the network is "the single most important key technical challenge" that developers need to work on before blockchain applications can be widely used.

See: 

• Ethereum will match Visa in scale in a ‘couple of years’ says founder

• Ethereum’s Double-Edged Sword: Will a Rising Price Hurt Users?

• Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio says crypto wallets are the new browsers

• Goodbye Ethereum: Kik Plans to Move Its ICO Tokens to Stellar

As such, the subsidy programs are being launched to incentivize developers to implement two proposed solutions for scaling: sharding and layer-two protocols that would be built on top of the blockchain today.

Sharding is a process that requires only a few nodes on the blockchain to verify a transaction, instead of having every node do so. Currently, ether's developers are finishing the specifications for their sharding protocol, and are looking for teams to build implementations and launch them on ethereum’s testnet.

Layer-two protocols, on the other hand, take a different approach by taking transactions off the main ethereum blockchain. The network would allow transactions to move on and off the blockchain in order to be processed, but would not be used to actually process the transactions.

According to the blog post, the subsidies for each program will range from $50,000 to $1 million and are intended to cover development costs. For both solutions, successful teams will also have a hand in implementing the protocols on ethereum’s mainnet as a next phase.

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The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a national non-profit actively engaged with social and investment crowdfunding, alternative finance, fintech, peer-to-peer (P2P), initial coin offerings (ICO), and online investing stakeholders across the country. NCFA Canada provides education, research, industry stewardship, networking opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, academia and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and online financing industry in Canada.  For more information, please visit:  ncfacanada.org