The blockchain startup Parity Technologies has received a grant of $5 million from the Ethereum Foundation. The grant was issued to support Parity Technologies' work on creating the next iteration of the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain network. On January 7 the organization announced that the funding is a grant for the development of "scalability, usability and security." In particular, it is aimed at accelerating work on the Casper upgrade – the modernization of the Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol – and a scaling solution called sharding, as well as light clients, tools for application development, auditing and infrastructure improvement. The foundation states that the grant will be provided in several stages and that the first part has already been issued. The remaining parts will be provided as certain milestones are reached. These include the completion of eWasm compatibility work, the release of a light wallet for the main network and the completion of the first two stages of sharding work.

Parity is an infrastructure blockchain startup founded by the former head of security at the Ethereum Foundation, Jutta Steiner. It is known for its Ethereum software client Parity Ethereum, which, as the company claims, is the "fastest and most modern" on the market. The startup has also developed several tools, for example Substrate – a service that allows users to create customizable blockchains for decentralized applications.

In its statement the Ethereum Foundation noted that it strives to fund teams and individuals building shared infrastructure around the network. Back in October the foundation issued almost $3 million to a number of startups and blockchain developers. "We were glad to see that our ecosystem is coming together and supporting a technological culture and the alignment of values, and we strive to use our resources to fulfill this mission. We do this through staged grants for large and small projects – their funding is commensurate with the potential impact of their work," the foundation stated. It is worth noting that at the end of December Vitalik Buterin also donated 1,000 ETH (about $300,000) to each of three blockchain startups working on the creation of Ethereum 2.0.