To qualify for matching, donors must meet both criteria:
- KYC passport verification required. All donors must complete identity verification (passport or government-issued ID) on the Giveth platform before their donation can be matched.
- Donate to more than one project. Your donations are only eligible for quadratic matching if you contribute to three or more projects in this funding round — not just CypherTalk. Spread your support across several projects you believe in.
What is Quadratic Funding?
Quadratic funding (QF) is a democratic way to allocate matching funds to public goods. It amplifies small donations by matching them more generously than large ones — the more people who give, even tiny amounts, the higher the match.
Think of it as crowd-funded matching: a large matching pool is distributed not in proportion to total amount raised, but according to how many individual donors each project attracts. This means a $10 donation from 100 people can outweigh a single $1,000 donation — giving the community, not the whales, the deciding vote.
The math
QF mathematically favours broad support over large gifts. More donors = higher match multiplier, regardless of total amount raised.
Why it matters
It prevents big wallets from dominating funding decisions and lets small contributors have outsized influence in building public goods.
What is TheDAO Security Fund?
TheDAO Security Fund is a long-term endowment that reactivates over 75,000 ETH in unclaimed assets recovered from the original 2016 DAO hack. Staked ETH generates an estimated ~$8M per year in staking yield, distributed through community-driven rounds to security researchers, tooling developers, and rapid-response teams across the Ethereum ecosystem.
Managed by Giveth and curated by leading Ethereum security experts — including Vitalik Buterin, Taylor Monahan (MetaMask), Jordi Baylina (ZisK), and pcaversaccio (SEAL 911) — the fund represents a landmark effort to permanently fund Ethereum security infrastructure through quadratic funding, retroactive grants, and ranked-choice voting.
Projects in This Funding Round
To qualify for matching, donate to at least 3 projects. Here are all the projects in this round:
Visit the full round on Giveth to see all participating projects — including CypherTalk.
Support Our Friends & Partner Projects
CypherTalk is part of a broader Ethereum security community. If you are donating to this round, consider also supporting these excellent projects — they are doing critical work for the ecosystem:
- BlockThreat — Security research, vulnerability alerts, and threat intelligence
- SEAL 911 — Emergency response coordination for critical protocol incidents
- Rekt — Post-mortems and investigative reporting on protocol breaches and exploits
- scfuzzbench — Open-source smart contract fuzzer benchmark and tooling
What Your Donation Supports
CypherTalk produces free, independent cybersecurity and privacy education for the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond. We cover zero-knowledge proofs, smart contract auditing, operational security, AI-driven threats, and privacy technology — without sponsors, ads, or corporate backing.
Donations help cover hosting, editing, transcription, and the time our hosts invest in researching and producing each episode. More importantly, your participation in this round signals that the community values independent security education — which strengthens the case for future funding rounds.