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Inside the ETHSecurity Badge: Recognition from TheDAO Fund and What It Means
10 min
A small, intentional experiment in amplifying expert voices in public-goods funding — with real mechanics behind it.
TL;DR — Quick Summary
- The ETHSecurity Badge is a recognition awarded by TheDAO Security Fund to contributors and experts in the Ethereum Security ecosystem.
- Badge holders receive approximately 4x matching impact on quadratic funding calculations in TheDAO Fund's Ethereum Security round, operated by Giveth.
- The round runs April 21 – May 14, 2026 with a 500 ETH matching pool (over $1.09M at current prices).
- The 4x amplification is a deliberate experiment: testing whether weighting expert voices improves how public-goods funding is distributed across security projects.
- Carlos Vendrell (@TheBlockChainer), founder of Zealynx Security and Zealynx Academy, was recognized with the badge for contribution and expertise in Ethereum security, as announced on TheDAO Fund's X.
What TheDAO Security Fund Is Doing
TheDAO Security Fund is an initiative built around a straightforward observation: a significant amount of ETH that should have been active capital has been idle for years, while the cost of Ethereum security work — audits, protocol research, wallet safety, incident response — grows faster than the available funding.
The fund's first program is the Ethereum Security QF round, a 500 ETH matching pool distributed through Giveth via quadratic funding. The round is structured to direct capital toward projects the community (not a grants committee) believes are making Ethereum safer.
This is important because public-goods funding often suffers from the "which committee gets to decide" problem. A small group of grants reviewers cannot possibly evaluate the breadth of security work — incident response, wallet safety, formal verification, tool development, education, research, and more all compete for the same pool. QF lets the community weigh in.
But QF also has its own problem: every donor, regardless of domain expertise, has equal baseline influence on the matching calculation. This is the democratic thing to do, but it raises a question: can the distribution outcomes be improved by giving proven security experts a somewhat larger voice?
The ETHSecurity Badge is how TheDAO Fund is testing that hypothesis.
The 4x Amplification Mechanism
Badge holders receive approximately 4x the impact on matching pool calculations compared to a standard donor during the round.
Concretely: in a standard QF round, every unique donor counts equally for matching purposes. In the Ethereum Security round, a badge holder's donation counts roughly four times as strongly. A 40 from a standard donor (with the exact multiplier tuned by TheDAO Fund's round mechanics).
This is a mechanism design experiment, not a favor to badge holders. The test: does amplifying expert voices produce better outcomes than treating everyone equally?
Why This Might Work
Security is a domain where expert opinion carries real information. An experienced auditor reading a protocol's codebase can often tell in an hour whether the team is shipping defensive code or not. That judgment is hard to replicate with lay donors who may only know the protocol's marketing site.
If you amplify the signal from people who can actually evaluate the work, the matching pool may route more efficiently toward projects that are genuinely reducing risk.
Why It Might Not Work
Expert-weighted voting can introduce its own biases. Experts may over-fund the projects that look familiar (similar to what they already know) and under-fund novel approaches. Expert networks can also be small and socially connected, which risks clustering influence in ways a pure democratic vote wouldn't.
TheDAO Fund's approach is to try it explicitly, observe the results, and adjust future rounds based on what the data shows. This is more honest than either extreme — pretending it's a pure democracy when experts already have disproportionate informal influence, or handing over decisions to a closed committee entirely.
Who Gets a Badge
TheDAO Fund has not published a formal public criteria for badge awards. In practice, badges are awarded to people with demonstrated contribution to Ethereum security — auditors, protocol engineers, researchers, educators, tool builders, whitehats. The badge is awarded personally, not to companies.
The announcement recognizing Carlos Vendrell cites contribution and expertise in the Ethereum Security ecosystem specifically — the underlying body of work includes 30+ smart contract audits shipped through Zealynx Security, open-source frameworks (Zealynx DeFi Security Framework), and the education platform Zealynx Academy, along with ongoing contributions to ecosystem security tooling.
TheDAO Fund's earlier badge announcement established the program context and who else is part of the cohort. The badge is social and reputational — there is no on-chain enforcement layer for badge holder status. The authority comes from TheDAO Fund's curation and the community's trust in that curation.
What the Badge Does (and Doesn't Do)
What It Does
- Gives badge holders ~4x matching pool impact in the current Ethereum Security QF round
- Signals recognition from TheDAO Fund and the broader Ethereum security community
- Helps route matching funds toward projects badge holders trust
- Provides a public signal that may be used by other organizations to identify trusted security contributors
What It Does Not Do
- Does not give badge holders decision-making authority over grant allocation (matching is still community-voted)
- Does not override individual project eligibility (all projects still need to meet the round's scope criteria)
- Does not pay the badge holder directly — it amplifies their donation impact, but the donations still come from their own wallet
- Does not function as a formal certification (no exams, no renewal criteria, no revocation process)
This is important to state clearly. The badge is a curator-assigned signal with specific mechanical weight in a specific round. It is not a credential that unlocks employment or a regulated professional status. Its meaning is what the community accepts it to mean, which so far is: "this person has contributed enough to Ethereum security that TheDAO Fund trusts their judgment on what deserves matching."
Why This Matters for Zealynx Academy
Being recognized with the ETHSecurity Badge validates one specific claim: that the work Zealynx Academy is doing — training builders to ship secure protocols through hands-on building, real-fork shadow audits, AI auditor construction, and founder education — is recognized by TheDAO Fund as valuable to Ethereum security.
That recognition was given personally to Carlos Vendrell, but it sits on top of a body of work that includes the Zealynx Security audit practice, the open-source DeFi Security Framework, and the Academy itself. The badge is a small public marker that the mission is aligned with what the Ethereum security ecosystem wants to see more of.
It also creates a direct practical benefit for the Academy's round participation: donations made from badge-holder wallets (including Carlos's own) carry larger matching weight, and the round's outcome reflects that amplification.
The Broader Public-Goods Funding Experiment
The ETHSecurity Badge is one small experiment inside a larger movement toward better mechanisms for funding public goods in Ethereum. Other experiments are running simultaneously:
- Optimism's RetroPGF pays projects retroactively based on demonstrated impact, inverting the "apply then receive" pattern.
- Arbitrum's STIP and LTIPP use delegated grant committees with public accountability.
- Gitcoin Grants continue to refine their sybil-resistance and matching formulas round over round.
- ENS's working groups and various DAOs' grants programs experiment with different committee structures.
Each experiment teaches the ecosystem something about how distributed funding actually works in practice. The ETHSecurity Badge's 4x weighting is TheDAO Fund's contribution to that learning — an intentional test of whether expert amplification improves allocation quality for a specific domain.
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Whatever the outcome of this round, the data it generates will inform how similar mechanisms get designed in the future.
How to Participate in the Round
The round is open to everyone, not just badge holders. If you want to support Ethereum security work, whether that is Zealynx Academy specifically or any of the other accepted projects, the path is straightforward:
- Gitcoin Passport 50+. Required for donations to count toward matching. Takes ~10 minutes with fast stamps (Google, GitHub, LinkedIn).
- Donate on Gnosis or Optimism. Not Mainnet. Gas will eat a small donation.
- Any amount counts. QF rewards unique donors more than donation size.
Full step-by-step guide: Quadratic Funding Explained.
Specific project page: giveth.io/project/zealynx-academy.
The round closes at the end of May 14, 2026.
Supporting Eth Security Is Supporting Eth
The Ethereum network is only as safe as the security work done across its ecosystem. Every protocol audit that catches a Critical bug before deployment. Every wallet safety improvement that prevents a phishing loss. Every educational platform that trains builders to ship safer code from day one. These compound.
TheDAO Fund's round is a chance to direct meaningful capital toward that work, and donors are how the capital gets allocated. The ETHSecurity Badge amplifies certain voices in that allocation decision, but it does not replace the baseline fact that donors decide what to support.
Learn more about the QF round: Quadratic Funding Explained
Zealynx Academy announcement: Zealynx Academy Is Public
FAQ
1. Who decides who gets an ETHSecurity Badge?
TheDAO Fund decides, with input from the Ethereum security community and ecosystem partners. There is no formal public application process today — recognition is based on demonstrated contribution.
2. How much matching impact does 4x actually mean in dollars?
It varies per donation. In a quadratic funding formula, amplification is not a simple linear multiplier on final payout — it affects the square-root-summed contribution to the matching pool, which then gets distributed across projects. The practical outcome: a badge-holder's 10 donation, though exact final matching dollars depend on the round's donor distribution.
3. Is the badge on-chain?
The badge itself is a curator-assigned signal announced publicly (on X, by TheDAO Fund). The round's matching calculation mechanics enforce the 4x weighting for badge-holder wallets during the round. There is no standalone on-chain badge NFT or credential at this time.
4. Does the badge transfer if Carlos changes wallets?
TheDAO Fund handles badge recognition at the wallet level for the round mechanics. Changes in wallet ownership would need to be communicated to the round operators. In practice the badge is tied to the person and is expected to be stable.
5. Will badges continue for future rounds?
TheDAO Fund's stated intent is that this is the first of many rounds. Whether the ETHSecurity Badge mechanism continues with the same 4x weighting, a different weighting, or is replaced by a different signal is an open question depending on the data from this round.
6. Can I get a badge?
TheDAO Fund does not have a public application. Contributions to Ethereum security that build visible public track record are the path — audits, research, tooling, education, whitehat work. If your work is visible and meaningful, badge awards have historically come without solicitation.
Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Quadratic Funding | A funding mechanism that amplifies donations based on the number of unique supporters rather than total amount raised. Used by Gitcoin and Giveth for public goods funding. |
| Matching Pool | A pool of funds contributed by sponsors and distributed to projects in a quadratic funding round based on the community's donation pattern. |
| Public Goods | Goods that benefit everyone but are hard to fund through normal markets because the benefit is diffuse. Security research, open-source tooling, and education are Ethereum examples. |
| Gitcoin Passport | A decentralized identity system for proving you are a real human online. Used by QF rounds to prevent sybil attacks. |
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