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Quadratic Funding Explained: Ethereum Security QF Round and Zealynx Academy
14 min
The largest quadratic funding round on Giveth yet, a 500 ETH matching pool from TheDAO Security Fund, and a mechanism designed to reward the community's breadth of support rather than the size of any single donation.
TL;DR — Quick Summary
- Quadratic funding (QF) amplifies donations based on how many unique people support a project, not how much each person gives. A 500 donation from one whale.
- The Ethereum Security QF round runs April 21 – May 12, 2026, on Giveth. It is backed by TheDAO Security Fund with a 500 ETH matching pool (over $1.09M at current prices).
- The Ethereum Foundation Grants Management team defined eligibility. Giveth operates the round. The community decides how the matching funds are distributed.
- Zealynx Academy was accepted into the round. We build a hands-on platform where Web3 founders learn to ship secure protocols and grow them into real businesses.
- The ETHSecurity Badge, awarded personally to Carlos Vendrell, gives holders ~2x impact on matching calculations. TheDAO Fund announced the recognition on X.
- How to participate: create a Gitcoin Passport with 50+ score, donate on Gnosis or Optimism (not Mainnet), any amount counts. Details below.
Introduction: Why Quadratic Funding Exists
Most funding in Web3 flows to whoever shouts loudest or has the most capital. A single large donor can distort priorities. A thousand small donors, each giving meaningful amounts, often cannot compete with one $50,000 check.
Quadratic funding (QF) inverts that dynamic. It is a mechanism invented to fund public goods — the kind of work that benefits everyone but belongs to no one: open security research, developer education, infrastructure, standards, wallet safety. Things that the market often underfunds because the benefits are diffuse.
On April 21, 2026, Giveth opened the Ethereum Security QF round, backed by TheDAO Security Fund's 500 ETH matching pool (over $1.09M at current prices). Organizers describe it as the largest quadratic funding round on Giveth yet.
Zealynx Academy applied and was accepted. This article explains what QF is, how this round specifically works, who is behind it, why Zealynx Academy joined, and how anyone who cares about Ethereum security can participate.
What Is Quadratic Funding?
Quadratic funding is a funding mechanism designed to amplify small donations based on the number of unique supporters, not the total amount raised.
The simplest way to see how it differs from traditional funding: imagine two projects that each raise the same $1,000.
- Project A has 2 donors giving $500 each.
- Project B has 100 donors giving $10 each.
Under traditional funding, these two projects raised the same amount. Under quadratic funding with a matching pool, Project B receives significantly more additional funding from the pool. Why? Because the mechanism treats broad support as a stronger signal of public value than concentrated support.
The Math, Simplified
The exact formula sums the square roots of each donation, then squares the total. Without getting lost in the algebra, the intuition is:
- Every new unique donor adds value to the matching calculation sublinearly by amount, but linearly by count.
- A 500 donation from the same donor adds only slightly more signal than their first $5.
- Combining donations across donors multiplies the matching.
The result: 100 × 100 donations, even though the raw amount is identical.
If you want a deeper walkthrough of the math with visual examples, wtfisqf.com has the clearest explanation we have seen.
Why This Matters for Public Goods
Traditional markets underfund public goods because no one can capture the return. Everyone benefits if Ethereum's wallet infrastructure gets audited, but no single entity is willing to pay for the whole audit. QF solves this by rewarding the act of showing up. You don't need to write a big check. You just need to be a real person who cares.
This is why QF is the default mechanism for serious public-goods funding efforts across the Ethereum ecosystem, including Gitcoin Grants, Giveth, and now TheDAO Security Fund's program.
The Ethereum Security QF Round: Who, What, Why
The Ethereum Security QF round is a collaborative effort. Four different entities play distinct roles.
TheDAO Security Fund (Capital)
TheDAO Security Fund contributes the matching capital. Their stated mission is to turn long-idle ETH into active support for the people and projects helping reduce real risk across Ethereum. For this round, they are committing 500 ETH (over $1.09M at current prices). This is the first of many rounds planned under their program.
Ethereum Foundation Grants Management (Eligibility)
The Ethereum Foundation's Grants Management team defined the eligibility criteria. In practice, this means they set the scope for what counts as a "security" project for the round. The definition is broad:
- Incident response and white-hat defense
- Security research, auditing, and formal verification
- User protection and wallet safety (anti-phishing, scam prevention)
- Security tooling and infrastructure
- Security education, training, and awareness (this is where Zealynx Academy fits)
- Threat intelligence and on-chain investigation
- Core infrastructure and protocol security
- Legal frameworks supporting white-hat activity
- Security standards, certifications, and best practices
- Wargames and incident response training
- DevSecOps and secure development tooling
- ZK and circuit security
- Client and node implementation security
- Cryptographic primitives and implementations
- Post-quantum research
- Supply chain security
If your work touches any of these, you may also apply. Late acceptance applications are open until April 28, 2026.
Giveth (Operations)
Giveth operates the round: they handle applications, UI, donations, matching calculations, and the full lifecycle. Giveth is the infrastructure that makes QF rounds practical. Donors use the Giveth platform to discover and donate to projects.
The Community (Signal)
This is the crucial part. You, the donor, decide how the matching pool is distributed. The matching pool is not allocated by a grants committee. It is allocated by the community's pattern of donations. More unique donors to a project → more of the matching pool flows to that project.
QF is a mechanism that listens to the community.
Key Dates
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| March 25, 2026 | Applications open |
| April 15, 2026 | Last day to apply before round starts |
| April 21, 2026 | Round begins |
| April 28, 2026 | Last day for late-acceptance applications |
| May 12, 2026 | Round ends |
The ETHSecurity Badge: 2x Matching Impact
One of the mechanisms TheDAO Fund introduced for this round is the ETHSecurity Badge. Holders of the badge have approximately 2x the impact on matching calculations compared to a regular donor.
The stated hypothesis: amplifying the voices of proven security experts may improve how funds are distributed. If 50 badge-holders donate $10 to a project, that project gets significantly more matching than if 50 unaffiliated donors donate the same amount. The round is partly a live test of that hypothesis.
Carlos Vendrell, founder of Zealynx Security and Zealynx Academy, was personally recognized with the ETHSecurity Badge by TheDAO Fund. The badge was awarded for contribution and expertise in the Ethereum Security ecosystem. TheDAO Fund announced the recognition on X, with the full badge-holder context in their earlier announcement.
This matters for Zealynx Academy's presence in the round two ways:
- It confirms the Academy's mission is aligned with what the Ethereum Security ecosystem recognizes as valuable work.
- Every donation from a badge-holder to any project in the round carries roughly double the matching influence. If you are a badge-holder and you believe in Web3 security education, your donation has an outsized effect.
Why Zealynx Academy Joined
Zealynx Academy was built to help Web3 founders build secure protocols and grow them into real businesses.
The program has three parts.
The build. You rebuild a real production protocol like Uniswap V2 from scratch, line by line, until your code matches the original. The goal is not to teach Solidity. The goal is to help you understand exactly what you are about to fork, what you want to keep, what you want to change, what you want to throw out. Our first module verifies your work against 207 automated tests.
The security training. After you have built the protocol, you shadow-audit a past security contest on a real fork. Five live targets include Basin (a protocol that ran a $40k public contest), ElasticSwap, Velodrome, Flux Finance, and Canto v2. Together that is 10,163 lines of real Solidity with 46 documented bugs. You see how other builders forked. What they kept. What they broke. When the time-boxed audit ends, you get the full review.
The eMBA for Web3 Founders. Tokenomics, fundraising, governance, treasury, regulatory, go-to-market. The non-code knowledge that kills as many protocols as bugs do. Built from the pattern we have seen across 30+ smart contract audits at Zealynx Security: technically excellent teams that ship beautiful code and still fail because of everything around the code.
This is security education. Every part of it directly maps to what the Ethereum Security QF round is designed to fund — helping builders ship safer protocols from day one, not patching security in after a post-mortem.
If the community agrees that this kind of education contributes to Ethereum security, the matching pool helps us scale. If not, the signal tells us what to change. Either way, the mechanism is honest.
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How to Support (in Two Minutes)
If the Academy's mission resonates, here is the cleanest path to donate in a way that counts toward matching.
Step 1: Gitcoin Passport 50+
You need a Gitcoin Passport score of 50 or higher for your donation to count toward matching. The score prevents sybil attacks (fake accounts gaming the matching).
Fastest stamps to reach 50+:
- Google (instant)
- GitHub (instant)
- LinkedIn (instant)
- Discord (instant)
- ENS (if you have one)
- Holonym (phone verification)
About 10 minutes end to end. If you already use Gitcoin Passport, just confirm your score is current.
Step 2: Fund on a Cheap Chain
Do not donate on Ethereum Mainnet. Gas fees will eat a small donation. Giveth supports:
- Gnosis Chain (cheapest, recommended for small donations)
- Optimism
- Arbitrum
- Polygon
If you do not hold funds on these chains, use Bungee, Relay, or a similar bridge to move a small amount to Gnosis.
Step 3: Donate
Go to the Zealynx Academy project page on Giveth. Click Donate. Connect the wallet you just verified with Passport. Choose chain, token, and amount. Any amount counts.
Amount matters less than the fact that you are a unique donor. 20 counts. $100 counts. The quadratic math does not reward size linearly.
Why Your 500
This is the single most counterintuitive thing about QF, so it is worth stating plainly.
If you are a new donor to Zealynx Academy:
- Your $5 donation adds a new unique-donor signal to the matching calculation.
- That signal amplifies the matching pool allocation to the Academy disproportionately more than the same amount coming from an existing donor.
- 100 new 100 donors.
This is why breadth wins over depth in a QF round. It is also why a genuine community of supporters — even small ones — matters more than a single large backer.
If you have been meaning to support Web3 security education and have not yet, this round is the moment when your $5 does the most work.
Conclusion
Quadratic funding is a mechanism for funding the things a market cannot easily price. Ethereum security is the most important of those things — wallet safety, protocol auditing, education, infrastructure — because a single failure echoes across every user and every protocol downstream.
TheDAO Security Fund, the Ethereum Foundation, and Giveth have built the largest QF round on Giveth to date to direct capital toward this work. The mechanism invites every person who cares to participate, not just a few with deep pockets.
Zealynx Academy is a project inside that round. If secure Web3 education matters to you, a $5 donation before May 12, 2026 does more than the number suggests.
Donate on Giveth: https://giveth.io/project/zealynx-academy
Learn the platform: academy.zealynx.io
Check your Passport: passport.gitcoin.co
FAQ
1. What is quadratic funding in simple terms?
Quadratic funding is a mechanism that amplifies donations based on the number of unique supporters, not the size of each donation. A matching pool (in this round, 500 ETH from TheDAO Security Fund) is distributed to projects based on how many unique people support them. Many small donors → big matching. A few large donors → smaller matching. It is designed to fund public goods fairly.
2. How does QF matching actually work?
The formula sums the square roots of each individual donation to a project, then squares the total. The result determines how much of the matching pool goes to that project. In practice this means that adding many small donors to a project increases its matching significantly more than increasing the amount from existing donors. If you want the visual explanation with examples, wtfisqf.com walks through it clearly.
3. Why does my $5 matter more than someone else's $500?
QF rewards the number of unique supporters over the total amount given. A 5 coming from an existing donor adds much less additional signal. In concrete terms, if 100 new donors give 100 each.
4. How do I make sure my donation counts for matching?
Three steps. First, set up a Gitcoin Passport with a score of 50 or higher. Second, donate on Gnosis Chain, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Polygon — not Ethereum Mainnet, where gas will eat your donation. Third, donate on the Giveth project page using the wallet you verified with Passport. Any donation amount counts. The unique-donor signal matters more than size.
5. When does the round end and when does matching pay out?
The Ethereum Security QF round ends on May 12, 2026. Matching calculations run after the round closes. Payout timing depends on Giveth's operational schedule. Donations made after May 12 will not count toward matching, although they still support the project directly.
6. What is TheDAO Security Fund?
TheDAO Security Fund is an initiative turning previously-idle ETH into active support for Ethereum security work. The Ethereum Security QF round is their first funding round under this program, with a 500 ETH matching pool. They plan more rounds. You can learn more directly from their podcast interview on CypherTalk.
7. What is the ETHSecurity Badge and how do I get one?
The ETHSecurity Badge is a recognition given by TheDAO Fund to security experts and contributors in the Ethereum ecosystem. Holders have approximately 2x the impact on QF matching calculations. The badge is not sold — it is awarded based on contribution and expertise. Carlos Vendrell (founder of Zealynx Security and Zealynx Academy) was recognized as a badge-holder, announced on TheDAO Fund's X.
Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Public Goods | Goods that benefit everyone but are hard to fund through normal markets because the benefit is diffuse. Examples: open security research, open-source infrastructure, education. |
| Gitcoin Passport | A decentralized identity system for proving you are a real human online. Used by QF rounds to prevent sybil attacks. |
| Sybil Attack | An attack where a single entity creates many fake identities to gain disproportionate influence. QF rounds use Passport scores to defend against this. |
| Matching Pool | A pool of funds contributed by a sponsor (in this round, TheDAO Security Fund) and distributed to projects based on the community's donation pattern. |
| Zealynx Academy | Zealynx Security's hands-on education platform for Web3 builders and founders. Build real protocols from scratch, shadow-audit real forks, learn the eMBA non-code side of launching. |
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