Researcher Grants
Mirage offers researcher grants of up to $5,000 for high-quality independent analysis of Mirage network privacy properties, network analytics, and obfuscation effectiveness.
These grants are intended for researchers who can help evaluate how well Mirage resists transaction tracing, metadata leakage, behavioral clustering, and related deanonymization techniques in realistic settings.
We are especially interested in work that improves our understanding of the Mirage network and Azoth under practical adversarial models.
Grant size
- Grants are typically between $500 and $5,000
- Final amounts are determined by scope, rigor, novelty, and practical value
- Mirage may decline, partially fund, or request a revised scope before approval
Areas of interest
- Network analytics against Mirage transaction flows
- Obfuscation analysis for Azoth and Mirage network behavior
- Deanonymization attempts using realistic threat models
- Metadata leakage analysis across routing, timing, or transaction patterns
- Empirical studies measuring privacy guarantees in production-like conditions
- Reproducible attack or measurement frameworks that help evaluate privacy claims
What a strong application includes
- Research objective and hypothesis
- Scope of the analysis
- Methodology and evaluation plan
- Expected deliverables
- Timeline and requested grant amount
- Relevant prior work, publications, or experience
- Any assumptions, prerequisites, or required access
Deliverables
Researchers should expect to provide:
- A short proposal before work begins
- Periodic progress updates for longer projects
- A final written report
- Supporting data, code, or proofs of concept when relevant and safe to share
- Clear findings, limitations, and recommendations
Evaluation criteria
Applications are evaluated based on:
- Technical quality
- Relevance to Mirage privacy and security goals
- Realism of the threat model
- Reproducibility of the proposed work
- Expected value of the findings to Mirage users and infrastructure
Important boundaries
- Grants are discretionary and not guaranteed
- Approval is required before work is eligible for grant payment
- Grant funding is separate from the bug bounty program
- Submission of a proposal does not create any employment, partnership, or exclusivity relationship
- Researchers must act lawfully and avoid unnecessary privacy violations, service disruption, or destructive testing
Submission
Send grant applications to whisper@mirageprivacy.com.
Include "Researcher Grant Application" in the subject line and attach any supporting materials that help us evaluate your proposal.