Public Nouns

Summary

Protocol Guild is a collective of 130 Ethereum core protocol contributors ✨ enabling distributed funding for distributed systems.

The have their own vesting contract setup to take donations, that vests over the course of 1 year: https://protocol-guild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/3-smart-contract.html

We should fund this with 10 ETH

About Protocol Guild

Attracting and retaining talented core protocol contributors is critical to the long-term success of Ethereum. Unfortunately, financial incentives for core protocol work are significantly lower than comparable work in the ecosystem. Think about it: how much would entities such as Google or Ava Labs pay to acquire the skills of an Ethereum core protocol developer? Or alternatively, how much token upside could a core dev get by working for an L2 like Arbitrum or Optimism?

The Protocol Guild was conceived to address these issues: to rebalance financial incentives in favor of core protocol work, by providing contributors with a way to indirectly participate in the success of the broader ecosystem, and incentivize continued contributions over the long term.

The Protocol Guild itself is a registry of members who are actively contributing to Ethereum’s core protocol. Today the Guild has 128 members, including client & infra teams like EthereumJS, Geth and Teku, research orgs like the Robust Incentives Group, as well as coordination and support groups Ethereum Cat Herders.

Other Reasoning

A 10 eth donation will still have a significant impact in building the social norm that projects built on Ethereum should help support the protocol they depend on. If every project donated a small amount, e.g. 1% of their tokens or treasury, then the Protocol Guild could become a long-term sustainable funding mechanism for Ethereum’s core protocol work.