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2. Membership

2.1 Active Members

The membership is a set of people working within the eligible projects who have also opted into Protocol Guild. As of the last onchain update (August 27, 2024) Protocol Guild had 181 members who cumulatively contributed over 600 years of effort to protocol stewardship. See the latest membership numbers here.

Name Multiplier Team Primary Contributions
Alex Stokes 1 Applied Research Group (ARG)
Echo 1 Applied Research Group (ARG)
Jacob Kaufmann 1 Applied Research Group (ARG)
Mike Neuder 1 Applied Research Group (ARG)
Toni Wahrstätter 1 research
Parithosh Jayanthi 1 ethPandaOps
Rafael Matias 1 ethPandaOps
Sam Calder-Mason 1 ethPandaOps
Barnabas Busa 1 ethPandaOps
Andrew Davis 1 ethPandaOps
pk910 1 ethPandaOps
Gary Rong 1 ethereum/go-ethereum
Guillaume Ballet 1 ethereum/go-ethereum, gballet/go-ethereum, ethereum/go-verkle
Jared Wasinger 1 Geth
Marius van der Wijden 1 Geth
Matt Garnett 1 Geth
Peter Szilagyi 1 Geth
Sina Mahmoodi 1 ethereum/go-ethereum
Alex Beregszaszi 0.5 Ipsilon ipsilon/eof, ethereum/evmone, ethereum/evmc, ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo
Andrei Maiboroda 1 ethereum/evmone, ethereum/evmc, ethereum/eips, ipsilon/eof
Jose Hugo de la cruz Romero 0.5 Ipsilon ethereum/tests, ethereum/evmone, ethereum/execution-spec-tests
Paweł Bylica 1 ethereum/evmone
Radosław Zagórowicz 1 Ipsilon ethereum/evmone, ipsilon/eof, ethereum/tests, ethereum/evmc
Piotr Dobaczewski 1 Ipsilon ethereum/evmone, ethereum/EIPs, ipsilon/eof, ethereum/execution-spec-tests
Amir Ghorbanian 1 EthereumJS
Andrew Day 1 ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo, ethereumjs/ultralight
Gabriel 0.5 EthereumJS
Jochem 1 ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo
Scotty Poi 1 EthereumJS ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo, ethereumjs/ultralight
Jason Carver 1 Portal Network (EF)
Kolby Moroz Liebl 1 Portal Network (EF)
Mike Ferris 1 Portal Network (EF)
Milos Stankovic 1 Portal Network (EF)
Ognyan Genev 1 ethereum/trin, ethereum/portal-network-specs
Piper Merriam 1 Portal Network (EF)
Nick Gheorghita 1 Portal Network (EF)
Guru 1 ethereum/execution-specs
Mário Havel 1 Protocol Support (EF)
Peter Davies 1 ethereum/execution-specs
Sam Wilson 1 ethereum/execution-specs
Tim Beiko 1 ethereum/pm
Trenton Van Epps 1 protocolguild/documentation
Arantxa Zapico 1 Cryptography (EF)
Dmitry Khovratovich 1 Cryptography (EF)
Mark Simkin 1 research
Ansgar Dietrichs 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Antonio Sanso 1 Cryptography (EF) research
Carl Beekhuizen 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Dankrad Feist 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Francesco D’Amato 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
George Kadianakis 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Hsiao-Wei Wang 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Justin Drake 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Kevaundray Wedderburn 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Luca Zanolini 1 Research
Pop Chunhapanya 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Gottfried Herold 1 Consensus R&D (EF)
Anders 1 Robust Incentives Group (RIG)
Barnabé Monnot 1 Robust Incentives Group (RIG)
Caspar Schwarz-Schilling 1 Robust Incentives Group (RIG)
Davide Crapis 0.5 Robust Incentives Group (RIG)
Thomas Thiery 1 ethresearch
Julian Ma 1 Robust Incentives Group (RIG)
Bhargava Shastry 1 ethereum/protocol-security
Fredrik Svantes 1 ethereum/protocol-security
Justin Traglia 1 ethereum/c-kzg-4844, consensys/teku, ethereum/consensus-specs, prysmaticlabs/prysm
Tyler Holmes 1 ethereum/protocol-security
Yoav Weiss 1 ethereum/protocol-security
Ignacio Hagopian 1 ethereum/go-verkle, gballet/go-ethereum, crate-crypto/go-ipa
Josh Rudolf 1 Stateless Consensus
danceratopz 1 ethereum/execution-spec-tests
Mario Vega 1 ethereum/execution-spec-tests
Spencer Taylor-Brown 0.5 ethereum/execution-spec-tests
Alex Sharov 1 Erigon
Andrey Ashikhmin 1 erigontech/erigon, erigontech/silkworm
Artem Tsebrovskii 1 Erigon
Daniel Lazarenko 1 erigontech/silkworm, erigontech/erigon
Giulio Rebuffo 1 Erigon
lupin012 0.5 erigontech/silkworm, erigontech/erigon, erigontech/rpc-tests
Jacek Glen 0.5 erigontech/silkworm, erigontech/erigon
Kairat Abylkasymov 1 Erigon
Kewei Chen 1 erigontech/erigon
Mark Holt 0.5 Erigon
Michelangelo Riccobene 1 Erigon
Milen Filatov 0.5 erigontech/erigon
M Sudeep Kumar 1 erigontech/erigon
Somnath Banerjee 1 Erigon
Shoham Chakraborty 0.5 erigontech/erigon
Tullio Canepa 1 erigontech/silkworm, erigontech/erigon
Pooja Ranjan 1 ethereum/pm, ethereum/eips, Ethereum Protocol Videos
Ameziane 0.5 hyperledger/besu
Daniel Lehrner 1 hyperledger/besu
Danno Ferrin 1 hyperledger/besu
Fabio di Fabio 1 hyperledger/besu
Gary Schulte 1 hyperledger/besu
Gabriel Trintinalia 1 hyperledger/besu
Jason Frame 1 hyperledger/besu
Justin Florentine 1 hyperledger/besu
pinges 1 hyperledger/besu
Sally Macfarlane 1 hyperledger/besu
Simon Dudley 1 hyperledger/besu
cheeky-gorilla 1 protocolguild/documentation
Jim McDonald 0.5 ethereum/beacon-APIs
Adrian Manning 0.5 Lighthouse sigp/lighthouse, sigp/enr, sigp/discv5
Mac Ladson 1 sigp/lighthouse
Mark Mackey 1 sigp/lighthouse
Mehdi Zerouali 0.5 sigp/lighthouse
Michael Sproul 1 sigp/lighthouse
Pawan Dhananjay Ravi 1 sigp/lighthouse
Sean Anderson 0.5 sigp/lighthouse
Anton Delaruelle 1 sigp/lighthouse
Jimmy Chen 1 sigp/lighthouse
João Oliveira 1 sigp/lighthouse, sigp/enr, sigp/discv5
dapplion 1 sigp/lighthouse, ethereum/consensus-specs, ethereum/EIPs
Eitan Seri-Levi 1 sigp/lighthouse
Paul Hauner 0.5 sigp/lighthouse, ethereum/consensus-specs
Cayman Nava 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
Gajinder Singh 1 ChainSafe/lodestar, ethereumjs/ethereumjs-monorepo
Matthew Keil 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
NC 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
Nazar Hussain 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
Nico Flaig 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
Phil Ngo 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
Tuyen Nguyen 1 ChainSafe/lodestar
Ahmad Bitar 0.5 NethermindEth/nethermind
Anders Kristiansen 0.5 Nethermind NethermindEth/nethermind
Alexey Osipov 1 NethermindEth contributions, NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Ayman Bouchareb 1 Nethermind NethermindEth contributions
NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Ben Adams 1 NethermindEth/nethermind
Damian Orzechowski 1 NethermindEth/nethermind
Carlos Bermudez Porto 0.5 NethermindEth contributions, NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Daniel Celeda 1 Nethermind
Jorge Mederos 0.5 Nethermind
Kamil Chodoła 1 NethermindEth/nethermind
Łukasz Rozmej 1 NethermindEth contributions, NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Marcin Sobczak 1 NethermindEth contributions, NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Marek Moraczyński 1 NethermindEth contributions
NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Mateusz Jędrzejewski 0.5 Nethermind
Muhammad Amirul Ashraf 1 NethermindEth/nethermind
Ruben Buniatyan 0.5 NethermindEth/nethermind
Tanishq Jasoria 1 NethermindEth contributions, NethermindEth/nethermind PR's
Tomasz Stanczak 0.5 Nethermind
James He 1 Prysm
Kasey Kirkham 1 Prysm
Nishant Das 1 Prysm
potuz 1 Prysm , gohashtree
Preston Van Loon 1 Prysm
Radosław Kapka 1 Prysm
Raul Jordan 0.5 Prysm
Sammy Rosso 1 Prysm
Taran Singh 0.5 Prysm devops
Terence Tsao 1 Prysm , ethresear.ch , hackmd.io
Manu Nalepa 1 Prysm
Alexey Shekhirin 1 Reth
Dan Cline 1 Reth
DaniPopes 0.5 Reth Reth, revmc
Dragan Rakita 1 Revm
Emilia Hane 1 Reth
Federico Gimenez 1 Reth
joshie 1 Reth
Matthias Seitz 0.5 Reth
Roman Krasiuk 0.5 Reth
Dmitriy Ryajov 0.5 Codex DAS
Csaba Kiraly 0.5 Codex DAS
Leonardo Bautista-Gomez 0.5 ethresearch
Dustin Brody 1 status-im/nimbus-eth2
Etan Kissling 1 status-im/nimbus-eth2, ethereum/consensus-specs, ethereum/EIPs
Eugene Kabanov 1 status-im/nimbus-eth2
Jacek Sieka 1 status-im/nimbus-eth2
Jordan Hrycaj 1 Nimbus
Kim De Mey 1 status-im/nimbus-eth2, status-im/nimbus-eth1 Portal, ethereum/portal-network-specs
Ben Hartnett 1 status-im/nimbus-eth1 Portal, ethereum/portal-network-specs
Dmitrii Shmatko 1 Consensys/teku
Enrico Del Fante 1 Consensys/teku
Gabriel Fukushima 1 Consensys/teku
Mehdi Aouadi 1 Consensys/teku
Lucas Saldanha 1 Consensys/teku
Paul Harris 1 Consensys/teku
Stefan Bratanov 1 Consensys/teku
Alex Vlasov 1 hackMD, ethresearch, ethereum/consensus-specs
Anton Nashatyrev 1 consensys/teku, libp2p/jvm-libp2p, ethereum/consensus-spec
Mikhail Kalinin 1 ethresearch, hackmd, ethereum/consensus-specs, ethereum/EIPs, ethereum/execution-apis
Roberto Saltini 1 Dependable Distributed Systems (DDS) Research
Chenyi Zhang 0.5 Dependable Distributed Systems (DDS)
Saulius Grigaitis 1 Grandine Grandine
Tumas 1 Grandine Grandine
Povilas Liubauskas 1 Grandine Grandine

Note: Protocol Guild's Split contract contains all the above members plus one additional address used for entity expenses (current address, former address).

2.2 Prerequisites

All current members have been contributing:

  1. To one or more of the list of eligible projects.
  2. Continuously for at least 6 months ahead of inclusion. This work is expected to be ongoing (e.g. not a short-term or one-off project). To avoid removal from the current membership, any breaks in contribution must be shorter than 1 quarter (3 months). Beyond this length, the member should be moved to "Inactive" status until contribution resumes.
  3. In a roughly full-time capacity. Anything less receives a partial weighting.

2.3 Rights

Split Share

Each member's share of the split contract is calculated using member-specific inputs. There are two parts to the calculation:

  1. Calculate each member's time_weight: time_weight = SQRT((start_date - months_inactive) * full_or_part_time)

  2. Normalize time_weight as a percentage: split_share = (time_weight / total_time_weights) * 100

This formulation recognizes the local knowledge contributors gain over time, and uses that as a proxy for "value to the commons" and to allocate funding to members. Existing contributor weights get "diluted" as newcomers show up. Continuing contributors get additional weight per month they are active.

Each member's time-weight is updated onchain every quarter along with an Ethereum address they control to allocate the funding flowing through the mechanism.

Time Weight

time_weight is a floating point number representing the square root of the time a member has been contributing to Ethereum (measured in months). It has the following components:

time_weight = SQRT((start_date - months_inactive) * full_or_part_time)

  1. start_date

start_date is a date value representing the date when a member commenced contributing to Ethereum's L1 R&D. The earlier a contributor's start_date, the higher their overall Split share, rewarding them retroactively for historical contributions.

  1. months_inactive

The mechanism tracks breaks to ensure weights are a fair representation of contributions.

When new members join, months_inactive can be used to account for time spent on non-eligible work or extended breaks. An example of this can be seen here. Note that although breaks can be tracked in this way, new members must still have contributed continuously for at least 6 months ahead of inclusion.

Existing members can take up to 3 months break without triggering a membership change.

  1. full_or_part_time
  • full-weight: 1.0x
  • partial-weight: 0.5x

These multipliers roughly track the effort per week given by contributors. Full-weight is considered full-time, at least 40 hr/wk. Partial-weight is anything between 20 - 40 hr/wk.

  1. SQRT

The final step of the formula uses a Square Root to compress the weight range. This is done to not overly privilege long-term members over newer contributors.

Time Weight Example

The table and graphs below illustrate how the 5 year weight change of a hypothetical three member Guild. The effect of the square root can be seen in how the difference between older and newer contributors gets smaller over time.

0 12 24 36 48 60
Peer 1 (starting weight 6mo, full-time) 4.24 5.48 6.48 7.35 8.12 8.12
Peer 2 (starting weight 24mo full-time) 6.00 6.93 7.75 8.49 9.17 9.17
Peer 3 (starting weight 12mo, part-time) 3.46 6.00 6.93 7.75 8.49 8.49
rawweights relativeweights

Governance

Protocol Guild members govern the evolution of the mechanism, which may include:

  • modifying high-level project eligibility
  • discussing which smart contracts to use, and how to operate them
  • setting parameters like how long vests should be
  • how and where to fundraise
  • the percentage of Split flows that the Foundation entity receives to account for various org expenses, including some compensation for select operational roles

Typically this takes the shape of rough consensus discussions. In some special cases, decisions need to be voted on or ratified - learn more here.

Governance does not include any control over any vesting funds. e.g. members can't vote to cancel or change the timeline of vesting funds - more details about our narrow scope of concern here.

2.4 Obligations

Members are expected to participate in curation. Consider these examples:

  • an individual updating their personal status
  • a colleague making updates on behalf of their team
  • members giving input to shape the addition/removal process

Self-Curation

We use the term "self-curation" to describe how the membership selects its own beneficiary set. This is an important distinction between Protocol Guild and other public goods funding mechanisms. While curatorial bodies external to the beneficiary set are appropriate in some contexts, self-curation is well suited here for a few reasons:

  1. Local actors have the most domain knowledge

    • Protocol Guild stakes its claim to legitimacy on the accuracy of its membership. This emerges from the perspectives and daily interactions of people that are already embedded: the core contributors themselves.
    • Any external curating council would be outside of core protocol stewardship. To approximate the local knowledge that core contributors naturally already have (e.g. who is doing what work, at what level of contribution, with what team), an external council would have to be embedded in the same work.
  2. Fewer classes of actors are easier to reason about operationally

    • Good mechanisms are simple. They should have the minimum sufficient operational surface area (or at least start there and layer in complexity). If something can be done with less, it should be.
    • External councils shift the operational onus to participants with a different incentive-set than beneficiaries. In the worst case, their goal is to maintain their position as curators - not to accurately curate the membership.
    • Additional governance processes would need to be set up for the membership to nominate and remove council members - more time, overhead, and bandwidth taken from the actual work of core protocol stewardship.
  3. Mechanisms close to the core protocol should be robust

    • The Ethereum core protocol is expected to operate in an adversarial environment. In the same way, protocol funding mechanisms should be held to similarly high institutional standards: resistant to failure.
    • Inviting (read: obligating) all members to participate in curation sidesteps any dependency on a narrow class of mechanism operators like an external curation council.
  4. Incentive compatibility

    • It is incentive compatible that curators (Guild members) are drawn from the beneficiaries (Guild members).
      • Adding beneficiaries removes future vested value from existing members. They will more carefully consider potential members and their contributions. An external council would not feel this constraint so directly.
    • The mechanism must accept all legitimate contributors
      • This prevents the set from ossifying or getting captured. Potential members which fit established guidelines need to be added to maintain credible neutrality to participants and sponsors. If donors think that the set is not curated well enough, they will not feel incentivized to contribute.

Adding a Member

An existing member should make a PR at this repo which proposes an addition to the member list above, along with the accompanying info:

  • Name / Identifier
  • Affiliated project they work on which is eligible
  • Links to relevant eligible work, eg. GitHub, research
  • 3-4 sentence summary of their contributions

See some examples here: open or closed PRs

Discussion should be open for at least one week to give members time to review and discuss.

Bias or conflicts of interest of the nominator should be disclosed, if they exist, e.g. where one is an advisor to the other’s side project. After one week of rough consensus, the PR should be merged or rejected.

Removing a Member

Self-Removal, Affiliation, Weights

Removals from the active membership should come from the member themselves, i.e. self-removal, by opening a PR in the same repo. Example here. Where this isn't possible due to extenuating circumstances, the member should be notified or tagged on the PR so they are aware of the changes.

Affiliation and weight changes should include some rationale for the change, ideally from the member themselves and seconding by a colleague.

Peer Removal

Peer removals can occur when a member stops contributing to eligible work, and is not responsive to requests to self-remove (as described above). In such cases, another member (ideally from the same team) can propose to remove the inactive member.

There may also be situations when another member proposes the removal of an existing member, even if they are continuing with eligible work. This should only happen in special circumstances where the removed member's contributions are far below what would generally be expected, or in the case of other grave misconducts. The PR should include ample documentation and justification for the removal. To date, this method has never been used.

2.5 Quotes

We asked members why they think the Guild is important for Ethereum. Last updated May 21 2024.

Adrian Manning (Lighthouse) - "Lighthouse is the Rust implementation of Ethereum Beacon Chain, a key component in Ethereum's transition to PoS Although Lighthouse is one of a few major production Eth2 clients, it's imperative that more than 1 production client is used in the space to avoid the chain collapsing if bugs/vulnerabilities are found in a single client. Protocol Guild supports the teams working on minority clients, which is an important initiative."

Alex Stokes (Applied Research Group (ARG)) - "The Protocol Guild is an experiment in public goods funding that aims to align the incentives of core protocol contributors with the continued stewardship of the ecosystem by allowing these contributors to share in the value created by their hard work. This mechanism is important for the future of Ethereum as it ensures continuity of protocol direction, maintenance, and growth amongst a set of dedicated individuals who deeply care about realizing the collective vision that inspires everyone who interacts with our community."

Alex Vlasov (TXRX) - "Ethereum - and blockchains, in general - unveils tremendous opportunities and one of them is building a more fair world. Protocol Guild serves several purposes: 1. It's an instrument for public goods funding, which is often underrated 2. It's a research and an exploration of innovative social mechanisms 3. It aims to support Ethereum Protocol contributors"

Ansgar Dietrichs (Consensus R&D (EF)) - "I strongly believe that not enshrining a contributor funding mechanism into the base chain was the correct choice for Ethereum (crucial for its credible neutrality). But in order to keep attracting top level talent to the core dev space, we need to experiment with out-of-protocol ways of funding. Protocol Guild is a very exciting project in that regard and hopefully a first step towards a sustainable funding structure."

Anton Nashatyrev (TXRX) - "I would really love to see Guild as an instrument for long term incentivisation of people who just want to develop Ethereum and don't want to worry about buying food for themselves tomorrow "

Carl Beekhuizen (Consensus R&D (EF)) - "As researchers we spend a lot of time worrying about incentive compatibility. This guild nudges us towards a better incentive landscape for those working on the protocol."

danceratopz (Testing (EF)) - "I believe the Protocol Guild will play an important role in helping ensure a sustainable future for Ethereum as a foundational public good. Its infrastructure enables Ethereum projects to channel funds into the protocol's continuous enhancement, thereby incentivizing and helping retain the dedicated individuals who work on its development. This system of support allows Ethereum's growth without reliance on a single or a collective group of entities. It even paves the way for core developers to operate independently of any organization, sustained by Guild-facilitated funding."

Danny Ryan (Consensus R&D (EF)) - "Public goods are hard."

Davide Crapis (Robust Incentives Group (RIG)) - "Public goods are the backbone of a thriving ecosystem."

Dmitry Khovratovich (Cryptography (EF)) - "We work on a number of projects: VDFs, zero knowledge protocols, validator secure selection, -- which all make Ethereum 2.0 faster, secure, and simple. We are taking the best from the most advanced cryptographic schemes today, and sometimes invent new ones."

Fredrik Svantes (Protocol Security (EF)) - "Funding public goods/FOSS, especially on an individual level, is hard. Protocol Guild helps make this easier for individuals from across the world to partake in the future of Ethereum without also having to be part of a larger organization. By creating this sustainable effort, the Protocol Guild is helping to further provide long term health of the protocol layer, which is crucial for the applications running on top of it, by rewarding those who help build it."

Gabriel (EthereumJS) - "The sustainable and community-driven funding mechanic introduced by the Protocol guild will increasingly become, I believe, a foundation ensuring the perennity of the Ethereum ecosystem. It aligns us with our core decentralization ethos while at the same time rewarding and incentivizing long-term contributions to a groundbreaking public good."

Gary Schulte (Hyperledger Besu) - "Narrowing the incentive gap between Ethereum core-protocol work and the more lucrative application space is an important effort worth putting time and resources into. "

Holger Drewes (EthereumJS) - "The Protocol Guild is a great chance to align core protocol incentivization with the core values Ethereum stands for."

Jason Carver (Portal Network (EF)) - "We should explore many approaches for supporting collaboration. It's a valuable and hard problem to generate and maintain public goods."

Jimmy Chen (Lighthouse) - "Protocol Guild is an exciting, well-planned initiative, offering core protocol contributors in an open-source ecosystem the chance to share in its ongoing success. Its self-curated approach aligns incentives and values among members, which is key to the sustainability of Ethereum's development."

Jordan Hrycaj (Nimbus) - "Giving as much agency to independent contributors as possible."

Justin Florentine (Hyperledger Besu) - "Funding public goods is a hard problem, I look forward to making some mistakes along the way so others can learn from us. Someone's gotta try!"

Mark Mackey (Lighthouse) - "Every core developer I've talked to is well aware that they can earn significantly more working in other fields or even just at the application layer. I personally couldn't even afford to join this effort until I was able to subsidize myself. This is strange for an industry acutely aware of incentive structures. If we care about the long-term heath of the base layer, it is important we mitigate this so we can attract and retain talent."

Matt Nelson (Hyperledger Besu) - "Ethereum, future-proofed"

Matthew Keil (Lodestar) - "We live under a shadow that few in the world know exists. Blockchain is a key to shining a light into the dark corners of society, and to bring trust to the forefront. Open-source will move us toward the egalitarian utopia we all dream of, and we are the warriors to write those lines of code!"

Michael Sproul (Lighthouse) - "I love that Protocol Guild centers individual contributors ahead of organisations, and in doing so grants autonomy to all of the people working on Ethereum's base layer. We have an opportunity to prove the viability of an alternative funding model for public goods, which I hope will inspire many more experiments in radical economic coordination."

Mike Neuder (Applied Research Group (ARG)) - "I love the idea of public goods developers and maintainers receiving some of the financial upside of the projects that are built on that foundation. It helps align incentives and motivates important foundational work to continue!"

Nazar Hussain (Lodestar) - "Mass adoption is the fundamental requirement for any disruptive innovation that could change the world. And for that infrastructure involving that innovation is the key pillar. The Protocol Guild can strengthen that pillar and hence will prove to be the best operational strategy for the betterment of the Ethereum Ecosystem. "

Nishant Das (Prysm) - "The Protocol Guild helps keep core developers focused on protocol work rather than jumping to the application layer where the upside is significantly more. Having a sustainable source of funding for public goods such as protocol work is valuable. "

Phil Ngo (Lodestar) - "Protocol developers and researchers create the base foundation for which Ethereum stands upon. The amount of responsibility bestowed upon them is not necessarily incentivized monetarily nor does value generated on Ethereum trickle down to the base layer for protocol development. The protocol guild is a valuable experiment to incentivize great minds to contribute to the long-term future of Ethereum while having their basic needs met."

pk910 (ethPandaOps) - "PG is a great way to distribute donations to those who work on the open source core of ethereum. It appreciates those who spent a lot of time on getting ethereum where it is today and helps keeping those core developers attracted and motivated. "

Pooja Ranjan (Ethereum Cat Herders) - "Incentivizing contributors is a great way to keep them motivated for ongoing work. Many of us started as volunteers and I am expecting more to join in the future. Protocol Guild is a well planned initiative to incentivize community contributors to the Ethereum protocol development work."

potuz (Prysm) - "End user applications stand on the shoulders of core development. In a world with multiple competing personal and institutional interests, this project helps keeping those interests as far away from core Ethereum development as possible."

Preston Van Loon (Prysm) - "Client software powers the Ethereum network! Crafting mechanisms to support the teams working on it long into the future is an important project."

Raul Jordan (Prysm) - "The Ethereum Foundation has a philosophy of subtraction. That is, it aims to be irrelevant over time as grassroots teams take over development, research, and community. We started working on a consensus client because of the immense potential we see in introducing new engineers to build public goods for Ethereum, just as we did. We believe being an independent team that has built a popular client helps inspire others to do the same and grow the ethos of Ethereum's decentralized development. hopefully the Protocol Guild will also inspire more contributors to join us in maintaining the core protocol."

Somnath Banerjee (Erigon) - "While individual contributors may always find a way to contribute to the Ethereum protocol, a streamlined funding project like the Guild would ensure sustained collective participation of talent. This is also necessary when we dive into more ambitious goals in the future, and we need the additional set of resources beyond the current teams and (possibly) L2s"

Taran Singh (Prysm) - "I believe a future with a sustainable financial system is only possible when the people behind its success are working towards a common purpose without restriction and strings attached."

Tim Beiko (Protocol Support (EF)) - "Aligning the incentives of the people supporting the Ethereum protocol with the success of the applications built on top of it allows these motivated contributors to keep doing what they do best, building Ethereum, while also being rewarded with some of the value they help create. "

Tomasz Stanczak (Nethermind) - "Protocol Guild is a well planned and honestly designed experiment for protocol development."

Toni Wahrstätter (Applied Research Group (ARG)) - "The Protocol Guild's significance in the Ethereum ecosystem cannot be overstated. It represents a vital mechanism for ensuring continuous improvement and innovation within Ethereum. By providing focused funding and support, the Guild empowers researchers and developers to continuously improve on the status quo without the constraints of financial limitations. This dedicated funding stream is crucial in attracting and retaining top talent, who are essential for driving Ethereum's evolution. The Guild's role in underpinning Ethereum's advancement lies in its ability to sustain a fertile ground for breakthrough ideas and implementations, ensuring that Ethereum not only maintains its pioneering status but also keeps evolving to meet future challenges and opportunities."

Trenton Van Epps (Protocol Support (EF)) - "The Protocol Guild is Ethereum itself beginning to comprehend its agency - I'm happy to be part of such an important initiative. Long-term maintenance of foundational internet infrastructure should accrue material social, cultural and financial benefits to contributors."

Anonymous Member Quotes

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "A diversified community will certainly benefit the entire Ethereum ecosystem in the long-term. I believe protocol guild is the right place to be for attracting multi-dimensional talents from various areas of strength, which is an ideal way that helps to maintain a healthy eco-system for the days to come."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "A huge ecosystem is building up upon the base Ethereum protocol. If we want this base layer to remain independent and maintained like a true public good, incentive alignment is a key factor. Let's make the Protocol Guild an inspiring and successful experiment! "

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Decentralized Apps. Decentralized Ecosystem. Decentralized Funding."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Decentralized eco-systems are hard to build, and client diversity is harder but super important for a robust social code consensus on a protocol. That requires on-par commitment, perseverance, continuous innovation, learning and contributions. And not to mention community support!"

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Decentralized open source funding - what's not to love? Another example of the ethereum ecosystem paving the path for the future - this time for funding."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Ethereum base layer is a core part of the Ethereum ecosystem. Incentivising people to keep contributing to the protocol will ensure the longevity of the network as well as let applications built on top of Ethereum thrive and become more accessible to the wide public. The Protocol Guild is a good start and I am excited to be part of it."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Ethereum is bigger than the Ethereum Foundation - there's an entire community of teams and individuals doing important work. However, many depend on salaries from an entity they are associated with. The PG project fills this vacancy and lets the community fund protocol devs. This decentralized funding mechanism will be critical for attracting and retaining Ethereum protocol builders."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Ethereum is public infrastructure for the world. Building infrastructure is hard, because everyone wants to enjoy it, but no one wants to be the chump left paying the bill, which often induces zero-sum thinking and protecting one's own interests rather than contributing. Protocol Guild ensures stability for those who choose to contribute and creates an environment of positive-sum thinking, powered entirely by the Ethereum ecosystem and the value it brings to the world."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "I believe Protocol Guild will produce good incentives for Core Devs to stay focused on building the protocol."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "I believe that the Protocol Guild will help to retain and attract the talent necessary for building and maintaining the foundation of the Ethereum ecosystem."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "I believe this experiment will result in a great precedent on how to keep the core values of the Ethereum protocol alive and relevant."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "I think open source is really important today and is one of the pillars of the world today, and it is going to be more and more important in future, but as today a proper way to reward its developers is missing, so I hope that this experiment will create the basis for a wider approach that could improve the sustainability of open source development."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Incentive alignment is one of the core issues that impact the long term health of a software/network. I think the Protocol Guild helps solve a part of the incentive alignment problem by allowing members to gain exposure to the network they are developing. I feel like it will go a long way in helping keep and onboard new core developers, as well as ensure everyone has skin in the game."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "It is an interesting concept to fund the Ethereum project, provides both funds and incentives/reward for core devs to do more, and that in my opinion set this open source community a part from the rest."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "It is important that we allow those that contribute to the core protocol the opportunity to be financially rewarded on a similar scale as those that choose to operate in the private sector. Without such a mechanism, the choice to work on the core protocol is also a choice to forfeit monetary rewards offered elsewhere, which in many cases, will lead to continual attrition of talent into the private sector."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "It is important to retain talent in this industry, and the Protocol Guild provides a mechanism for doing so. Decentralized public goods funding of the researchers and developers that build the underlying technology have good chances of benefitting the applications built on top, long term."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "It should help to bring and keep talents in the Ethereum core dev group."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "It's great to see the incentive problem trying to be solved for existing and also new Guild Member (Anonymous)s."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "It's sad that those who develop open technologies have historically profited far less than those who build on top of open technologies. I think that the Protocol Guild is the start of something very important to Ethereum."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Let's make base layer r&d long term sexy!"

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Material funding makes developers feel as a part of something big and important. In turn, this motivates them to do a better job, which contributes to progress."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "maybe the log4j exploit might not have happened with more funding, let's try to make the same not happening on Ethereum."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Motivating talent towards Ethereum development is critical to stay competitive in this dynamic industry."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "PG crucially provides independent incentives for open-source contributors to maintain their contributions for a long period of time."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "PG is a powerful mechanism as it essentially decentralises funding for protocol work, and empowers anyone to step up and contribute."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "PG is one of the only ways of funding open-source software that seems like it will both actually scale, and meaningfully compensate contributors. Ethereum is built on open source software. Sustainably supporting its development is an achievement in itself, and required for Ethereum to succeed."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Protocol contributors enable the creation of value. Rewarding them proportionally to the value created can sustain their work and attract additional talent. Token contributions from successful projects is a great way to achieve that."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Protocol guild encourages the various contributors to stay in the project for a long time, work hard and gain more and more experience to achieve the agreed objectives. "

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Protocol Guild is a great way to reward Ethereum core developers for the infrastructure work that they are doing."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Protocol Guild is a platform for the community to acknowledge and appreciate the talent and dedication that keeps Ethereum going."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Protocol Guild is one of the most important efforts within Ethereum right now because it creates an independent parallel structure for supporting core development. This is very unique across the whole crypto ecosystem where we see many projects struggling from lack of decentralized support of contributors. "

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "Prysm implements the ethereum beacon chain proof of stake protocol. The beacon chain is important because eliminating proof of work is a moral imperative. Multiple implementations of the beacon chain do and should exist for the resilience of the network. prysm is written in go, which is a language designed to minimize the complexity of strongly typed, highly concurrent source code. This means that prysm can be performant, have good support for safety and correctness, while also being built from source code that is easier to read and audit than other system languages. More eyes on the implementation should lead to greater understanding of how the system works and more confidence in the network."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The backbone of Ethereum is its diversity and the resilience it fosters. In order to safeguard its evolution, it's crucial to maintain a broad array of contributors who work in sync towards common goals. The Protocol Guild underlines this approach, by establishing a sustainable incentive model that supports those committed to the continued development and protection of Ethereum's open-source protocol. This initiative plays an instrumental role in ensuring a healthy, robust, and fair landscape for Ethereum's future."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The domain is inherently complicated, so there need to be incentive to attract capable developer. Relatively speaking, it also requires pretty beefy equipment (large capacity ssd) whose cost can add up."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The Ethereum Foundation, however successful beyond what might have been reasonably expected of it, still comprises a single point of failure. The protocol guild can help ensure the values the foundation has helped shepherd can sustainably adapt in a decentralized fashion consistent with Ethereum's core principles."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The Ethereum Protocol needs careful and long-term thinking. Despite core-devs are very value driven, their short lifetime (compared to the pretended Ethereum lifetime) introduces some economic opportunity costs which can put Ethereum development at risk. Funding is just a problem that gets in the way between the protocol development and core-devs. I wish PG can fix this problem!"

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The Guild is a great way to assure the high quality of contributions while diversifying the set of contributors, leading to solid and always-improving protocols for the whole ecosystem."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The Guild will help retain existing and attract new talented contributors to the Ethereum revolution."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The Protocol Guild plays a vital role in expanding the Ethereum ecosystem by attracting skilled individuals to the blockchain space. By rewarding highly engaged participants, it provides an additional incentive to drive continuous improvement. Furthermore, the Guild fosters collaboration among key stakeholders within Ethereum, facilitating crucial discussions on pressing topics. This collective effort ultimately unites contributors under a shared objective: to enhance the decentralized world for the better."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But without the parts there is no whole. This project addresses the parts without diminishing the whole."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "This type of a public funding should be main source of funds for such a projects like Ethereum blockchain research and development."

Guild Member (Anonymous) - "With its rewards beyond casual wages or project grants, Protocol Guild inspires members to apply their efforts to the Ethereum development in unrehearsed ways and directions where forces of EF and big companies are missed. It preserves the strong community engagement over major pathways, which safeguards Ethereum's decentralization."