ether.fi, Taiko, and other projects have recently donated to Protocol Guild, while LayerZero has enforced mandatory user donations, sparking widespread attention and discussion within the community, along with some confusion and questions.

As a solid backbone for Ethereum L1 development and maintenance, Protocol Guild plays a crucial role in the ecosystem. However, details about membership requirements, funding received, and donation release mechanisms behind this mysterious yet powerful organization remain largely undisclosed. This article aims to delve into these aspects and provide insights into Protocol Guild.

What is Protocol Guild?

Protocol Guild is an organization dedicated to Ethereum L1 development and maintenance. It aims to support core contributors within the Ethereum ecosystem through native token incentives, ensuring the network’s robust growth and continuous innovation.

Since early 2022, Protocol Guild has designed its mechanisms and started recruiting members. In May of the same year, Protocol Guild launched the Protocol Guild Pilot program. After two years of careful operation and continuous improvement, by the end of January 2024, Protocol Guild disclosed its official commitments and concluded the pilot project. It also initiated PGv2, aiming to identify Ethereum L1 development contributors on-chain. This is facilitated through a time-weighted list and clear membership criteria, showcasing current contributors and their contribution durations.

Protocol Guild recommends that Ethereum-based projects allocate 1% of their native tokens to donate to Protocol Guild. This initiative aims to attract and retain high-quality contributors by offering significant potential returns, ensuring these tokens ultimately benefit valuable contributors. Importantly, this 1% native token allocation is not released all at once but gradually over 4 years.

Why choose 1%? Protocol Guild’s rationale is that if 33% to 66% of projects adopt this donation standard, each member could potentially receive annual returns ranging from $500,000 to $1 million on average.

Currently, Protocol Guild has accumulated donations worth $76 million (current value). Over the past year, members have received a median donation amount of $54,000. Concurrently, the membership has grown from an initial 90 members to the current 177 members.

Who are the current members of the Protocol Guild?

Protocol Guild has now gathered 177 members, primarily from Ethereum Foundation members and Ethereum mainnet client teams. These client teams include Geth, EthereumJS, Erigon, Hyperledger Besu, Lighthouse, Lodestar, Nethermind, Prysm, Reth, Nimbus, Teku, among others, with each client team contributing between 6 to 15 members to Protocol Guild. This means client contributors make up nearly 60% of Protocol Guild’s total membership.

Additionally, Protocol Guild members encompass Ethereum Foundation application research groups (ARG), ethPandaOps (an Ethereum Foundation subgroup), the Ipsilon development team (focused on EVM research), Ethereum Foundation’s Portal Network (dedicated to redefining how resource-constrained devices participate in the Ethereum network), as well as Protocol Support, Cryptography, Consensus R&D, Robust Incentives Group, Testing, and other critical teams.

Some notable members include Tim Beiko and Danny Ryan from the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Support team, and Justin Drake from the Consensus R&D team. However, it’s important to note that Vitalik Buterin is currently not listed among the members of Protocol Guild.

What donations do Protocol Guild members receive?

Protocol Guild’s vigorous development is greatly supported by generous donations from numerous projects. Which projects have donated to Protocol Guild, and how do members of Protocol Guild benefit from these donations?

ether.fi was the first project to commit to donating to Protocol Guild, pledging 1% of its token supply to support the ongoing development of Ethereum, before Protocol Guild’s commitment was disclosed at the end of January this year.

Following this, other projects like DeFi lending protocol PWN, Ethereum Layer2 project Taiko based on zkRollup, decentralized lending pool Ethereum Credit Guild, modular decentralized storage Layer2 project EthStorage, and several Meme projects have also followed suit by allocating 1% of their token supplies to Protocol Guild.

In addition to these 1% token commitments, Protocol Guild has received various donations during its pilot phase, including 500,000 UNI tokens, 200,000 ENS tokens, 2 million LDO tokens, 3 million ARB tokens, and more.

Source: Dune https://dune.com/protocolguild/protocol-guild

Even the US spot Bitcoin ETF issuer Bitwise recently pledged to donate 50% of the proceeds from its Ethereum advertising NFTs to Protocol Guild. Similarly, last September, another ETF issuer, VanEck, announced plans to donate 10% of profits from its Ethereum futures ETF to Protocol Guild, as a gesture of gratitude to Ethereum contributors over the past decade.

Just days ago, during the token airdrop claiming process, the LayerZero Foundation implemented a mandatory donation requirement, asking airdrop recipients to donate $0.1 USD in USDC, USDT, or native ETH for each ZRO claimed, with these funds directly benefiting Protocol Guild. This initiative is expected to result in donations totaling approximately $18.5 million USD. Additionally, the LayerZero Foundation will match all donations, potentially up to $10 million USD.

According to Dune Analytics, Protocol Guild has now received donations valued at over $76 million USD, with ether.fi and Taiko’s contributions accounting for 66% of this total. Including LayerZero’s mandatory donations, the total amount received by Protocol Guild could exceed $100 million USD.

As of this month, the median donation amount received by each Protocol Guild member over the past 12 months is $54,000 USD. It is projected to increase to $81,000 USD in the coming 12 months. Over the next four years, $57 million USD in donation funds will be allocated and distributed to Protocol Guild members, based solely on the donations received to date.

What are the qualifications to become a member of the Protocol Guild?

Protocol Guild serves as a donation and fund distribution mechanism for Ethereum developers and maintainers. To qualify, according to Protocol Guild’s official documentation:

Projects/organizations must be fully open-source.

Regular activity in Ethereum specification repositories, research forums, feature prototype design, and routine Ethereum protocol contributions is required.

Focus on protocol specification research, Ethereum core protocol maintenance and development, including contributions to clients like Erigon, EthereumJS, Geth, Hyperledger Besu, Lighthouse, Lodestar, Nethermind, Nimbus, Prysm, Teku, Reth, etc., as well as research and implementation of potential protocol changes or Protocol Guild-related research.

However, meeting these conditions is foundational and does not guarantee membership. Applicants must have worked continuously for at least 6 months in their relevant project/organization, expect ongoing work, and ensure no interruptions in contributions exceeding one quarter. For part-time members, benefits correspondingly decrease based on actual contributions.

Benefits for members are proportionate to the square root of their Ethereum contribution time in months, ensuring fair rewards. Currently, new members seem to require nomination and invitation by existing members, followed by a review and discussion process among all members. Disclosure of conflicts of interest between nominators and nominees is necessary to maintain fairness and transparency.

How are Protocol Guild donations released?

Protocol Guild’s mechanism for releasing donated funds centers around its smart contract architecture. Leveraging a smart contract created by Splits, Protocol Guild manages the attribution, distribution, and flow of donated funds. All donations are processed through a 4-year vesting contract on the main network, which assigns funds to a designated wallet (Pass-Through Wallet). Subsequently, this wallet sends the funds to a splitting contract to distribute them according to each member’s contribution share.

The splitting contract includes addresses of all Protocol Guild members and their respective allocated fund shares. It is updated quarterly to reflect changes in membership, additions and departures of members, and adjustments in individual member weights.

In addition, Protocol Guild utilizes DAOhaus’s Moloch V3 contract for on-chain governance, granting each member equal voting rights to approve or reject changes in membership status. Once decisions are made, Protocol Guild’s multisig is responsible for implementing these changes and updating the splitting contract to reflect the latest member roster and fund allocations.

Within Ethereum’s expansive ecosystem, Protocol Guild stands out with its unique donation and fund distribution mechanisms, attracting core contributors dedicated to Ethereum’s development and maintenance. Serving as a bridge between funds and contributors, Protocol Guild not only ensures fair allocation of funds but also injects continuous momentum into the thriving development of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Reference: https://protocol-guild.readthedocs.io/

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