Safeguarding Ethereum's Soul: Protocol Guild and governing the digital commons
Dec 10, 2023
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Trent Van Epps, part of the Ethereum Foundation and Protocol Guild, discusses the governance of Ethereum and the need for alternative funding. They explore the connection between Ethereum's governance and open source culture, preservation of Ethereum's history, and supporting contributors. They also explore Van Eck's Ethereum futures ETF and compare Bitcoin and Ethereum in supporting structured financial products. Lastly, they discuss solidarity primitives and the role of Protocol Guild in unifying the Ethereum ecosystem.
Ethereum's governance process involves a broad global community, with discussions occurring online to facilitate widespread participation.
Protocol Guild enables direct funding for Ethereum's core development, ensuring long-term stewardship and sustainability.
Protocol Guild serves as a strategy for long-term resilience, pooling resources and distributing funds to incentivize core contributors and preserve institutional knowledge.
Deep dives
Ethereum Governance Structures
Ethereum operates on a governance structure borrowed from Bitcoin, where technical specifications for protocol changes are discussed and debated on online forums. This process involves various forums and calls where the Ethereum community debates, refines, and reaches a consensus on proposed protocol changes. These changes are then implemented through network upgrades or hard forks. The governance process prioritizes a broad global community, with discussions occurring online to facilitate widespread participation. Ethereum's governance structure is decentralized, with various organizations and individuals actively engaged in shaping the protocol's future.
Protocol Guild: Funding the Ethereum Commons
Protocol Guild is an initiative focused on funding the core development of Ethereum as a digital commons. It brings together a collective of individuals who work on research, client teams, testing, dev ops, coordination, and other areas essential to Ethereum's core development. The Protocol Guild framework maintains a list of these individuals and enables direct funding through a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. This funding mechanism allows the broader Ethereum ecosystem to support the Ethereum commons directly, without relying on individual entities or intermediaries. The funding process is aimed at ensuring the long-term stewardship and sustainability of Ethereum's core protocol.
Comparing RPGF and Protocol Guild
RPGF (Retroactive Public Goods Funding) and Protocol Guild are two different approaches to public goods funding in the Ethereum ecosystem. While RPGF looks back and rewards work that has already been done, Protocol Guild focuses on providing ongoing funding for the core development and stewardship of Ethereum. RPGF emphasizes tracking granular contributions for financial rewards, while Protocol Guild operates more like a UBI (Universal Basic Income) for individuals involved in Ethereum's core development. Both mechanisms have their strengths and challenges, and Protocol Guild is open to engaging within the RPGF framework to ensure sustainable funding for Ethereum's dependencies.
Protocol Guild: A Strategy for Long-Term Resilience
Protocol Guild is seen as a strategy for long-term resilience in the Ethereum ecosystem. It provides a credible alternative to individual client teams or the Ethereum Foundation itself, allowing a collective approach to the stewardship of the core protocol. The guild serves as a mechanism for preserving institutional knowledge and incentivizing core contributors to stay involved. By pooling resources and distributing funds to members based on their time and contributions, Protocol Guild aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and development of the Ethereum network.
Solidarity Primitives and the Importance of Collective Funding
Protocol Guild is a manifestation of solidarity within the Ethereum community, specifically among those involved in building core infrastructure. It demonstrates the importance of collective funding and support for the sustainability of the network. By using solidarity primitives, Protocol Guild creates a framework for funding and distributing resources among the members. This mechanism goes beyond financial incentives, allowing contributors to express their shared values and commitment to the common good. The guild acts as a representation of the collective work performed by core protocol contributors, offering a way to bridge the gap between purely financial motivations and the larger goals of open and decentralized systems.
In this episode I spoke with Trent Van Epps, who is part of the Ethereum Foundation and a key member of Protocol Guild (PG). PG is a collective of 152 Ethereum core protocol contributors who are curated to receive public good funding from ecosystem sponsors. In turn, this is meant to balance incentives for contributors to work on the Ethereum protocol and prevent high contributor turnover.
During the interview we discuss how Ethereum is actually governed more publicly than people realize, the need for alternatives to venture capital, and how other digital commons like the Linux OS is governed. We also deep dive into how PG works and why their vision for public goods funding is different than others.
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