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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/6/funding-ethereum-with-the-protocol-guild/
This talk will include an overview of Ethereum Public Goods, existing funding mechanisms and their limitations, our design responses to shape the Protocol Guild, and an update on the 2022 Pilot.
Speaker(s): Trent Van Epps
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Governance & Coordination
Keywords: Public Goods,Ethereum,core devs
Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/
Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers.
Devcon 6 was held in Bogotá, Colombia on Oct 11 - 14, 2022.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/
A
A
Oops
can
I
think
I
left
my
water
over
there.
Can
somebody
grab
that?
Thank
you.
Everybody
who's
here
to
listen
to
this
talk
honored
to
be
speaking
at
Devcon.
I.
Never
really
imagined.
I
would
be
doing
that
a
couple
years
ago,
when
I
first
got
into
ethereum,
so
honored
to
be
here
and
happy
to
educate
or
communicate
what
we've
been
working
on
here
with
the
protocol
Guild.
A
So
the
title
of
the
talk
is
funding
ethereum
with
the
protocol
Guild
like
Karthik
mentioned,
my
name
is
Trent
van
apps
I
am
a
member
of
this
Guild.
However,
I
do
also
work
for
the
EF
on
the
protocol
support
team,
which
is
we
we
work
on
network
upgrades
and
generally
coordinating
the
ecosystem
around
where
the
protocol
is
going
and
how
we
can
improve
this
coordination
process.
A
So
a
brief,
intro
I'm,
assuming
most
of
you,
are
aware
of
this,
but
never
hurts
to
step
back
and
think
about
what
we're.
What
this
topic
is
so
ethereum
generally
is
a
globally
distributed
computer
that
anyone
can
use
anyone
can
access
people
can
deploy
contracts
to
it.
They
can
send
transactions
and
interact
with
it
anywhere
around
the
world.
This
means
that
ethereum
the
network,
so
mainnet
is
a
screenshot
from
etherscan
there,
and
this
is
a
public
good.
That
users
of
the
network
can
depend
on
and
use
throughout
their
lives.
A
They
can
trust
that
it's
going
to
be
a
resource
for
them.
Nobody
can
stop
them
from
using
it.
This
is
stretching
in
the
definition
of
public
it
a
little
bit
because
we
have
transaction
fees,
but
generally
we
can.
We
can
understand
it
to
be
this,
and
if
we
take
a
step
back
looking
at
the
yellow
paper,
this
is
the
ethereum
virtual
machine.
This
is
a
another
public,
good
that
ethereum
developers
core
contributors.
They
maintain
and
many
other
chains
besides
ethereum
also
use
the
evm.
A
So
these
are
two
fundamental
public
goods
infrastructure
that
people
depend
on.
They
build
companies
on
they
store
their
finances
on,
and
they're
really
important
for
people
to
actually
have
access
to,
and
if
we're
thinking
about
the
different
categories,
these
can
include.
You
know
the
research
about
where
the
protocol
is
going.
The
client
developers
who
are
implementing
the
protocol
as
it
currently
is
the
coordination
like
I,
mentioned
the
work
that
I
do,
along
with
many
others,
to
shape
Network
coordination
and
then
there's
tooling,
so
what
developers
actually
use
to
interact
with
the
chain?
A
And
then
that
brings
us
to
the
question
of
how
are
these
these
areas
of
public
goods
funded
a
big
one?
Is
the
ethereum
foundation
you're,
probably
aware
of
what
the
ethereum
foundation
is
and
what
it
does?
It
funds
a
huge
number
of
initiatives
in
the
space,
sometimes
through
direct
contributions,
sometimes
delegating
funding
to
specific
ecosystem
groups
or
things
like
the
client
incentive
program
where
it
it
gives
eth
directly
to
client
teams
to
run
validators
and
it
unlocks
over
a
specific
period
of
time
and
then
outside
of
the
ethereum
foundation.
A
There's
groups
like
optimism,
giveth
git
coin
CLR
fund,
who
run
matching
rounds,
quadratic
matching
rounds
where
the
community
can
participate
in
actually
funding
these
important
public
goods
things
that
people
depend
on
and
then
another
smaller
project,
which
you
may
not
be
aware
of,
is
called
open
grants
which
does
vested
eth
to
specific
groups.
There's
a
some
projects
that
are
using
this
to
fund
public
goods,
so
yeah,
there's
quite
a
diversity
and
I
think
this
is
one
of
the
strengths
of
ethereum
is
that
it
has
a
diversity
of
approaches.
A
Kevin
owaki,
formerly
the
founder
of
git
coin,
had
a
talk
earlier.
That
I
was
on
about
practical
pluralism
and
how
important
it
is
that
we
have
these
many
overlapping
approaches
to
how
to
fund
these
important
initiatives,
how
to
get
funding
to
people
who
are
working
on
infrastructure-
and
this
is
a
great
visualization
of
I'm
sure
I'm,
leaving
out
some
projects,
so
I
apologize.
A
But
there
are
these
projects
on
the
on
the
slide
and
many
more
who
do
the
important
work
of
getting
money
to
public
goods
infrastructure,
the
developers
who
are
actually
building
the
things
that
we
depend
on
and
I'll
Echo
that
by
by
saying
many
Community
funding
mechanisms
are
good.
It
decentralizes
power
and
influence
away
from
single
entities.
It
celebrates
pluralism
like
I
mentioned,
prevents
influence
from
being
siled
with
individual
allocators
and
it
strengths
strengthens
the
intra-community
relationships.
A
However,
especially
the
quadratic
funding
mechanisms,
they
often
use
similar
curation
techniques,
for
example,
it
weights
the
matching
pool
division
according
to
how
many
people
donate
to
a
specific
Grant-
and
this
is
not
to
say
that's
a
bad
thing
it
just
it's.
It
can
have
a
challenge
when
it
comes
to
delegating
funding
or
getting
funding
to
areas
of
the
protocol.
That
may
not
be
a
fit
for
quadratic
funding.
A
So
this
is
the
question:
is
how
can
we
curate
better,
specifically
related
to
the
core
protocol
and
then
even
more
broadly,
how
can
we
incentivize
long-term
core
protocol
contributions?
So
this
is
a
a
big
question.
That's
you
know
been
around
as
long
as
open
source
software
has
has
been
worked
on,
and
it's
not
a
new
problem
for
ethereum
people
have
talked
about
it
over
the
years.
You
know
people
join
core
development,
they
leave
core
development,
it's
something
that
will
be
with
us
as
long
as
we're
producing
software
and
modifying
the
protocol.
So
these
are.
A
These
are
the
big
questions
that
came
to
mind
over
the
years,
they've
been
a
recurring
set
of
concerns,
and
especially
last
year,
November.
The
discussion
in
the
community
began
again
about
how
can
we
properly
incentivize
contributors
to
stick
around,
while
also
making
sure
that
they're
financially
compensated?
A
So
when
this
discussion
came
up
last
year,
there
were
my
perspective
of
being
around
core
development
for
a
few
years
now
and
then
working
with
core
developers
directly
some
researchers,
we
started
to
think
about
what
sort
of
challenges
were
most
important
to
address
when
thinking
about
what
sort
of
mechanism
would
be
best
to
design
and
if
I'll
go
through
the
first
through
here
just
an
overview,
and
then
the
next
slides
detail
out
what
these
challenges
are.
So
the
first
challenge
curation
is
hard.
A
The
second,
the
incentives
are
imbalanced
and
the
third
contributor
churn
is
bad.
So
the
first
challenge
about
curation
the
ecosystem
is
very
interested
in
sponsoring
this
guy
The
Princess
and
the
magician
the
ecosystem
of
broader
individuals,
Dows
protocols,
l2s
they're
interested
in
funding
the
core
protocol,
but
they
don't
have
a
single
mechanism
to
send
funds
to
there's.
Sometimes
projects
will
publicize
their.
You
know
ethereum
address
that
you
can
send
donations
to,
but
it's
not
necessarily
easy
to
find
all
of
them
in
a
single
location.
A
You
know
it's
very
deep:
technically
it
requires
you
to
sort
of
be
embedded
within
that
work
and
it's
it's
not
reasonable
to
expect
a
single
organization
like
Bitcoin
to
really
effectively
curate
who's,
doing
the
work
at
the
core
protocol
and
and
how
they
should
receive
the
funding.
So
the
response
to
how
to
address
this
question
is:
we
should
designate
a
contract
on
on
chain
that
is
regularly
updated
by
the
the
members
themselves,
so
people
who
are
doing
core
contributor
work
they're
updating
this
membership
registry.
A
The
second
problem
is
that
the
incentives
are
unbalanced,
so
this
is
maybe
a
little
self-explanatory,
but
I'll
go
into
it.
L2S
D5
projects,
token
projects,
things
that
have
Equity,
there's
a
stronger
incentive
for
people
to
go
work
on
them
rather
than
the
core
protocol,
and
this
is
completely
rational.
You
know,
if
you're
weighing
your
options
here,
ethereum
just
doesn't
have
token
incentives
or
Equity
or
anything
that
can
similarly
be
offered
by
applications
or
l2s.
However,
it
still
needs
to
attract
and
retain
talent
to
evolve.
A
The
protocol
you
know
ethereum,
is
an
infrastructure
influx.
There's
a
lot
of
changes
that
we'd
like
to
make
to
better
scale
to
become
more
secure
and
we
need.
We
need
really
smart
people
working
on
these
problems,
but
we
should
be
compensating
them
fairly.
It's
totally
rational
to
pursue
something
with
you
know:
greater
Financial,
upside
and
I.
Don't
follow
people
for
that
or
for
other
protocols
leveraging
these
these
incentives.
However,
as
the
broader
ecosystem
continues
to
grow,
competition
for
these
talented
individuals
is
really
going
to
only
increase.
A
Of
course,
Financial
motivations
aren't
the
only
or
best
motivator
for
people.
We
just
want
to
recognize
that
it's
just
one
tool
in
our
tool
set
that's
being
under
leverage,
so
the
problem
of
imbalance.
We
can
address
this
by
tapping
into
the
the
financial
value
that
all
of
these
amazing
projects
are
building
on
top
of
ethereum
and
getting
them
to
contribute
some
of
them
back
to
the
people
who
are
working
on
the
core
protocol.
A
The
third
challenge:
exclu,
excuse
my
rushed
Graphics
here,
but
the
contributor
churn
is
a
challenge
when
it
comes
to
the
core
protocol,
it
can
take.
You
know
six
to
12
months
for
somebody
joining
a
client
team
to
really
start
to
understand
how
that
they
can
contribute
to
the
client
effectively
and
start
making
a
meaningful
impact
on
the
work,
so
there's
a
steep
learning
curve
for
new
contributors
to
to
deliver
value.
However,
the
contributor
value
does
grow
over
time.
If
you
stick
around,
but
there's
less
incentives
to
stick
around.
A
If
you're
once
you're
an
expert,
you,
you
sort
of
reach
a
certain
level
of
expertise
with
a
client
code
base,
for
example.
So
one
of
the
things
we
thought
about
how
to
address
this
contributor
churn
is
that
membership
eligibility
to
any
sort
of
public
goods
funding
mechanism.
It
should
only
be
after
six
months
of
regular
contributions
and
that
assets
should
invest
over
time
in
order
to
incentivize
this
to
incentivize
this
knowledge
transfer
between
different
cohorts,
different
generations
of
people
working
on
the
core
protocol.
A
You
know
there
are
some
amazing
people
doing
work
today
that
maintain
clients
and
make
ethereum
infrastructure
in
the
protocol
possible,
but
eventually
they're
going
to
move
on
or
retire,
if
we're
still
around
in
so
many
years,
and
we
need
to
make
sure
that
the
next
generation
of
people
that
are
going
to
be
maintaining
this
software
are
ready
and
incentivized
to
stick
around.
Similarly,
so,
as
you
may
have
guessed,
I'm
describing
the
protocol
Guild,
which
started
as
an
idea
last
November
and
we've
been
building
it.
A
Since
then,
we
worked
with
a
team
called
Xerox
splits
to
design.
Well,
they
already
had
a
split
contract,
but
we
worked
with
them
to
design
a
vesting
contract
and
it's
a
collective
of
today
119
ethereum
contributors
and
we're
working
to
rebalance
the
incentive
address.
All
those
challenges
like
I
laid
out
in
those
previous
slides
and
here's
a
very
simple
diagram,
the
sponsors.
These
can
be
anybody
in
the
ecosystem,
individuals,
projects,
large
scale,
small,
doesn't
matter
anybody
who's
interested
in
giving
back
to
a
really
highly
curated
set
of
core
protocol
contributors.
A
You
know
something:
Beyond,
a
typo
in
a
client
code
base
or
something
and
Beyond
six
months.
We
want
to
make
sure,
there's
a
there's,
a
high
threshold
for
people
who
are
actually
really
committed
to
this
infrastructure
work
and
touching
on
self-curation
again.
The
the
reason
this
is
super
important
is
because
it
avoids
intermediation
between
external
curating
entities,
which
may
or
may
not
be
really
close
to
the
work
that
people
are
doing
so.
A
Like
I
said,
you
get
a
really
high
signal
curation,
and
you
can
be
assured
that
this
is
going
to
be
consistently
updated
over
time
with
a
membership.
That's
really
contributing
to
the
core
protocol
and
it's
incentive
compatible
because
adding
new
members
dilutes
existing
ones.
So
you
don't
have
to
worry
about
new
members,
just
adding
anybody
in
the
ecosystem
there's
a
cost
to
properly
curating.
However,
if
eligible
contributors
are
not
being
added,
then
it
removes
any
legitimacy.
That's
built
up
over
time
and
external
funders
won't
continue
funding
this
mechanism.
A
So
we
hope
that
these
are
sufficiently
balanced
against
each
other,
but
this
this
next
year
is
sort
of
a
learning
period
over
yeah
it's
a
learning
period,
so
we've
launched
a
one-year
pilot
to
test
out
the
assumptions
about
the
challenges
that
we
wanted
to
address,
as
well
as
the
assumptions
about
what
the
best
ways
to
approach
them
are.
How
long
should
vesting
be
things
like
this?
A
So
we're
working
on
that
we,
we
launched
the
the
protocol
itself
in
May
of
this
year
and
it'll
run
until
May
of
next
year
and
so
far
we've
raised
11
million
in
sponsoring
assets
and,
like
I
said,
these
will
vest
for
one
year
overtime
again
to
incentivize
long-term
contributions,
knowledge
transfer
between
different
cohorts
of
core
contributors,
and
it's
it's
been
very
awesome
to
plug
into
existing
funding
infrastructure.
To
touch
on
this
idea
of
pluralism
in
funding.
A
So
again,
another
shout
out
to
True
Freeze
gnosis,
safe
and
texture,
punks
and
nft
project
they've
committed
to
contributing
some
some
of
their
revenue
and
over
time.
We
we
want
to
build
this
more
and
more.
We're
not
saying
that
this
is
the
only
or
best
way
to
fund
through
you
know,
initial
token
allocation,
but
we're
very
excited
to
explore
this
with
the
broader
ecosystem,
we're
already
starting
some
discussions
with
l2s
about
how
they
can
directly
fund
this.
A
This
incentive
mechanism-
and
one
thing
we
really
want
to
be
intentional
about-
is
documenting
the
outcomes
to
see
you
know.
Does
this
really
work?
Does
this
increase
the
incentive
to
contribute
to
the
core
protocol?
We
hope
it
will,
but
we
want
to
make
sure
that
the
community
hold
us
accountable
and
we
really
iterate
and
improve
the
mechanism
over
time.
One
of
the
cool
things
is
because
this
is
all
on
chain.
Anybody
can
track
it.
A
So
if
you
go
to
Dune,
analytics
and
search
protocol,
all
Guild
or
something
monkey,
sorry
I
can't
remember
the
name
of
the
contributor,
but
we've
been
working
with
someone
to
put
together
this
dashboard
and
anybody
can
track
the
finances
of
this
on-chain
protocol.
Incentivization
mechanism,
which
is
pretty
amazing.
You
can
see
the
membership,
the
the
total
weighting
of
their
share
of
the
the
proceeds
who
has
contributed
really
great
data
source
and
awesome
for
transparency,
if
anybody's
interested
in
tracking
that
so
I'm
ending
a
little
early.
A
If
there
are
any
questions,
I'd
love
to
talk
with
anybody
who
wants
to
learn
more
about
the
mechanism
if
you're
part
of
a
D5
project
or
something
that's
planning
to
launch
a
token.
Please
do
come
talk
to
me
or
any
of
the
members
there's
a
ton
of
core
developers
here
who
are
part
of
this
project
that
QR
code
I
think
takes
you
to
the
docs
or
somewhere
else
relevant,
so
yeah,
and
then
there's
some
bitly
links.
A
If
anybody's
curious
to
explore
more
that's
my
handle
and
then
you
can
follow
the
the
organization
itself
at
protocol
Guild
on
Twitter
yeah.
So
thank
you
for
the
time
again
to
the
Defcon
organizers
for
giving
me
space
to
talk
about
this
public
goods.
Funding
is
incredibly
important
and
it's
it's
important
to
have
also
a
variety
of
approaches,
different
curators
different
mechanisms,
so
that
we
can
make
sure
that
the
incentives
to
contributing
back
to
the
ethereum
protocol
in
the
context
of
amazing
application
layer
projects
is
maintained
over
time.
B
C
Adrian
thanks
amazing
initiative.
Thank
you
for
giving
the
speech
I
had
a
question
about
the
recent
acquisition
of
prison.
I'm
curious.
If
you
could
comment
on
that,
like
obviously
on
one
hand,
that
means
that
there's
I
guess
less
pressure
on
the
protocol
Guild
to
fund
those
developers,
on
the
other
hand,
is
that
the
kind
of
outcome
that
we
strive
for
now,
obviously
arbitrum
they're,
a
they're,
a
good
actor
I
think
they
have
a
great
reputation,
but
one
could
think
of
some
potential
downsides.
C
So
I'm
just
wondering
how
does
a
protocol
Guild
feel
about
those
kind
of
outcomes?
What
sort
of
downsides
do
you
see
undue
influence?
I
mean?
Obviously
we
have
like
nine
teams
in
total
who
are
contributing
to
this.
If
I'm
not
mistaken,
and
so
you
know
We
Trust
arbitrum,
if
if
they
start
doing
some
weird
stuff,
you
know
there's
other
options
for
people
to
choose
different
clients
and
obviously,
if
we
have
many
more
clients
their
influence,
you
know
they
won't
really
have
an
influence,
but
nevertheless
you
know
they
have
certain
interests.
C
A
You
definitely
pick
the
hardest
question:
it's
given.
They
announced
yesterday
so
yeah.
This
is.
This
is
really
interesting
and
digs
into
it
touches
a
lot
of
different
areas
about
protocol
governance,
incentivization
funding,
the
core
protocol
work
and,
like
you
said,
I,
don't
I
know
them
all
personally,
so
I
do
have
a
bias
here,
but
I
do
expect
that
they
will
maintain
their
neutrality.
A
I
can't
comment
super
deeply
on
it
again
because
it
just
happened
and
I'm
still
digesting
still
understanding
the
the
mechanics
of
it,
but
I
don't
expect
that
there
would
be
any
undue
influence
exerted
by
the
L2
and,
like
you
said,
if
there
were
red
flags
starting
to
appear
I'm,
pretty
sure
the
community
would
call
it
out
pretty
fast
and
either
arbitrim
or
the
Prismatic
team
would
adjust
course
pretty
quickly,
but
yeah.
That's
the
short
answer.
D
A
If
they're
leaving
so
they
can,
they
can
claim
any
assets
from
vesting
at
any
point,
but
there
are
windows
in
the
contract
so
once
they
leave
contributing
core
protocol
work,
they
can,
they
won't
receive
future
vesting,
but
they
they
can
claim
at
any
time.
It's
permissionless
like
that.
Does
that
answer?
Yes,
anybody
else,
I.
A
A
So
if
you're
working
on
a
research
team,
if
you're
contributing
to
a
client
code
base
or
doing
coordination,
we
want
to
make
sure
that
it's
it's
very
clear
that
these
are
people
who
are
contributing
value,
because
if
you
aren't
explicit
or
don't
maintain
rigor
in
the
eligibility
process
again,
the
mechanism
will
lose
its
value.
It'll
become
a
lossy
signal
for
people
who
are
interested
in
contributing
to
something.
That's
that's
going
to
get
their
money
to
go
to
the
right
place
so
make
sure
that
we're
iterating
and
starting
small
is
how
we've
approached
it.
A
A
A
It's
you
can
imagine
it's
sort
of
like
a
collective
or
a
union
that
represents
them
and
makes
it
very,
very
straightforward
for
people
interested
in
funding
like
like
optimisms
retroactive
funding
program,
they
can
just
point
it
to
a
single
address
and
scale
it
accordingly.
However,
much
they'd
like
to
give
back,
rather
than
possibly
missing
somebody
who
did
crucial
work
over
the
past
two
years,
they
can
rest
assured
that
this
is.
This.
A
Is
a
mechanism
that's
going
to
be
very,
very
tightly
curated,
but
yeah
I'm
super
excited
to
plug
into
retroactive
funding,
continue
to
have
a
good
coin.
Grant
things
like
that
is
all
possible
and
I'm
sure
there
will
be
even
more
mechanisms
in
the
future
that
are
a
good
fit
for
these
types
of
things.
Awesome.