The Protocol Guild is a collective of Ethereum's active core protocol contributors, who have a high-impact track record of both research and implementation work related to cryptography, distributed systems and cryptoeconomic protocol design.

These individuals are focused not only on maintaining Ethereum and the EVM as it exists today, but also on researching and implementing cutting-edge advancements, including;

• Boosting scaling and performance via L2 enhancements such as proto-danksharding and danksharding
• PoS evolutions including proposer build separation, LMD-GHOST confirmation rules and single slot finality
• EVM and execution layer improvements including light client support, new data structures (Verkle Tries) and introducing state expiry
• Cryptoeconomic research including multidimensional EIP-1559 and timing games in PoS
• Zero-knowledge proofs and cryptography research including advancements to elliptic curve cryptography

Protocol Guild aims to make working on Ethereum's core protocol economically rational on a risk-adjusted basis

Ethereum's core protocol work - a foundational public good - is of extreme importance to the long-term success of Ethereum’s ecosystem, and yet funding for this work has historically come from a select number of entities, which only provide a fraction of the financial incentives compared to other available work (apps, L2s etc.), on a risk-adjusted basis.

The Protocol Guild was created to rebalance financial incentives towards Ethereum's core protocol work (and at worst, a funder of last resort), by enabling a funding mechanism which allows Ethereum’s core protocol contributors to indirectly participate in the success of the broader ecosystem. All donations to the Protocol Guild are trustlessly vested directly to the Guild’s members over time, helping to onboard and retain Ethereum’s core protocol contributors over the long term, reducing contributor churn and facilitating knowledge handover.

Overall, the Protocol Guild aims to secure the future of Ethereum, by enabling a highly efficient way for its ecosystem and community to sustainably fund core protocol development, while rebalancing incentives for core protocol contributors.

Ethereum