Valuable resources are produced within the Ethereum commons. The way they are produced matters to their integrity. Protocol Guild is a stewardship funding protocol which upholds that integrity.

Thanks to Barnabé, John, Josh, Paul, and Tim for review.

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Commons are productive systems which create resources for collective benefit. Some examples from the broader digital commons, include Wikipedia, Linux, and Ethereum.

In Ethereum, sets of peers produce three resources: a blockchain network, an asset, and media. The way they are produced matters to their integrity and fundamental characteristics. Taken together, these resources create a larger valuable whole we call Ethereum. These interwoven resources can be extended outside of their original production contexts, but still within the bounds of the broader commons.

Neither peers nor external capital can make complete ownership claims to these digital resources without destroying their integrity. However, open governance processes can also be acted on from a distance (in contrast to natural physical commons). In light of these conditions, capital seeks influence within the frameworks of production themselves.

1. network

• mainnet, Ethereum Layer 1, L1, chain state, history, forks, L2s

• protocols: fork choice, EIP-4844, p2p gossip, syncing

• Anyone can use or operate Ethereum network infrastructure. Each participant running a node independently chooses which protocol version to run, resulting in an emergent set of actors who agree to be bound by the same set of rules. For example: an open validator set alongside credible neutrality norms make it more difficult for internal or external actors to fully own the entire consensus process. However, value can still be extracted by purchasing agency, (e.g. Proposer-Builder Separation), or by encumbering the Proof of Stake mechanism (e.g. restaking, liquid staking tokens).

2. asset

• ether, ETH, wrapped, restaked, bridged, LSTs

• protocols: POS issuance, EIP-1559 burn

• Anyone can purchase, transfer or hold individual units of Ether as a private good. However, because the network and the software define emergent features of the asset, it cannot exist outside of either context. Actors interested in influencing its supply, characteristics, or uses must engage with the other forms of resource production.

3. media

• software, specs, EVM, p2p code, research, All Core Dev call transcripts, Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs)

• protocols/norms: open source software, permissive licensing, public by default, open governance,
rough consensus,
collaboration

• Anyone can use, modify, or contribute to technical media. The production of these artifacts are structured by technical, legal and social protocols. The permissive licensing of open source software (OSS) sidesteps the restrictive norms of commercial software, carving out a space for software media to exist on its own terms. This resource is inclusive of artifacts of the governance processes. When boxed out of media ownership, capital surfaces extractable influence by funding and directing the labor of those producing the media. Norms of openness and working in public are helpful to curtail capture, but can never fully prevent it.

Comprehensive funding information across all nonprofit and for-profit entities engaged in this media production is hard to come by, but necessary for community self-assessments. The community and labor engage, but their agency could be enhanced.

I believe that funding streams should be passed through simple protocols. They should be transparent, legible, sustainable and accountable. They should be held to the same standards of rigor that we expect of network protocols.

Protocol Guild is one such candidate funding protocol. There are a few things which make it unique in the landscape of protocol funding mechanisms (1):

1. narrow mandate

   1. just focused on funding - does not direct work - not involved in Ethereum governance, upgrades cycles

   2. Read more here

2. broad self-curation

   1. 181 members come from across all of L1 core development (client teams, research, coordination, support). the most knowledgeable people curate the membership

   2. The watershed, not one of the rivers

   3. See the eligibility frameworks and eligible projects here

3. members are individuals

   1. funding doesn’t flow to teams, companies, or projects - we wanted members to represent themselves and retain their agency

   2. See the member list here

4. 4yr onchain vesting contract

   1. this list of members is published onchain: immutable vesting contract means transparent, legible assurances for funders and members

   2. Smart contract architecture here

   3. Comprehensive funding Dune dashboard here

5. designed with time in mind

   1. Regular curation and vesting are crucial recognition that Ethereum is a resource commons being stewarded over time: in the same way, our funding streams should be allocated with that in mind. the Ethereum of 2015 is different from what we have today, just as it will look very different in 2035.

   2. per member allocations are time-weighted by months active - read more

As a mirror to our resource production, the mechanism assembles a collective whole capable of providing benefits which would be inaccessible to maintainers seeking funding on their own. Vested funding and deterministic member allocations - both onchain - create legibility and certainty for both funders and beneficiaries alike.

The challenges of capture and influence are not unique to Ethereum - see other digital commons precedents like Linux and Red Hat (2). More broadly, the history of natural commons is rife with examples of exploitation until exhaustion - often by return-seeking capital. These are incompatible logics: extract value for private gain VS cede value for shared benefit. In pursuit of its own ends, capital destabilizes the healthy equilibrium of commons management.

It's worth remembering that some historic natural commons have survived despite inhospitable contexts. Existing outside of popular awareness, continuously sustained - some for thousands of years - Inuit fishing practices (4000 years), Ifugao rice terraces (2000), Dehesa farming system (2000). In the same way, blossoming digital commons should practice the posture and develop the mechanisms necessary to ensure uncaptured longevity.

1. In another article I plan to explore the theoretical and tradeoffs bundled by in-protocol funding ie. minted de novo by the software rulesets which set how validators/miners are compensated for consensus participation but directed instead to an onchain or offchain allocation mechanism (foundation, for-profit, DAO). Our goal with Protocol Guild is to construct it robustly enough that it would be capable of taking in-protocol funding, but then scale it through opt-in norms like the 1% Pledge to never have to push that lever.

2. Capital and enclosure in software commons: Linux & Ethereum

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BONUS - reading that has informed the development of Protocol Guild and this article:

• systemantics: the systems bible - John Gall

• Ethereum is game-changing technology, literally - Virgil Griffith

• The moral character of cryptographic work - Phillip Rogaway

• Meditations on moloch - Scott Alexander

• Incorporating the Digital Commons - Benjamin Birkinbine

• Seeing like a State - James C. Scott

• Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate -  Lorraine Daston

• Emissaries guide to worlding - Ian Cheng

• One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization - Dee Hock

• The viable system model: a briefing about organisational structure - Raul Espejo

• Speech by Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew on Ministerial Salaries in Parliament