foreign
[Music]
oops can I think I left my water over
there can somebody grab that
thank you everybody who's uh here to
listen to this talk
um
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 uh
honored to be here and
um happy to educate or communicate what
we've been working on here with the
protocol Guild
so the title of the talk is funding
ethereum with the protocol Guild uh 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 uh
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
so a brief intro I'm assuming most of
you are aware of this but uh 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
um uh 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
um can depend on and use throughout
their lives 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
um 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 uh besides ethereum also
use the evm 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 uh 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
and then that brings us to the question
of how are these uh these areas of
public goods funded a big one is the
ethereum foundation
um 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
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 um uh one of the strengths
of ethereum is that it has a diversity
of approaches Kevin owaki uh formerly
the founder of git coin uh had a talk
earlier that I was on about uh 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 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 uh many
Community funding mechanisms are good it
decentralizes power and influence away
from uh single entities it celebrates
pluralism like I mentioned
um prevents influence from being siled
with individual allocators and it
strengths strengthens the
intra-community relationships
however uh
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 um
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
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 uh 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 these are the big
questions
um that came to mind
um 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
so uh when this discussion came up last
year there were
um 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 uh 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 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 uh 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
um
similarly protocol contributors are
interested in receiving funding some of
them may not be directly working for a
team but they're doing important
infrastructure work they're interested
in receiving some form of financial
compensation for the work that they're
doing but there's no single mechanism
for them to plug into and be recognized
for their work and then on top of that
some of the existing Solutions favor
teams due to the difficulty of curation
like I mentioned
the solutions favor teams and it's
really hard for them to surface many
individual contributors for example in a
grants round
um and we can't expect a single
organization to uh that's outside of
this core development or this core
infrastructure to effectively curate the
work that these people are doing you
know it's very deep technically uh 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 uh so the
response to how to address this question
is
um we should uh designate a contract on
on chain that is regularly updated by
the the members themselves so people who
are doing core contributor work uh
they're updating this membership
registry the second problem is that the
incentives are unbalanced uh 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 uh 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 the protocol
you know ethereum is uh 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
um 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
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 the third challenge uh 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
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 uh generations of
people working on the core protocol 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 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 they
send funds in whatever form they are to
investing contract over a certain amount
of time and then it goes to this
weighted registry which is regularly
updated by the the membership itself and
that's the key that it's self-curated
because you know you have a really high
signal for the membership and the fact
that you know that these are people who
are doing really crucial work I'll dive
in a little bit into eligibility and
self-curation like I mentioned to be
part of the protocol Guild it it has to
be 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 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 so we hope that
these are sufficiently balanced against
each other but this this next year is
sort of a learning period uh 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 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 there's a git coin Grant we've
tapped into some Dow treasuries who fund
back in their native token so shout out
to the people that have funded including
uniswap Lido ens noun style to name a
few as well as this Norm that we want to
pursue of one way to scale the incentive
uh the treasury sorry uh to build the
norm around allocating a percent of the
initial Supply or annual revenue so
again another shout out to True Freeze
gnosis safe and texture punks and nft
project uh they've committed to
contributing some some of their revenue
and over time we we want to build this
more and more
um we're not saying that this is the
only or best way to fund uh 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
um this 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 uh one of the cool things is
because this is all on chain anybody can
track it 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 uh the the total weighting of
their share of the the proceeds who has
contributed uh really great data source
and um awesome for transparency if
anybody's interested in tracking that so
I'm ending a little early 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 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 uh it's it's
important to have also a variety of
approaches different curators different
uh 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 so thank you and
I'm happy to take questions if there are
any we have a question here we'll give
the mic to the gentleman over there if
you have more questions please just
raise your hand or get to the end of the
line so we can quickly give you the mic
and I'll let's begin with the question
Adrian thanks um amazing initiative
thank you for giving the speech I had a
question about the recent acquisition of
uh prison
um 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
um but one could think of some potential
downsides 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
um and so you know
We Trust arbitrum if um if they start
doing some weird stuff you know there's
other options for people to choose
different clients
um and obviously if we have many more
clients their influence uh you know they
won't really have an influence
um but nevertheless you know they have
certain interests
um they might like they're probably
going to launch a token tokenomics how
do they pump their token you know these
kind of questions yeah you definitely uh
pick the hardest question
um 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
um funding the core protocol work and
like you said I don't I know them all
personally
um so I do have a bias here but I do
expect that they will maintain their
neutrality
um 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 uh 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
I saw on the other hand do we have more
questions
um what's the like let's let's say
someone's leaving the protocol Guild
what's like the process for the
off-boarding like do they have an amount
of time or has that been thought through
much uh leaving or joining leaving
um 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 have one sure how do you think
about
deciding what should be funded and how
do you sort of in a way prevent or get
ahead of not having favoritism kind of
come into play yeah
um this is something that we've been
trying to iterate on through the pilot
and one of the reasons we wanted to
start really small I mean 10 million is
uh it may seem like a large number but
split between 120 different core
contributors it's not not that massive
but we were very intentional about the
amount of money that we're raising and
and that's one of the main reasons is
because the eligibility framework isn't
going to be exactly right the first time
and we're going to need to iterate on it
and so that's part of this pilot is
figuring out
um what sort of scope we want to take on
and I think what we've learned over the
past six months since May is that it's
probably better for a more narrow scope
and to be as explicit as possible 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
uh going to get their money to go to the
right place so
um make sure that we're iterating and
starting small is how we've approached
it that's great and just out of
curiosity did you kind of compare this
thing with the retroactive funding model
and sort of what was kind of the the
pros and cons list that you made made
you kind of pick this model sure so
resurrective funding is great in that we
can also plug into that
however uh these individual teams they
don't have to apply on their own or the
the because protocol protocol Guild is
biased towards the individual
um 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 uh possibly
missing somebody who did crucial work
over the past two years they can rest
assured that this is this 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 uh 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 to any other
last questions great well please give
Trent a big round of applause thank you
[Applause]