Protocol Guild Membership
Protocol Guild·Cayman Islands
Active Ethereum L1 core protocol contributors receive a continuously streamed share of donated funds, weighted by how long they have been contributing; there is no application, an existing member nominates you by pull request.
What you get
“Each member's share of the split contract is calculated using member-specific inputs. There are two parts to the calculation: Calculate each member's time_weight: time_weight = SQRT((start_date - months_inactive) * full_or_part_time); Normalize time_weight as a percentage: split_share = (time_weight / total_time_weights) * 100”
Can you apply
To satisfy our requirements, working groups and members must: Champion Ethereum's ethos of decentralization, credible neutrality, censorship resistance and permissionlessness; Be fully open source under an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved License; Have a regular presence in Ethereum R&D or governance venues like ethresear.ch, Ethereum Magicians, protocol calls (e.g. AllCoreDevs, breakouts, testing/interop, etc.); Be engaged in feature prototyping (e.g. EIPs, devnets, etc.); Have been contributing continuously for at least 6 months ahead of inclusion. This work must be ongoing (e.g. not a short-term or one-off project). To avoid removal from the current membership, any breaks in contribution must be shorter than 1 quarter (3 months). Beyond this length, the member should be moved to "Inactive" status until contribution resumes; Be contributing in a roughly full-time capacity. Anything less receives a partial weighting.
When
Retroactive: this rewards work you have already shipped rather than a proposal, so there is nothing to apply for up front.
What Protocol Guild funds
A collective funding mechanism for the maintainers of Ethereum's layer 1. Donations flow into onchain vesting contracts and are split among active core protocol contributors by a time weight that deliberately rewards people retroactively for how long they have been contributing. You cannot apply; membership is nominated and curated by existing members.
Everything Protocol Guild funds →Details
Protocol Guild has three components: "An eligibility framework, A member registry, Onchain donation contracts." Registry addresses and weights are published onchain quarterly to a split contract from which vested funding can be claimed. Share is calculated as time_weight = SQRT((start_date - months_inactive) * full_or_part_time), then normalised: split_share = (time_weight / total_time_weights) * 100. The retroactive character is explicit: "The earlier a contributor's start_date, the higher their overall Split share, rewarding them retroactively for historical contributions." full-weight is 1.0x (at least 40 hr/wk) and partial-weight 0.5x (20-40 hr/wk). The mainnet donation address is "an immutable vesting contract which trustlessly vests donated funds over 1 year"; separate 4-year vesting contracts exist for Protocol Guild Pledge donations, where projects donate 1% of their native token. Vesting contracts are also deployed on Arbitrum, Base and Optimism, with multisigs for Polygon, Scroll, Shape, zkSync and Zora. Protocol Guild incorporated a Cayman Islands legal entity in 2024, which currently receives 10% of vested funds to cover legal and operational costs.