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.
Read off the Protocol Guild page on 29 Aug 2026. Funders move amounts and eligibility without announcing it, so confirm any figure here before you count on it.