Ethereum Projects Urged To Donate 1% Of Token Supply To Support Development

Protocol Guild, a collective of core Ethereum contributors, is calling on ecosystem projects with native tokens to donate a share of their tokens’ supply to support Ethereum development.

On Jan. 30, Tim Beiko, protocol support for the Ethereum Foundation, outlined the “Protocol Guild Pledge” via tweet and blog post. Beiko called on projects operating within the Ethereum ecosystem to donate 1% of their native tokens’ supply to the guild to support ongoing research and development toward Ethereum’s Layer 1 mainnet.

The post argues that Ethereum’s core contributors are in high demand and could likely generate greater monetary earnings working elsewhere within web3. It warns that without funding commitments from the broader Ethereum ecosystem, the network could become maintained by a small group of underpaid contributors.

“Relying exclusively on passion, or status, as a long-term strategy to attract and retain core contributors puts Ethereum at risk of ending up in a… situation where only a small set of (relatively) underpaid maintainers are responsible for infrastructure securing billions in value,” Beiko said. “With a commitment from Ethereum ecosystem projects to donate 1% of their native tokens to Protocol Guild, I believe we can align incentives between L1 R&D work and the rest of the crypto ecosystem.”

Protocol Guild

Protocol Guild spans around 150 members from roughly 25 teams contributing to the core Ethereum protocol including researchers, devops engineers, and client implementers.

The guild is currently preparing for its v2 restructuring, which aims to increase funding to contributors, introduce an on-chain membership registry, and adopt Moloch v3’s DAO architecture for on-chain governance.

Funding challenges

The guild hopes to attract contributions from both large and small projects alike to avoid a small pool of well-capitalized entities capturing control over the Ethereum ecosystem by committing funding to developers. The guild will exclusively receive contributions on-chain to ensure funding transparency.

“We want to prevent scenarios where a deep-pocketed actor can single-handedly exert influence over a large portion of maintainers,” the post said. “Donors should never expect anything beyond the continued support and development of the Ethereum protocol as a result of their contribution… Protocol Guild is not a way to shift core contributors’ focus to a specific initiative.”

Protocol Guild has already received funding commitments from prominent entities within the Ethereum space.

EtherFi, the leading Ethereum liquid staking protocol, committed 1% of its forthcoming token’s supply to Protocol Guild to support development on Jan. 30 prior to Beiko’s call to action.

In September, VanEck, the global asset manager with a pending application for a spot ETH exchange-traded fund, also committed to donating 10% of profits generated from its Ether ETF should the fund receive regulatory approval.