Description
Protocol Guild operates a mechanism that funds Ethereum's layer 1 research and development maintainers in proportion to their collaborative contributions over time. It consists of three core components: an eligibility framework that determines which contributors qualify for funding, an active member registry maintained using that framework, and onchain split contracts (deployed on Ethereum Mainnet, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, Scroll, Shape, ZKsync, and Zora) where donations are vested and claimed by registry members according to published weights. Protocol Guild does not participate in or influence day-to-day stewardship of the Ethereum protocol, which continues to occur in venues like All Core Devs calls, ethresear.ch, and the Magicians forum; it is solely focused on soliciting and distributing funding to eligible Ethereum L1 R&D contributors, functioning as a commons-based compensation mechanism for the developers who build and maintain the protocol.