Protocol Guild
Protocol Guild is a collective of 128 individuals who steward the Ethereum protocol. Its members come from 23 teams across the ecosystem:
Client & Infrastructure teams, such as EthereumJS, Erigon, Geth, Hyperledger Besu, Lighthouse, Lodestar, Nethermind, Nimbus, Portal Network, Prysm, Solidity, Teku
Research orgs thinking about how to shape the protocol: EF Research, Ipsilon, Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE), Robust Incentives Group (RIG), TXRX
Coordination & Support for network upgrades and the teams listed above: EF Security, EF Protocol Support, EF Testing, EF DevOps, Ethereum Cat Herders
See the full list of individuals here. Two notes:
- This should not be interpreted as an exhaustive list of all Ethereum contributors. Protocol Guild membership is opt-in and there are eligible core contributors who have decided to not participate for various reasons.
- Expect the membership to change over time - it’s regularly updated through member curation and adjustments to the eligibility framework. However, even on a longer timeframe, we don’t expect PG’s membership to increase significantly.
The idea for the mechanism originated in 2021. It came about in response to recurring challenges related to the ecosystem being able to holistically fund core Ethereum infrastructure, with a specific consideration towards rebalancing the incentives towards contributing to the Ethereum protocol.
To learn more, check out the docs.
Ethereum X Optimism
As a rollup, Optimism will leverage Ethereum for settlement & security assurances. Optimism also hopes to make use of new scaling mechanisms like proto-danksharding (EIP-4844). These will reduce rollup user fees, which broadens access to Ethereum’s trust assurances to as many people around the world. 
Protocol Guild members are intimately engaged in both the long-term work required to maintain the network, as well as building these newer constructions. Given the mutual relationship between this work and the goals of the Optimism community, it makes sense to directly fund the people doing this infrastructure work.
Long-term thinking is baked into Protocol Guild’s architecture. Our members’ protocol contributions range from 9 months to 8 years, with the median having ~3 years. When any funding is received, this value is used as a “time-weighting” to allocate each members’ share relative to the whole membership. This ensures long-term contributors are properly recognized, and closely aligns with the retroactive aspect of RPGF. We also vest any funding (eg. 1 year in the Pilot, 4 years for future iterations), which will hopefully lead to a more stable set of contributors over time. Learn more about the smart contracts here.
We’re excited to be considered for this retroactive round! Your support as a prominent ecosystem participant helps to maintain the Public Good funding norms both communities should aspire to, while also rebalancing the incentives for individuals contributing to foundational infrastructure. Please reply with any questions here or on twitter and we’d be happy to answer them!