0:09

Hello everyone , you're listening to the

0:12

Blockchain Socials podcast . I

0:14

am Josh and I am here

0:16

in Istanbul during

0:18

DevConnect and I am with a

0:20

friend of mine , trent Van

0:22

Epps . He is a member of

0:24

Protocol Guild , which is a pretty

0:27

big public goods funder in

0:29

the Ethereum Core protocol ecosystem

0:32

. He also is a

0:34

guy at the EF doing

0:37

coordination around the protocol who

0:40

has been working on some pretty cool things . We're

0:43

going to talk about Protocol Guild in

0:45

a bit , but first we're

0:47

going to talk a bit about Ethereum

0:50

and its very elusive

0:52

governance structures that maybe

0:55

Trent can help us illuminate

0:58

and learn more about . So

1:00

, hi , trent , how are you ?

1:02

Hi Josh . Thank you for having me Long

1:08

time listener , first time caller . Yeah

1:11

, it's an honor to actually be here

1:14

and , well , metaphorically

1:16

, on the podcast . But yeah , I'm excited to talk

1:18

about Protocol Guild and maybe

1:21

help some people understand what this thing

1:23

is and how it relates to Ethereum governance

1:25

.

1:26

Yeah , I mean metaphorically you're here , but

1:28

also physically in my apartment

1:30

In every way .

1:32

we're here listening to the cats meow

1:34

outside .

1:36

So , yeah , so maybe to start off , ethereum

1:40

, as everybody knows , it is one

1:42

of the largest blockchains

1:44

out there . It's one of the largest market

1:47

caps of cryptocurrency . Ether is

1:50

also the first one to put

1:52

out or to create , like make

1:54

, smart contracts , I guess , in reality founded by Vitalik

1:56

Buterin all that context that , in

1:58

case people don't know and

2:01

it has been able to kind of bring

2:03

together many different types of people

2:06

all kind of around

2:09

the blockchain world , as

2:11

we see here now at DevConnect

2:14

and kind of like , at

2:16

least for me . I'm sort of I don't even

2:18

really know that much about the governance

2:21

around Ethereum . I just kind of get told

2:23

hey , devconnect is going to happen in

2:25

Istanbul and there's going to be 100 different events here

2:27

. You should all come and there's going to be a lot

2:29

of people from Ethereum . But

2:32

yeah , maybe do you want to start with explaining

2:34

a bit how Ethereum works

2:36

as far as its governance structures

2:38

?

2:40

Yeah , so it borrows a lot , at least from

2:42

the frameworks that

2:44

people operate

2:47

within . It borrows directly from Bitcoin

2:49

, which borrowed from , I believe , the Python

2:52

community , and

2:54

in Ethereum it's called the EIP process . This

2:57

is where you , in

2:59

so many words , write up a technical specification

3:02

of a change or a way you can see

3:04

the protocol operating in the future , and

3:07

there's discussion around it on

3:09

text forums , things like Ethereum research

3:11

or E3 search or the

3:13

Ethereum magicians forum People

3:17

debate the merits , people discuss

3:19

how it could be better , how it could be improved , whether it's

3:21

a good fit for the protocol now , and

3:25

some of these eventually get included in

3:27

the protocol , and

3:30

so one of the forums where people discuss

3:32

changes is called All Core Devs

3:34

ACD . There's a couple different ones

3:36

, or there's some testing

3:38

calls or one specifically related

3:40

to the specific

3:43

upgrades , for example , data availability

3:45

sampling . There might be a specific call related to that

3:47

. That happens every couple weeks and people

3:49

will talk about a topic and come

3:53

to a rough consensus on what the specs

3:55

should be , what the implementation should look

3:57

like , what trade-offs should

3:59

be optimized for , and then it eventually

4:01

makes it to mainnet as part of

4:03

a network

4:06

upgrade , or historically

4:09

called hard forks . But I like

4:11

network upgrade better because it has some

4:14

very specific connotations of like less contentious

4:16

. Yeah , yeah , like the Ethereum classic . And

4:19

Ethereum split was a hard fork because

4:21

the community split , but typically these

4:24

things aren't contentious , it's just the community

4:26

introducing a new set of

4:28

protocol features that everyone

4:30

is on board with . For

4:33

example , the merge is it

4:35

was technically a hard fork , but it's much

4:37

more of a network upgrade because it brings in proof

4:40

of stake . So all of these processes

4:42

, typically most

4:47

of the time they're async . Obviously , we're here in DevConnect

4:50

and people are talking and meeting in person , but because

4:52

Ethereum is such a broad

4:55

global community , by default

4:57

people are talking online

4:59

in text . They're

5:02

. You know it's a distributed process

5:04

where people slowly come to consensus . That is

5:06

maybe not as fast as having everybody in the same

5:08

office , but in the end it allows

5:11

for a much broader participation . And this

5:13

is maybe one of the fundamental aspects

5:15

of Ethereum's stewardship

5:18

process as a

5:21

distributed system is that

5:23

it's not done by any

5:25

single corporation . Obviously , it's not done

5:27

by any single organization , even like the

5:30

EF , for example . A lot of people have this anchoring

5:32

bias that the EF is this director

5:36

of where the protocol is

5:38

going and what it's looking like . But in reality

5:40

, there's , I would say , 20

5:42

to 30 , maybe even more a

5:45

few that I'm not aware of organizations

5:47

and teams within those organizations , and

5:50

then the individuals within those teams that

5:52

are actively engaged , so

5:54

probably on the order of hundreds of

5:56

individuals who are helping

5:58

to shape what Ethereum is

6:00

today and what it could be in the future .

6:03

So my understanding is that again

6:06

, or like something that people are

6:09

not super aware of or would be surprised

6:11

by , is that a lot of these discussions

6:13

around potential changes

6:15

to the protocol are public

6:18

discussions . If

6:20

you take the time

6:22

to go into the forums , you'll find the link to

6:24

join the Zoom call , which

6:27

will have where the discussion will actually take place

6:30

, and that's , I think

6:32

, funnily enough , how you got

6:34

involved in the Ethereum ecosystem

6:36

. Do you want to talk a bit about that ? Because

6:38

I think a lot of times people assume that

6:41

it is very shady in

6:43

many ways , but actually there is . Things

6:46

are very public is just that maybe

6:49

the discussions are so technical

6:51

that a lot of people don't

6:53

even want to go .

6:55

Yeah , I mean , I definitely

6:57

get that impression , or I can

6:59

understand why people have that impression . Maybe

7:03

more inaccessible

7:05

it feels inaccessible rather

7:07

than it being purposefully obscured

7:10

or hidden away from people . But yeah , so

7:12

from my personal story , I

7:15

am not a developer in any

7:17

way . I mean , I've written some SQL queries

7:19

and done visual coding things , but I

7:22

don't know how to write code . But

7:24

at least now I'm deeply embedded within

7:27

engineering culture and developers

7:30

, everyday researchers these are the people

7:32

I talk to . But I went to school for architecture

7:35

and design and I found

7:38

Ethereum and found the All Core Devs call

7:40

years ago and just started attending

7:43

the calls . Like you said , the

7:45

Zoom link is I believe it's public

7:47

for most of them . Some of them , some of the smaller

7:49

, more focused ones are invite only . For

7:52

example , I think the testing call is like if you're

7:54

on a team that is specifically

7:56

concerned with this , they will add you to the invite , but

7:58

the All Core Devs call , anybody

8:00

can show up , you can add something to

8:03

the agenda and obviously

8:06

there's some discretion that the person running the call

8:08

has to add it to the agenda

8:10

. But if it's a technical

8:13

topic that fits within the

8:15

scope of the call , it's like discussing the Ethereum

8:17

protocol and , for example , the

8:20

upcoming network upgrade , there's

8:23

a very good chance it'll just be included and you'll be able to

8:25

state your piece and discuss it On

8:28

a pretty . It

8:30

has pretty wide reach . It's not like the

8:35

public call is unimportant

8:37

and there are private calls that are happening that are

8:39

where the decisions are actually made . The

8:41

public call is actually pretty significant . This is where

8:44

the stewards of the protocol

8:46

, the people who are actually engaged with shaping

8:48

it , come to talk about

8:50

things , and so , yeah , you can just show

8:52

up , and that's what I did for many years

8:54

, Not really sure

8:57

what I was doing , but I found it interesting enough

8:59

to observe the

9:01

process , see the relationships

9:04

that people had , and , yeah

9:06

, that's open today for anyone to

9:08

still do .

9:09

Really , it sounds to me like this

9:11

is very heavily linked to kind of open

9:14

source culture , of

9:16

open source development , which a lot of people just don't know

9:18

that much about unless they are in open

9:20

source development . It's

9:23

like practices that have already been going

9:25

on , at least since you guys took

9:27

from Python . There's

9:30

no on chain governance

9:34

structures , which is interesting because

9:36

what I've read is that Vitalik didn't

9:38

want to do that from the get-go

9:40

because that was , like , I think , probably I mean probably

9:43

generally a good decision because nobody knew how

9:45

to make smart contracts in the first place , and

9:49

so there is no on-chain governance . But what that means

9:51

? Well , it means many things and we'll

9:54

maybe actually I'll save that question for later but

9:56

the people who are involved in

9:58

kind of like this open-source development governance

10:01

or like the institutions I imagine many of

10:03

them would be like the clients of

10:05

Ethereum , so like Nimbus

10:08

or Aragon or Prism

10:10

or all these big clients

10:13

that have to add

10:16

the protocol upgrades to

10:18

their clients , which then gets spread out to everybody

10:20

who's running their clients , and a client

10:22

is just basically like the kind of like

10:24

the piece of code that you run in

10:27

order to be able to run an Ethereum

10:30

node for people . But that's

10:32

why I assume kind of like the major players would be .

10:35

Yeah , the open-source software

10:37

culture is something I think a

10:39

lot of people maybe not take for granted

10:41

, but it's . It's

10:44

such a norm that's part

10:46

of the community at this point that you it's

10:48

like the language you speak growing up you

10:50

don't really think about that . You're speaking that

10:52

way , or maybe the language that you think

10:54

in it just happens naturally . So

10:56

, yeah , the culture of open-source software

10:59

is baked into Ethereum and it wouldn't

11:01

work without it , and so maybe people

11:04

we don't talk about it because it's

11:06

just , this is the norm and it

11:08

would be . It would be ridiculous to think

11:10

that the the social and

11:12

political consensus building could happen if

11:14

everyone was using closed-source licenses

11:16

and not actually participating in an open

11:19

, just

11:21

like a default open posture

11:24

towards everyone else .

11:26

And the . I mean that's kind of . It's

11:28

almost like it's baked in open-source culture

11:30

just due to the like , maybe technical

11:33

features of a blockchain like you can only

11:35

do open-source .

11:36

Yeah , yeah , I mean it

11:39

would be . It's honestly hard

11:41

to imagine getting

11:43

a broader ecosystem

11:45

to spring up around a closed-source chain

11:47

, because but , definitionally

11:49

, blockchains are useful

11:52

for getting parties that are

11:54

mutually distrustful to agree on

11:57

some final outcome . And if

11:59

, ultimately , you have to trust somebody who wrote the

12:01

code that you're running your program on , for example

12:03

, let's imagine some

12:05

financial institution wants to use Ethereum

12:08

, they shouldn't

12:10

have to trust some company that's operating the software

12:12

and the people that are running nodes

12:15

. They shouldn't have to trust the people who are running or

12:17

writing the software that is actually in the nodes

12:19

, that that the code is correct , like they can

12:22

inspect it themselves . This transparency

12:24

is super important and critical to how

12:27

trust is maintained

12:29

. Or maybe put another way

12:31

, trust isn't necessary . You don't have to trust

12:34

that somebody else wrote the code in a specific

12:36

way or it will operate in a certain

12:38

way . You can just look at the code yourself

12:41

.

12:41

Yeah , and so in

12:44

this kind of environment

12:48

, just technically , how

12:50

blockchains work , how it needs to function as

12:52

a protocol , as something that is

12:54

openly available to everyone and is sort of like

12:57

a set standard of

12:59

rules for people to follow . In

13:02

many ways , blockchains

13:04

are kind of like a commons , as

13:06

kind of what we've discussed before

13:08

off the podcast , that

13:10

there is governance

13:13

around this shared resource

13:15

of the protocol of Ethereum that needs

13:17

to have some amounts of consensus

13:20

for things to continue to function

13:22

. Do you want to talk

13:24

a bit about this and maybe the relationship

13:27

with thinking about commons

13:29

in a digital context

13:31

, because sometimes when we think about commons , we think of

13:33

just like fisheries or physical

13:36

things .

13:36

Yeah , yeah , definitely . So

13:39

some people

13:41

probably have at least heard of the idea of commons , but

13:43

for those who haven't , it's the idea

13:45

that groups of people can steward

13:48

or produce shared resources

13:50

that they govern and are involved in the production

13:53

of , and traditionally , in the academic

13:55

sense , commons referred to , like you

13:57

said , fisheries , or

13:59

in medieval Europe , it was

14:01

the commons where I

14:04

mean that's where the term commoners comes from is

14:06

the people , the poor people , who

14:08

had access to this shared , this

14:11

shared field where they could graze their

14:14

sheep or grow crops

14:16

, and there was very

14:18

specific agreements on how this

14:20

land was going to be managed , who had access

14:22

to it , what could be done

14:25

to it . Things like this

14:27

were crucial , like the frameworks

14:29

under which the commons was maintained

14:31

were very important

14:34

to how it's structured right

14:36

. There isn't some external

14:38

authority that's coming in and saying this

14:40

is how it's going to be run and you get access

14:42

to a small portion of it . It was . It's

14:45

the fact that it's operated

14:47

by and stewarded by the individuals

14:49

who end up using the resources is

14:51

sort of intrinsically baked into what

14:53

a commons is . And , to

14:56

your point , today we

14:58

live in an internet world and the digital

15:00

, digital

15:02

artifacts are more and more important

15:04

in our life , and so there's also a notion of

15:06

digital commons , and this can be . It

15:09

could be data , it can be something like Wikipedia

15:12

. You could think of it as a digital commons . It's a shared

15:14

resource that editors

15:16

are putting their time and their effort

15:18

into making something useful for

15:20

other people . But

15:23

software is also a really great example of

15:25

a digital commons , especially open

15:27

source . Software is something

15:30

that is freely accessible . People

15:32

can experiment with it , they can fork it , they

15:35

can do things with it that you couldn't otherwise do

15:37

with a closed source or restrictive

15:39

licenses , and Ethereum is a

15:41

really great example . I think it fits quite

15:44

well into the

15:46

digital commons frame and

15:48

, if people are curious , a lot

15:50

of the inspiration I get for this is from a

15:52

professor

15:56

I'm forgetting the school he's with , but Benjamin Birkenbein

15:59

has written about digital commons and

16:01

specifically

16:03

enclosure and capture , and maybe we can get into that

16:05

a little bit . But yeah , ethereum

16:08

is a great example of what a digital

16:10

commons is , because it's stewarded by the

16:14

people that are producing the software , and

16:17

this software is freely accessible to anybody who wants to actually make

16:22

something like Ethereum or understand

16:25

how it works .

16:27

So , with the Ethereum

16:30

protocol being governed

16:32

as a kind of

16:34

commons , where people who are

16:36

willing and able to come to these

16:38

technical discussions for discussing

16:42

potential changes for the protocol , but

16:44

there is no hard

16:47

governance with the Ethereum foundation

16:49

, I feel like obviously it would

16:51

play some sort of amount of influence . It

16:53

does do some research and what potential upgrades

16:55

should be . Vitalik , of course , is

16:58

up there as everyone's profit

17:00

, and if he suggests something

17:02

, then it's something that people consider

17:05

more and more . There

17:07

are these kind of it has

17:10

all these kind of things in the commons , but one of

17:12

the things that is perhaps missing

17:14

, which we can get into now with protocol

17:16

guild , is that there is no kind of clear

17:19

funding

17:21

mechanism for people who want to work

17:23

on things that are essential

17:26

to Ethereum core development

17:28

. In the crypto world there are a lot

17:31

of for-profit entities and

17:33

companies , but a lot of open-source

17:36

development is something

17:38

that is not a profitable endeavor

17:40

for the person directly

17:42

working on that thing . Necessarily . Is

17:46

that kind of like the situation

17:48

? Is that how I described

17:50

it ? Kind of what

17:54

the situation is and why protocol

17:56

guild now was

17:59

something that you thought would be why

18:02

you have brought forth protocol guild .

18:03

Yeah . So , going back

18:06

to the idea of a commons , there's

18:08

no single organization

18:10

. Or we had talked about how

18:12

Ethereum is created . There's no

18:14

corporation that's running it

18:16

or specifically

18:20

responsible for introducing these upgrades

18:22

, and that's kind of intrinsically

18:25

. What makes it so special and so valuable is

18:27

that there is no single organization that says you

18:30

know , it's going to look like this , or in the future

18:32

it will change to look like this , and

18:35

I'm

18:37

going to butcher the quote

18:40

, but it's in

18:43

the same way that we've inherited

18:45

this open-source ideal . There's

18:48

this concept of the quote is something like

18:50

we believe in rough consensus and running code . I think

18:52

that's someone from the IETF many years ago . But

18:55

, in the same way , there's

18:57

no on-chain governance . We could probably

18:59

spend a whole topic or a whole podcast

19:01

talking about how

19:04

token voting is a

19:06

horrible system , and there

19:08

are some chains that have on-chain governance and

19:10

you know you can supplement them

19:12

with technical

19:14

councils as an

19:16

advisory council too , in

19:19

addition to token governance , or there

19:21

are ways that you can balance

19:23

out the financialized

19:26

nature of token

19:28

voting . But , yeah

19:31

, I'm quite glad that Ethereum doesn't have

19:33

this , because it leads to

19:35

a lot of really strange incentives and

19:37

oftentimes adds

19:40

more challenges than are worthwhile to having

19:42

it . So , yeah

19:44

, the set of

19:47

contributors are the people that

19:49

are actually working on this . They are broadly

19:52

from different companies sometimes

19:54

we have individuals , but

19:56

they're all working on different

19:58

parts that need to . In

20:00

the end , they need to inter-operate . So it's this

20:03

back-and-forth process of people

20:05

deciding what ways the protocol

20:08

will change in the future , and

20:11

this happens over the long term . It's

20:13

a stewardship process and

20:16

because there's no

20:19

, you

20:21

know , these are all individual entities

20:24

. They may have their own interests

20:27

, they may be commercial entities , but

20:29

Previously

20:32

there was no single organization or single

20:34

mechanism to fund the commons

20:36

. Because , again , ethereum is a commons

20:38

, it makes sense that it would be

20:40

funded similarly , or at least

20:42

there would be some way for

20:45

it to

20:47

be

20:49

produced or be supported in a way

20:51

that's in line with the , the

20:53

output of it , which is this digital

20:56

commons . Again , maybe

20:58

I'm just repeating myself at this point , but because

21:01

there's no single organization , it doesn't make

21:03

sense to fund these organizations individually

21:05

, like , for example , you brought up some of the client teams

21:07

. How do you ? In a distributed system , there's

21:10

no client team that is more important

21:12

than the others , right ? In fact , it's

21:14

crucially important that there's a broad

21:17

diversity of these clients being

21:19

used to produce the network state , and

21:21

it's . It's actually really bad if there's

21:23

one that has a

21:26

greater share of the network . A big

21:28

theme you'll see in Ethereum is

21:30

polycentrism , or this idea that many

21:33

, many voices is better than a single

21:35

dominating one , and this

21:38

isn't like some people

21:40

might might say , this is like hippie

21:43

or you know , this is like you

21:45

guys are just . Oh , this is just a dumb , infeasible

21:48

concept , but like it in

21:50

reality , it comes from a very practical

21:53

perspective that if you have a single client

21:55

running 100% of the network , the any

21:57

bug in this implementation is

22:00

the specification , it is the network , and

22:02

so it's crucial that , like

22:05

it's not a political statement I

22:07

mean it is political , but it's not people

22:09

making a political statement of we're

22:11

going to have many organizations involved

22:13

. It's . It's a very practical consideration

22:16

. Like we need many

22:18

versions of this running , and that's how

22:20

you , by , by extension

22:23

, you end up with this

22:25

, this process , which

22:27

necessarily involves

22:31

many different organizations , many individuals

22:33

, and so protocol guild fits

22:36

into that existing context

22:38

as a funding

22:40

mechanism which plays

22:43

into this many

22:46

contributor governance model .

22:48

Yeah , yeah , so

22:50

yeah with for people

22:52

, in case it's still not clear

22:54

, technically kind of what happens

22:56

is is that whenever you want to run

22:58

an Ethereum node , you choose a client

23:00

, and that right now , there are several

23:02

different types

23:04

of clients you can choose and they're each run by their

23:06

own organization

23:09

. I think some

23:11

of them I'm not sure exactly if some , if they're

23:13

like all for-profit or non-profit , or

23:15

how exactly each one is but

23:17

I think most of them are within

23:19

a commercial entity , but they have

23:21

, let's say , varying degrees

23:24

of appetite for growth , sure

23:26

.

23:26

So some of them are just very happy to work

23:28

on the client . Others have a little bit of

23:31

a broader perspective and they will have

23:33

, like you know , an audit team , or

23:35

sometimes they're

23:37

within a much larger corporation , like there's a couple

23:39

clients in consensus , so

23:41

it there's a wide range . But

23:45

, yeah , one thing well , maybe we can get into

23:47

protocol guild now , unless you had something else , no

23:49

, go for it . Yeah . So protocol guild

23:51

, as we've been teasing this whole time , is

23:54

this collective of individuals , crucially

23:56

individuals that are

23:59

stewarding the core Ethereum protocol , and

24:02

they , they

24:06

work on research

24:08

, so again figuring out what the protocol might look

24:10

like in the future , and they

24:13

are people who are working on the client

24:15

teams , like you just mentioned . They're writing the code , they're

24:17

testing it , interacting

24:20

with the researchers to actually validate ideas

24:22

about how things can change and what they might look

24:24

like . So , and

24:27

then there's , like you know , a spectrum in between

24:29

possible futures and the current

24:31

reality and people working within that

24:33

. And then there's a couple other sets

24:36

of individuals who work

24:38

on things , like you know , supporting both

24:40

of these functions testing , dev

24:42

ops for running test nets . People

24:45

like myself who do coordination

24:47

, you know

24:49

, helping the broader ecosystem

24:51

engage with the process , the actual

24:54

governance process of bringing network

24:56

upgrades to life , things like that . Myself

24:58

, tim Bico these are people that are

25:01

sort of like talking

25:03

, just doing a lot of talking and and helping

25:05

people engage with the process . So

25:07

there's there's a number of different

25:09

types of people that are members of protocol guild , but

25:11

they're all focused on stewarding

25:14

Ethereum over the long term , and so

25:16

this mechanism is

25:19

specifically concerned with

25:21

surfacing who these people are

25:23

and producing a list

25:25

. So it's a . It's a list

25:28

that lives on chain . It's a smart contract

25:30

through the Xerox splits

25:32

protocol , which is just you

25:34

can have a contract with a list of addresses and

25:36

weights associated with it , and we

25:38

use this as a way for the

25:41

broader ecosystem to fund

25:43

the core protocol as a commons

25:46

. So instead of having , you know , these

25:48

individual client teams all having to

25:50

petition whatever

25:52

some public that's funding mechanism for

25:54

a grants round

25:56

or the optimism RPGF , we

25:58

have a . This mechanism , this contract

26:01

, the protocol guild framework

26:04

allows us to say look , here's

26:07

the commons , or at least an approximation

26:10

of it . There's , there's some members who aren't sorry

26:13

. It presents this

26:15

to the ecosystem as a way for them to fund

26:17

it , because previously there was no such thing

26:19

. It wouldn't work for

26:21

the ecosystem to send money

26:24

to the Ethereum foundation and then have them distributed

26:26

. That's weird , and on a number of levels . But

26:29

now protocol yield produces this list

26:31

attached to a contract on chain and

26:34

it goes directly to the individuals and

26:36

not the corporations . Because why

26:40

not do you ? Why not have the individuals

26:42

? Why ? Why do we have to have a

26:45

set of intermediaries ? give it directly

26:47

to the people themselves who are working on this

26:49

stuff it would be weird to give it to the for-profit

26:51

entity right what they would do with it .

26:53

But so then it's kind of like in

26:55

this kind of weird situation

26:58

just like inherent to the

27:00

crypto world , blockchain world and open source communities

27:02

that , like you said earlier , some

27:04

of these for-profit entities may be building

27:07

things that are not , like immediately

27:10

monetizable . So

27:12

there is like a hypothetical where

27:14

a for-profit company says we

27:16

need to cut costs and so we're going

27:18

to cut our non-monetizable products , and

27:20

that might be something that is a core part

27:24

of the infrastructure for Ethereum . But

27:26

if you are able to fund

27:28

the individual who is working specifically

27:31

on that part , maybe

27:33

in that for-profit company , then they

27:35

can feel safe that they can

27:37

continue doing their job as a , as

27:40

they have already been doing , and

27:42

while also being paid for it

27:44

, and not having to monetize their

27:46

core infrastructure work , which

27:48

could , you know , disrupt the

27:50

commons of Ethereum yeah

27:53

.

27:53

So I'll give a massive , massive

27:55

caveat here . Not

27:59

all companies are bad . The people that the people

28:01

that work for companies , are not bad people . But

28:04

it's important , I think , as Ethereum

28:07

matures and be

28:09

the governance process becomes maybe more complex

28:12

as more parties are coming in , it's

28:15

worth thinking about what this might look like

28:17

in five years , ten years . This

28:19

isn't a project that's necessarily going

28:21

to be completed or done at any point , and

28:24

it's , I think , it's healthy

28:26

to think about things like capture

28:28

or enclosure . Enclosure would be the

28:30

commons term of when the

28:33

local baron comes in and

28:35

says oh wait , actually you

28:37

guys have been maintaining this , this set

28:39

of fields , for your sheep . Oh , actually

28:41

, I'm gonna claim it for myself and set up a wall

28:43

around it and I have exclusive access

28:45

to it , and actually I'm gonna make you

28:47

work on it and I'll take I'll give

28:49

you some of it back , but I actually retain

28:52

some . So that's where the enclosure term comes

28:54

from , and

28:56

there are examples of

28:58

this happening in Linux

29:00

, for example . Yeah , yeah

29:03

, benjamin Birkenbein has a really cool

29:05

case study about how Linux

29:07

gets intermediated

29:09

by corporate entities

29:11

. There are some differences between Linux

29:14

and Ethereum , but also some really interesting parallels

29:16

, for , how you know

29:18

, they have a 30-year head start on this . So it's it's

29:20

useful to see how

29:22

enclosure or incorporation has

29:24

played out over the timeframe . As

29:27

corporations sort

29:29

of encroach on the

29:32

commons of this digital software

29:34

and they try to , you know they're gonna use

29:36

it for their own financial

29:38

gain , because that's what corporations do , their their

29:41

purpose built for that . But

29:44

in Ethereum , how can we think of ways

29:46

to maybe counterbalance that

29:48

or at least provide alternative

29:50

structures where at some point

29:53

in the future , when I don't know , ibm

29:55

shows up or Google shows up

29:57

and they say we've got ten million

30:00

dollars and we want to buy a client company and

30:02

all of the , the

30:05

relationships and social

30:08

yeah , the social and

30:10

frameworks

30:13

that are naturally client

30:16

teams are naturally embedded within .

30:18

That's what they're purchasing , right , they're going to be very

30:21

disrupted if Google says

30:23

we're gonna buy one of you yeah , and

30:25

I mean this is not

30:28

a common thing .

30:30

There has been one client team purchase , but I think

30:32

it's very , very worthwhile to start thinking about

30:34

a

30:36

possible future where we we can avoid this

30:38

outcome or the worst , the worst

30:40

versions of this right . So

30:43

, yeah , this

30:45

is again to any client teams , if

30:47

you're somehow listening to this podcast . I love

30:49

you all the commercials . Like

30:51

corporations , the world is

30:53

set up for these typically and I get it

30:55

. But it's just worthwhile to think

30:57

about what a future might

31:00

look like where you know big money

31:03

starts coming in , is in , is interested in

31:05

influencing

31:07

the Ethereum protocol or purchasing influences

31:10

, and in my view , the most likely

31:12

way that would happen is through the

31:14

corporate entity , because it's much harder

31:16

to purchase . You know that the labor

31:18

of 20 people individually versus

31:20

oh , we can just buy this client team and

31:23

that and that's basically the one

31:25

at one of the , the inspirations

31:27

or motivations for why protocol guild is so important

31:30

yeah , I mean it's .

31:31

It's ultimately a strategy for long-term resilience

31:33

exactly .

31:34

Yeah , it's like a credible . It's

31:36

a credible alternative . Like most , most people

31:38

are still gonna continue working at

31:40

client teams or the Ethereum Foundation . These

31:44

, these entities are still gonna exist

31:46

, and that's great . I think it

31:48

would be strange for everything to be under

31:50

a single organization . That's also has its

31:52

own trade-offs , but if there was a

31:54

credible alternative , it's

31:57

good to have that as a anti

31:59

fragile mechanism

32:01

we can layer on top hi

32:04

everyone .

32:05

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resonates with you , I hope you'll consider helping out

33:02

. So

33:07

I think what you explain is kind of like the purpose of protocol

33:09

guild . But how

33:12

has it been able to do this funding

33:15

? Because it does take

33:17

I mean , you guys

33:19

have gotten like quite a bit of of

33:21

of ETH in order to do the work that you

33:23

guys are doing , because developers

33:25

are not cheap oftentimes

33:27

yeah , so one

33:30

of so I guess maybe I'll

33:32

just give like a little timeline .

33:34

So when we originally started the project

33:36

and I say we , it's

33:38

like all of the all of the members this

33:40

has been a collective process and , similar to

33:42

Ethereum , it's

33:45

intrinsically requiring

33:47

a distributed governance process

33:49

. If it was just me starting protocol guild

33:51

and just forcing people , it wouldn't work

33:54

, it would be pretty pointless . This

33:56

has definitely been a collective effort

33:58

, a collective activity between

34:00

all of these . Today , it's 160

34:02

individuals that are members of this , and

34:05

so you know , how

34:08

do we fund the , the

34:10

core protocol , and in what way or

34:12

like what amount , has been

34:14

a discussion for many , many years , and

34:16

it came up again in 2021

34:19

. You know , heading

34:21

into the bear market , people

34:23

, people find discussions and

34:26

topics , things to argue about , and so we

34:29

this discussion came up again and

34:31

one of the one of the current members said

34:34

okay , why don't we , you know , just

34:36

have an organization , that the

34:38

focus

34:40

, the focus , was on retention

34:43

how do we retain people long-term ? Because the

34:45

concern is , as we start

34:47

to see more DeFi projects

34:49

or L2's

34:51

, things that have a token and , crucially

34:54

, like high growth potential , it's

34:56

possible that they will start to pull people away

34:58

from protocol stewardship

35:00

, which we all need . We need this to

35:03

stay long-term and so initially , the

35:05

concept was okay how can we give

35:07

exposure like the

35:09

people that are doing this important infrastructural

35:11

work ? How can we give them

35:13

some exposure to the , the success

35:15

of the network ? And so the concept was okay , we'll

35:18

create this collective list and then

35:20

projects can donate a percent of their

35:22

tokens to whatever . Whatever token

35:24

they're they're generating , they can donate

35:27

it to the membership and then they'll

35:29

have some exposure . That

35:31

was the initial concept in 2021 and

35:34

I think it's shifted more into taking

35:37

it taken

35:39

a bit of a broader perspective in

35:42

terms of this is a

35:44

way for the membership

35:46

to assert itself or represent itself

35:48

, as I mentioned , as a commons , as

35:51

a collective set

35:54

of people who are doing labor . It's

35:56

a collective of individuals We've

36:00

also talked about like a solidarity primitive like these

36:02

are core . I think these are much more

36:04

important to the , the

36:06

soul of this thing , than just

36:08

like pure upside . You

36:11

have a credible alternative if you're working on

36:14

the protocol that you know this

36:16

, this , these assets or

36:18

these resources will be available to you

36:20

. Anything that's donated vests

36:22

over time and yeah

36:25

, so during the pilot , we raised

36:27

, I think , around 12

36:30

to 15 it depends on

36:34

the day you're looking at it , but we have a Dune dashboard

36:36

which tracks all this , because it's on chain but raised

36:38

about 12 million US

36:41

and that goes directly to those individuals

36:43

and so had a really successful pilot , and

36:45

now we're looking at how to

36:47

take what we learned and

36:49

implement it in the new version , to scale

36:51

it up to even more significant amounts

36:54

.

36:55

So you guys have done some other interesting

36:57

things I don't know if

37:00

you want to talk about . There's some like

37:02

. There's like the KZG

37:05

ceremony and there was one thing

37:07

there was also like a book that you guys

37:09

made in relation to I

37:11

believe it was like the switch to proof of stake . It

37:15

seems like it seems that you guys are able

37:17

to is

37:20

an interesting like , a creation

37:22

of , almost

37:25

like , or acknowledgement of history

37:27

through some sort of cultural artifact , and

37:30

then there happens to be like enough

37:32

people that become

37:35

willing to donate or willing

37:37

to give , give some of their ETH because of that , as

37:39

part of this like , almost like , a need for a ritual

37:41

for people to engage in , to

37:44

like to free them of their money , which means

37:46

that , like , I think partially that

37:48

not everybody

37:50

in the Ethereum ecosystem , at least , is not

37:52

purely motivated by simply

37:54

making money . Of course

37:56

, like if you are a core

37:58

developer , and then you go and see , like you

38:01

know , your friend went to Pupu Coin DeFi

38:03

project and they're making like ten million

38:05

dollars off of , off of that , there you're

38:07

gonna you may second guess yourself for

38:09

, for a little bit , to go to go

38:12

get some some of that , some of that money , if

38:15

you are not feeling you are being compensated

38:18

enough for the the core

38:20

development work that you're doing .

38:22

Yeah , so what you're referencing the KGG

38:25

ceremony was a separate thing , but

38:27

what you're talking about is some projects I

38:29

was a part of . Under a

38:31

few people are curious . They can look up stateful

38:34

works , which is just a project

38:36

that I run , and it does

38:38

slot . It slots in very nicely as a complement

38:40

to protocol guild as a way

38:42

to , like you said , create these

38:44

cultural artifacts . So , yeah

38:48

, a number of past projects have

38:50

done something like this where , for

38:53

example , that

38:56

there was something I made , something called the beacon

38:58

book , and this is again . This is separate

39:00

, completely separate , from my work at the EF and

39:02

as a member of protocol guild . This was just me creating

39:04

something , created a book

39:06

, gathering the perspectives

39:08

of everyone who had worked on the launch of the

39:10

beacon chain in 2020 , and

39:12

compiled it into a physical book . There were NFTs

39:15

and people purchased it and I think it raised

39:17

like

39:19

maybe two or three hundred thousand dollars

39:21

at the time and it went directly on chain

39:24

to the people that had actually done that and

39:26

, like you said , there's an interesting

39:29

. It's

39:33

really interesting to encapsulate this

39:35

sentiment of the core theory community

39:37

, which I know it might be hard to believe

39:39

, but there are people , like you said , there are people that care

39:41

about common

39:43

goods and they care about the people

39:46

who are actually doing the work to steward this technology

39:48

, and this is a way for them to express

39:50

their , this sentiment . It's

39:53

not all moon coins and scams

39:56

. Unfortunately

39:58

, that's what makes it out of the community . But

40:01

yeah , it's really amazing to see people

40:04

also recognize that these cultural artifacts

40:06

are interesting and now that's something like

40:08

protocol guild exists . I really

40:11

hope that there are more people who recognize this as a way

40:13

to create

40:17

things in recognition . I

40:19

think of like the Public Works Administration during

40:21

the Great Depression in the US , like they just paid

40:23

people to do stuff and create . One

40:26

of one part of the program was like they paid people

40:28

to paint murals about workers , which

40:31

is , you know , hard to believe nowadays

40:33

yeah , yeah

40:36

, but in the similar vein , like creating

40:38

beautiful things to celebrate the

40:41

work that people have done , and

40:44

particularly the work

40:46

that's created for a

40:48

common good . It's not , you

40:51

know . Can you imagine making a mural

40:53

about Amazon ?

40:54

or some .

40:55

SF tech company , like it doesn't click , but

40:58

yeah , so I've done the beacon book . We

41:00

did something related to the EIP

41:03

1559 maybe

41:06

I won't get into that , but yeah , there's been a number

41:08

of things , and again another one related

41:10

to the merge , where we're creating art , allowing

41:12

people to you know they could

41:14

give this ETH otherwise

41:17

, but now they have a memento , something beautiful

41:19

, a token or

41:21

an artifact is probably the best way to summarize it

41:23

. And now , with protocol

41:25

guild , there's this mechanism which will consistently

41:28

over time , be

41:31

a like a recipient , or a mechanism

41:34

that will , for the long term , distribute

41:36

these funds to the ever-changing

41:38

set of curators , because we update

41:41

the membership of protocol guild every

41:43

quarter . So you know for sure , if you're

41:45

funding it , that it's going to be an accurate

41:48

representation , whereas you

41:50

know you may not have insight into some of

41:52

these other grant profiles or it's

41:54

a little hard to have insight , but one of the core guarantees

41:56

that the membership gives to the broader

41:59

public , the broader ecosystem , is

42:01

that we're going to update this every quarter with

42:03

the membership and the

42:06

weights associated with it , and I

42:09

guess I'll say that . So the one

42:12

of the one of the other details about

42:14

the mechanism is okay , now you have membership

42:16

, how do you wait the the funds

42:19

that are coming into it , and

42:21

we take a philosophy of

42:23

governance , minimization and

42:25

, you know , reducing the number of dials

42:28

and knobs . We have to turn because I think core

42:30

developers have more important things to do than argue

42:32

about who gets what , and one

42:35

of the very simple mechanism

42:37

we've settled on is just time waiting . So

42:39

if you've been around longer , you'll have a larger

42:42

weight in the set , and this is a way of

42:44

recognizing and rewarding

42:46

, or celebrating , let's say , the

42:48

institutional knowledge that people

42:50

build up over time , because Ethereum

42:52

is a very deep technical domain

42:55

and it takes a while for people to

42:57

get up to speed and and really

42:59

understand why decisions were made in a certain

43:01

way . And once they have this knowledge , we want

43:03

to keep them around , we want to help them stick

43:05

around , and so investing

43:07

investing the funds helps , but

43:10

also giving people a weight proportional

43:12

to the time that they've been around is also

43:14

another way that we recognize it and celebrate

43:18

this knowledge , because it's super important , because

43:21

we don't want to make the same mistakes that we made five years

43:23

ago again

43:25

in the future .

43:26

Hopefully we can avoid that by keeping that knowledge

43:28

around long-term yeah , the

43:30

the complexity of Ethereum has increased

43:33

since the beginning and using that

43:35

, I think , has been well

43:37

. Yeah , it would be .

43:38

It would be really bad if some

43:40

of those , like pieces of knowledge , were lost

43:42

yeah , you think I'm like like the village elders

43:45

, like you want to pass that knowledge

43:47

on to the next generation . Obviously

43:49

, you know core devs aren't gonna stick

43:51

around forever . People , you know they get interested

43:54

in other things and they'll move on . But to

43:56

the extent that we can encourage people to stick

43:58

around long enough to pass that on

44:00

to the next generation of

44:02

core protocol stewards , the

44:04

better . And so time waiting investing

44:06

are these two mechanisms within

44:09

protocol guild that we can use to encourage

44:11

that and so you

44:13

guys are also .

44:14

I don't know if you want to talk about this , but you're going from right

44:16

now is a v1 , you're going to a v2 , so

44:19

you're adding some , some upgrades to

44:21

how you guys are running

44:23

protocol guild and governing that yeah , I

44:25

won't get too deep into the smart contracts , but we

44:28

do .

44:30

Zero X splits can be mutable

44:33

or immutable . Or you

44:35

you can change them , or you can just issue

44:38

them once and they won't change ever in the future . And so

44:40

protocol guilds contract

44:42

is updatable and that's how we

44:44

bring the new membership and the new

44:46

weights on chain every quarter and

44:48

this is really important to how the thing

44:51

operates . But today this is just

44:53

a multi-sig that updates the split

44:55

. There's a six of ten multi-sig that sends

44:57

a transaction , people validate that you

45:00

know it's roughly correct and then that goes into

45:02

the split and updates any allocations

45:04

for funds that are flowing through it . And in

45:07

the future we

45:09

we well , rather in the past

45:11

we started to think , you know , it'd be great if we didn't have

45:13

this multi-sig and we

45:15

could make it more

45:17

trustless for anybody in

45:19

the membership to have the same governance

45:23

capacity that any other member

45:25

has . So we're working on moving

45:29

to a new system which will use a mall look down

45:31

, which is just a contract with the

45:34

ability to create

45:36

proposals and vote on them , very

45:38

straightforward . But

45:40

what we're bringing on chain is a registry

45:43

of weights

45:45

, so people don't

45:47

have to trust , you know , the , the

45:49

operators of this multi-sig to bring the

45:52

weights on chain . And you know we all

45:54

operate in a very high trust environment

45:56

we have . I know these people personally . I

45:58

don't think that there would be any funny

46:00

business where somebody would like issue

46:02

a transaction that you know reduces my

46:04

weight slightly . Obviously that trust

46:06

is there , but the

46:09

more guarantees , the more certainty we can

46:11

introduce in the system , the

46:13

less attention people have to

46:15

expend ensuring that those

46:18

guarantees are actually met . So if

46:20

we can bring it on chain and allow more people to

46:22

engage with the governance or

46:24

the curation process

46:27

, I think that's a win . So

46:29

we're bringing the off-chain tracking

46:31

of the weights of members

46:33

, so their start date will be brought on chain

46:35

and then that's

46:38

one way that the

46:40

membership doesn't have to trust this

46:42

off-chain process as much and so

46:44

that'll feed directly into the existing

46:46

split contract and together

46:49

these things . We just put it under

46:51

the protocol guild V2

46:53

bucket and

46:56

yeah , so those contracts

46:58

are under audit right now and

47:00

hopefully we'll be actually putting

47:02

them on chain in the next few months . The other thing

47:05

, which is maybe much

47:08

, much larger than the scope of this discussion

47:12

, but it's thinking about what a legal entity looks

47:14

like . This has been some of the members

47:16

. I haven't been involved , but

47:18

the members have been looking into okay

47:20

, how do we bridge between the traditional

47:23

legal world and this on-chain

47:26

world , and just navigating

47:28

like bridging between those two

47:30

worlds has been quite interesting

47:33

to see the results of those discussions

47:35

and figuring out what shape actually

47:37

works or what entity type actually works

47:39

, and hopefully we'll have a

47:42

much more , we'll have a

47:44

better idea of that in

47:46

the next few weeks , months

47:49

, and then we'll be able to . You

47:51

know , as much as we people

47:54

in crypto like to avoid the traditional

47:56

world and they think they're escaping from it , I

47:59

think in reality , we're much more

48:01

entwined with it than we realize , and

48:03

so this legal entity is really important

48:05

for helping us in the future

48:08

have some

48:10

structure and some protection for members

48:12

against each other and also

48:14

, let's say , other entities

48:16

outside of it that may

48:19

have interests that are not

48:21

in the interests of the membership

48:23

. So those are the main things we've been working

48:25

on and hope to have those up and running in

48:27

the next few months , and

48:29

then we'll begin fundraising again , going to

48:31

DAOs , going

48:33

to organizations that are dependent

48:36

on Ethereum . So , for example , the Optimism

48:38

RPGF program we've applied twice

48:40

now and we're the , I

48:43

believe , the top recipient in the last

48:45

round and it's

48:47

really nice

48:49

to see people recognizing that this is a dependency

48:52

to Layer 2s and they

48:54

can fund their dependencies directly through a mechanism

48:57

like this without having to rely

48:59

on okay , we've got to find this

49:02

client team , this client team , this client team , this one

49:04

, this set of researchers . There's

49:06

just a holistic mechanism that

49:08

they can fund through and

49:11

, yeah , so we hope to start fundraising again

49:13

in the near future

49:15

and then scale it up much

49:17

larger than the original pilot was .

49:19

Yeah , I want to talk about that . I'm not going

49:22

to talk about that for a moment , but I wanted to . I'm interested

49:24

in just talking briefly about

49:26

the fact that you guys I

49:29

forgot what they're

49:31

called Van Ek- Is

49:33

that the new ? Is it an ETF , or

49:35

I forget what it was .

49:36

It futures .

49:37

ETF yeah .

49:38

Yeah so they .

49:40

I don't know if we need to like explain all that , but it's not going to

49:42

explain it the thing that normal normies

49:44

can invest in Ethereum

49:47

through , and they have magically

49:50

decided to also give

49:52

some of their profits to protocol guild

49:54

.

49:54

The .

49:54

Thing is like , I

49:56

mean interesting .

49:58

It's pretty crazy . So

50:00

, yeah , etf and exchange traded fund

50:02

is a way for it's

50:05

just a structured financial product . That's pretty

50:07

common in traditional finance and

50:09

Wall Street . And

50:13

there's this company called Van Ek . They're very old

50:15

, I think a hundred . Well , in

50:18

the scope of things , maybe not that old , but like relative

50:20

to the U S , that's like . You know , that's

50:22

. That's significant . It's a hundred year old

50:24

company and they launched

50:27

an Ethereum . So the Ether

50:29

futures product , which is

50:31

a , it's not

50:33

on chain , it's off chain and it tracks the

50:36

price of of Ether in the future and you

50:38

can buy and sell it . And

50:41

these products are really exciting for people

50:44

for a number of reasons . But

50:47

the thing that's relevant to us here in this discussion

50:49

is that this company , this traditional

50:52

Wall Street company

50:54

, they reached out to

50:57

a couple of people and said , hey , we want

50:59

to actually

51:01

give back to the Ethereum

51:03

community that's enabling

51:05

this asset . We

51:09

want to give back to the people that are actually making this possible

51:12

, and so they committed

51:14

to donating 10% of profits

51:16

from

51:18

operating this , this financial

51:20

product , back to protocol guild . And

51:23

, like you said , this is if you step

51:25

back and think about it . It's it's pretty absurd that

51:27

you have what could have been a purely extractive

51:30

entity . You know they're committing

51:32

in advance to fund

51:34

this mechanism of developers

51:36

all around the world who are stewarding

51:39

a common , so like these things

51:41

are kind of bizarre to me .

51:41

None of the Bitcoin , also like

51:44

structured financial products , are doing that , as

51:46

far as I know .

51:47

To the best of my knowledge , they haven't done it , and it

51:49

may be the case that it's because

51:52

, I mean , there's

51:54

a lot of things , much less structure . Yeah , there's

51:56

a lot of things to say about why this is the case in Bitcoin

51:58

. It's not changing as much , it

52:00

doesn't ? They're very happy , right

52:03

.

52:03

Being stuck where they are Exactly , but

52:05

there is no future for Bitcoin and it is the state

52:08

now and it's always going to be that way .

52:09

Stewardship is yeah , I don't know how

52:11

much of a focus that is within the

52:13

community , but also

52:15

for the simple practical reason of this thing

52:17

can exist on chain . On Bitcoin they don't have smart contracts

52:20

, so this is uniquely enabled by Ethereum

52:22

. It's a smart contract that they can just

52:24

send directly to . Obviously , their

52:26

profits happen off chain , wherever

52:28

it does , and

52:31

I will definitely acknowledge , like Van

52:33

Aak is getting something out of this . This

52:35

is a marketing benefit for them for sure

52:37

.

52:38

I understand there , it also fits there . But

52:40

before that , futures ETF to

52:42

flourish

52:44

after is that they need something

52:46

to happen into the future , right . It's

52:49

directly funding in the Ethereum ecosystem

52:51

for people to do shit for them to even

52:53

have a chance for this product to

52:56

keep going .

52:57

Right and so , in that sense , like the incentives

52:59

are directly aligned , they benefit

53:01

from people being interested in Ethereum

53:03

, from the technology

53:05

actually developing long term , gaining adoption

53:08

, because their product is intrinsically

53:10

dependent on the

53:13

work of these people , or it wouldn't

53:15

exist

53:18

Like

53:20

the Ether token wouldn't exist

53:22

without people maintaining

53:24

the chain and people like

53:26

external institutions or

53:29

users actually coming and using it . So these things are

53:31

all wound up together in

53:34

the work of the stewards . Yeah

53:37

, and yeah it is . Yeah , it

53:40

was pretty incredible to see .

53:41

Yeah , and another

53:43

thing I want to talk about , maybe as

53:46

well , is the differences

53:49

between optimism's

53:51

current thing on retroactive

53:54

public goods funding versus protocol

53:56

guild . So there was like a

53:58

very interesting

54:01

sort of discussion and debates between kind

54:03

of like the different approaches that

54:05

. I've listened to one of them that

54:07

happened at Zuzalu , but

54:10

they are two very different

54:12

approaches to looking at this problem

54:14

of public goods funding . Do

54:18

you want to talk a little bit about that ?

54:20

Yeah , in some sense they do have significant

54:23

differences , but also maybe

54:25

they're completely different mechanisms which

54:27

are harder to compare , so I'll try to be sensitive

54:29

to that . And again , here's another

54:31

caveat . I love the optimism team

54:34

, I think , the fact

54:36

that they're this is a declaration of war .

54:38

What do you mean ? No , never .

54:40

I think the fact that they're one of the only L2s to have

54:42

a consistent public

54:44

goods funding program is , I

54:47

mean , it's kind of , to

54:50

be honest , crazy that there aren't other

54:52

L2s which understand that this is

54:54

. I mean , obviously it's centered around the optimism

54:57

stack , but the fact that

54:59

they recognize that Ethereum core

55:01

contributors are eligible for this it's

55:04

just recognize your dependencies and

55:06

fund them . So I celebrate

55:08

the fact that they're

55:10

experimenting , they're trying to find a

55:12

new mechanism , so

55:15

take that any

55:17

criticism alongside that , but

55:21

yeah . So RPGF is an

55:24

interesting experiment in the sense

55:26

that they're trying to look

55:30

back on the work that was done and

55:33

reward it . I

55:35

think there may be some disagreements from

55:37

me personally about how

55:39

much they over-index on

55:41

granularity or this

55:44

idea that you can track every contribution

55:47

and then directly reward

55:49

it financially . I think that's a lot

55:51

more challenging in practice and there are significant

55:53

challenges with how people

55:55

are expected to evaluate this and

55:59

, to their credit , they've introduced things like

56:01

lists where you can

56:03

, which are maybe

56:06

more directly comparable to protocol guild , where

56:08

you have , you

56:13

can set up , you can

56:15

group different profiles

56:17

, grant profiles that may be

56:20

in the similar area . So protocol guild is

56:22

a list of projects essentially

56:24

just represented by their atomic

56:27

component , which is the individual , and

56:29

so they are working towards lists

56:31

which would approximate something like protocol guild

56:33

and again , there's

56:37

no reason that we can't directly

56:41

engage with a mechanism like this . So

56:43

protocol guild has applied and gotten funding

56:45

in the past and is applying to

56:47

this current round . I

56:51

think one of the challenges that

56:53

they're experiencing so

56:55

I mentioned the idea

56:58

of scaling it up is hard . There's significant

57:00

money flowing through it . I

57:02

think the idea

57:04

of public goods is incredibly

57:07

watered down and diluted to the point of

57:09

it doesn't really mean anything anymore in

57:12

the crypto space , and we would do

57:14

well to be more specific . And

57:16

maybe one other disagreement is I think they

57:19

have a very particular vision for

57:21

what our PGF is and what it

57:23

does , and maybe overly

57:25

broad , in the sense that projects

57:28

that take VC funding are

57:30

encouraged to apply to this thing , and

57:33

I worry that in the future it'll just

57:35

end up being an arbitrage between

57:37

okay , we can fund these companies to do

57:39

work on the optimism stack and then we'll

57:42

get whatever returns

57:45

from traditional investing

57:47

, but we'll also get access to this optimism

57:49

incentive program . I think that

57:52

that will . There's

57:55

a possible future where it eats up a lot

57:57

of the funding , so I think that's a challenge

57:59

. That being said

58:01

, protocol Guild is happy to like apply

58:04

or like engage within this

58:06

mechanism and

58:08

, like I've personally provided feedback and

58:11

I'm happy to

58:13

see that people are doing something , especially that scale Definitely

58:17

more challenges to be solved

58:19

. It's not like a mechanism

58:22

is not complete .

58:23

Yeah , so I would . I think we were talking

58:25

earlier . We kind of compare optimism's

58:27

approach to kind of I would

58:30

say , like heavily kind of means

58:32

tested .

58:33

Yeah .

58:34

Liberal Democrat style

58:36

, you know , welfare , but with

58:38

heavy strings attached versus

58:41

Protocol Guild , maybe being more like akin

58:43

to a UBI .

58:45

Yeah , yeah and

58:47

I think this again , I'll keep coming

58:49

back to the idea of the comments

58:51

like it's

58:55

really hard when you're making software

58:57

or you're engaging in a political , social

58:59

consensus building process

59:01

. You can't . These

59:04

are inherently soft processes . You can't

59:06

articulate this

59:08

conversation we're having right now , like what is the financial

59:11

value this provided to the optimism

59:13

stack ? Well , probably zero . But like , imagine we

59:15

were having a conversation about optimism . How

59:17

do you place a financial value

59:19

and this is their thing about impact

59:22

equaling financial

59:24

impact , equaling profit and I think this

59:26

is a really really hard thing to do and it

59:29

may even be a red herring of some kind

59:31

. But yeah , in the stewardship of

59:33

a commons there's a lot of

59:35

soft things

59:37

that are really really hard to track .

59:39

Right , If I picked , if I you know , picked

59:41

five tomatoes and you did like 14

59:44

potatoes how do we

59:46

, you know , literally comparing oranges ?

59:48

Yeah , so I

59:51

think they , over this RPGF

59:54

system , might over index on

59:56

trying

59:58

to like

1:00:00

track something , track everything

1:00:02

from God mode and then translate that into

1:00:04

like you don't , it's really really hard

1:00:06

to see something

1:00:09

from a thousand foot view and then get down to

1:00:11

the resolution of the individual and the work

1:00:13

that they're doing . One book

1:00:15

that I really love is seeing like a state and

1:00:17

it documents a lot of really

1:00:20

cool case studies about how

1:00:22

the state tries to manage something from far

1:00:25

away and ends up fucking things

1:00:27

up in really bad ways and

1:00:29

how you . It's really hard to

1:00:32

surface local knowledge

1:00:34

in a way that doesn't completely destroy

1:00:36

the efficacy or the value of

1:00:39

that that local knowledge , and protocol guild

1:00:41

is surfacing that

1:00:43

in a way that's legible and at

1:00:45

a particular scale . So it's able

1:00:47

to bring this local knowledge of here's

1:00:50

160 people who are

1:00:53

doing important work and many of them probably wouldn't

1:00:55

be surfaced to the RPGF

1:00:57

mechanism otherwise , and so bringing

1:01:00

them together as a collective gives a certain weight

1:01:02

that otherwise wouldn't have been there . And

1:01:05

yeah , I just worry about this

1:01:07

focus on granular detail and

1:01:10

as soon as you start

1:01:12

to try to

1:01:14

apply basically what's

1:01:17

the phrase of ? As soon

1:01:19

as something becomes a measure

1:01:21

, it ceases to become a good measure or becomes

1:01:23

a target . Like you

1:01:26

will see that start to happen when they say , okay

1:01:28

, we're measuring this

1:01:30

, this KPI , this , this and

1:01:32

this , people will start to target that in

1:01:34

order to maximize their revenue

1:01:36

from the optimism's RPGF

1:01:39

and then game it in certain

1:01:41

ways . And I just worry about that happening

1:01:43

if they continue down the path

1:01:45

of like we want to get the most granular level of

1:01:47

impact . Obviously there's a middle

1:01:49

ground . This

1:01:51

is an episode of caveats . There's

1:01:53

a middle ground . People

1:01:55

shouldn't just show up and expect to get funding

1:01:58

for work that they can't justify . But

1:02:01

I do worry if you try to get too

1:02:03

granular and the weird

1:02:05

degenerate incentives that'll emerge

1:02:08

. I think that's maybe

1:02:10

something to be very , very cautious about .

1:02:12

Right , right , no , yeah , I

1:02:14

mean I also applied to their , to their grant

1:02:16

funding , just because it's sort of like , oh , I would

1:02:18

love some money for things that I've done

1:02:21

, but the metrics that they put

1:02:23

in there is like . Or they ask you like what

1:02:25

are the metrics that you measure yourself

1:02:27

?

1:02:27

And I , it's like I was like

1:02:29

, okay , I guess views , listens

1:02:32

downloads Right , and now you're incentivized

1:02:34

to like , pump up your , your view numbers and like

1:02:36

now , do I need to , like , make a really

1:02:38

shitty , like you know ? I want to see you

1:02:40

start a YouTube channel where you have to open your mouth

1:02:42

.

1:02:43

I need to do . Start the , the

1:02:45

, the , the the thumbnail .

1:02:45

The thumbnail .

1:02:47

Like I'm on the thumbnail yeah .

1:02:51

Or at least that your podcast episodes

1:02:53

have to have like a sensationalist title . Yeah , it

1:02:55

can't be descriptive and it kind of .

1:02:57

it kind of sucks being being a content creator

1:02:59

quote , unquote that

1:03:01

often , sometimes what

1:03:03

is listened to or what is viewed

1:03:06

on my channel are just things that like

1:03:08

, oh , the title that I came up was like

1:03:10

kind of more catchy this time , even

1:03:12

though I thought like maybe the interview that I had previously

1:03:15

, which didn't have a catchy title , was way more interesting

1:03:17

.

1:03:17

Yeah .

1:03:18

Or way more important or something like that . Yeah , so

1:03:22

I take , I definitely take your point and , yeah

1:03:24

, I also find I mean just to

1:03:27

keep in mind that optimism is VC

1:03:29

funded Right , and that is something

1:03:31

to keep in mind as to , like you know , the context

1:03:33

of all this and protocol is not , of course

1:03:35

. And

1:03:38

so the last thing I want to touch upon

1:03:40

, just because we were part of this research

1:03:43

that other internet did and

1:03:45

I interviewed our friend Tara , who was

1:03:49

one of the research researchers for this but

1:03:53

I want to talk a bit about solidarity primitives

1:03:55

, and I love shilling this because it's

1:03:58

a , it's a concept that that I kind of

1:04:00

like created and made up and I was like

1:04:02

is this ? I hope this is like this makes sense , but

1:04:05

I found that it is like an

1:04:07

interesting way to kind of bridge

1:04:10

the gap between , like I

1:04:12

don't know the crypto , the guy who only understands

1:04:14

the world through crypto , and like

1:04:16

a real and kind of like , I

1:04:19

guess like my politics in a certain

1:04:21

respect . Yeah , so

1:04:23

, like , solidarity primitives for people who don't know

1:04:25

are just basically taking the idea

1:04:27

of financial primitives in the

1:04:29

DeFi space of basically money

1:04:31

, legos , or taking saying

1:04:34

that these financial products

1:04:36

and financial mechanisms are

1:04:39

instantiated in code

1:04:41

via smart contracts , but

1:04:44

taking that idea and instead , rather than trying to

1:04:46

do it as something for simply

1:04:49

finance , as like financial

1:04:51

speculation often is the case , but

1:04:53

for creating solidarity between individuals

1:04:55

and organizations , that

1:04:58

is instantiated again through code

1:05:00

. But it's not just

1:05:02

it's not just a code thing

1:05:04

, because I think solidarity is still is

1:05:07

still like a soft thing . It's you can't

1:05:09

quantify the solidarity

1:05:11

that you have for something else and someone

1:05:14

else . It really depends on , of course , what

1:05:16

you're able to provide and what the other person is

1:05:18

able to receive . But

1:05:21

yeah , so I thought it was interesting to see Protocol Guild

1:05:23

take up this concept a

1:05:25

little bit .

1:05:27

Yeah , and this is sort of going a little

1:05:29

bit back to what I mentioned about legibility

1:05:31

and kind

1:05:35

of in the way that Ethereum wouldn't

1:05:38

be interesting as a privately operated

1:05:40

corporation chain the

1:05:42

Protocol Guild is a way for

1:05:44

all of these self-interested individuals

1:05:46

to group

1:05:49

together in a way that increases

1:05:51

their legibility to significant funding mechanisms

1:05:53

or increases

1:05:57

their , like , metaphysical

1:05:59

weight in the space of things

1:06:01

. It's like it's a representation of

1:06:03

the collective work . Again , no

1:06:05

single individual , no single organization

1:06:07

or company is responsible for this stewardship

1:06:10

, and Protocol Guild

1:06:12

is a way of sort of crystallizing

1:06:15

the power or the relationships

1:06:17

that actually enable that to happen . And

1:06:21

yeah , and solidarity is a great way to describe

1:06:24

it if you want to think of it as a union

1:06:26

for a core Protocol contributors or a

1:06:29

UBI , a consistent

1:06:31

income stream . But this wouldn't be

1:06:33

possible otherwise . It

1:06:36

wouldn't be . You wouldn't be able to do something

1:06:38

like this if you split

1:06:40

everybody up into different groups . This

1:06:42

is uniquely enabled by

1:06:44

the fact that everyone is coming together and saying

1:06:47

look , we produce this

1:06:49

body of software which is then used

1:06:51

. People run it and

1:06:53

produce the distributed system that is Ethereum

1:06:56

. But we all do this collectively . It's

1:06:58

not anyone going off on their own

1:07:00

and being a genius . This

1:07:03

is something that requires the

1:07:05

input of so many different people . Solidarity

1:07:08

is a great lens to view it through , and I

1:07:10

hope more people can . I

1:07:12

would love to see more versions of Protocol Guild . I

1:07:16

do acknowledge that it's maybe

1:07:18

very tailored to the core

1:07:20

Protocol space , but

1:07:23

I would love for there to be ways

1:07:25

for different

1:07:29

pits of the community to band together

1:07:31

and represent themselves , set

1:07:33

up an eligibility framework that's hopefully

1:07:36

explicit , and then you can just have membership

1:07:38

and then funding can flow through it . So , for example

1:07:40

, one thing that comes to mind is the

1:07:43

developer tooling layer . Smart

1:07:45

contract languages like Solidarity , and Viper libraries

1:07:49

that developers use , like ethers . These

1:07:52

things are all basically operating

1:07:54

at the same level of the stack , but they're all

1:07:56

in a sense competing

1:07:59

for funding from these same mechanisms

1:08:01

. But all the developers

1:08:03

still use

1:08:06

these tools to produce

1:08:09

smart contracts . It's an important integral

1:08:11

part of what they're doing . So it

1:08:13

would be really cool to start to see more people use something

1:08:15

like this as a primitive , and

1:08:18

I know other people have these great visions of

1:08:20

what happens when we start

1:08:22

to interlink different

1:08:25

organizations together . You can have

1:08:27

mutual aid , exchange

1:08:30

of value . I don't

1:08:32

know exactly what it would look

1:08:34

like . But if there was something

1:08:36

else , like Protocol Guild adjacent

1:08:40

to it or some dependency

1:08:42

funding , you can start to see this network

1:08:45

of value flows between organizations

1:08:48

that are logically

1:08:50

encapsulated by

1:08:53

their eligibility framework , but they're

1:08:55

adjacent to each other and recognize that

1:08:57

they can start to mutually

1:08:59

support the work that these other people are doing

1:09:02

. I

1:09:05

know there's other work that exists , like Coordinate is

1:09:07

another tool that people use to

1:09:10

coordinate on-chain work . Things

1:09:12

like this already exist and Protocol Guild is also

1:09:14

building on existing

1:09:17

work , things like Open Grants . This

1:09:19

is from years

1:09:21

ago . At this point , I think , 2019

1:09:23

. Even so

1:09:27

, these aren't new things , but it will be interesting

1:09:29

to start to see exchanges

1:09:33

between similar mechanisms or people

1:09:35

starting to see okay , we can fund each other , we

1:09:38

can surface

1:09:40

ourselves to larger mechanisms

1:09:42

, and that's one of the you talked about . Ethereum

1:09:45

doesn't have on-chain governance . Another big

1:09:48

difference from systems that have

1:09:50

on-chain governance is that it also doesn't have block

1:09:52

reward funding that goes to . There's

1:09:55

no percent of the block

1:09:57

reward , which typically goes to the

1:10:00

actors who are involved in consensus , like

1:10:03

progressing the chain forward , making blocks . They

1:10:06

get paid a certain amount of ETH

1:10:08

in this case , but in Ethereum it's unique

1:10:10

and that doesn't go to the

1:10:12

Ethereum Foundation . There's no reward to

1:10:14

pay for stewardship and I think One

1:10:17

small reason why that's the case is because there

1:10:20

hasn't been any credible mechanism

1:10:22

to actually accept it . It was like what would that look

1:10:24

like ? How would it be governed ? And we're

1:10:27

a long way from actually getting there and and finding

1:10:29

mechanisms , and maybe we never actually

1:10:31

have Infrotocall funding and it's all like

1:10:34

this altruistic opt-in . Maybe

1:10:36

that's good as a way to prevent capture

1:10:38

. Long-term , I'm definitely

1:10:40

I would err on the side of caution instead of

1:10:42

, you know , cementing this permanent

1:10:44

technocracy into ruling this

1:10:47

, this , this system . But

1:10:49

I think there's still

1:10:51

a lot to experiment and

1:10:53

Figure out as we start

1:10:55

to or

1:10:57

not as we start to , but as we continue to build

1:11:00

out these , these systems and how they're stewarded

1:11:02

.

1:11:03

Yeah . So there is

1:11:05

no kind of like Protocolized funding

1:11:07

of things in the Ethereum ecosystem

1:11:09

, hence why protocol

1:11:12

guild is important . You

1:11:15

know , there was a point whenever the Ethereum

1:11:17

Foundation almost ran out of money , I

1:11:19

think a few years ago . So there's also a need

1:11:22

, a need for resilience to have , or

1:11:24

other organizations besides . Yeah , that is that

1:11:26

is exactly to do this types of

1:11:28

funding , and

1:11:31

if there was a kind of like attempt

1:11:33

at putting on chain governance , it

1:11:35

would potentially solidify

1:11:37

certain things that

1:11:39

maybe don't make sense in the long term , because Ethereum

1:11:42

is , you can say potentially

1:11:45

, is still early , I don't know , but

1:11:47

we do see . Like , I mean , there's Dash and Tezos

1:11:50

, which does have these on-chain stuff , and while

1:11:52

they're interesting , they're not nearly as big

1:11:54

as as Ethereum , and

1:11:57

Ethereum is . I

1:11:59

think to some extent it is a bit

1:12:01

of a technocracy just because of the oh

1:12:03

for sure , yeah , the knowledge needed

1:12:05

to understand things is quite high

1:12:08

, even though it is public .

1:12:09

So it is like it does tow this like weird line

1:12:12

of Things that doesn't fit

1:12:14

yeah , for a counter example

1:12:16

, if people are familiar with cosmos , they have on-chain

1:12:18

governance , and I think a

1:12:20

big frustration of the community is that there's

1:12:24

this clash between the Technocracy

1:12:27

, or , like the people who are running the code and

1:12:29

saying like , okay , we could , we could move the protocol in

1:12:31

this direction , and then you have the token holders

1:12:34

right , the DJs . Yeah , like the people who

1:12:36

see it , they see it as a

1:12:38

financialized vehicle

1:12:40

and sometimes , often

1:12:43

, all more often than not , like there's , there's a

1:12:45

difference of opinion , and I think that's where a

1:12:47

lot of the angst in the cosmos community comes from

1:12:49

is it's really hard to come to consensus

1:12:51

when you have these different parties . So Ethereum

1:12:54

was Maybe lucky

1:12:56

, maybe had foresight , but we are

1:12:58

fortunate that we don't have

1:13:00

to deal with People purely

1:13:02

looking for financial return and making decisions

1:13:05

about like is censorship resistance

1:13:07

like censorship resistance ? Can you imagine

1:13:09

pitching that to a VC company ? Like

1:13:11

we're gonna make it easy for people

1:13:14

who ? We're gonna make a network infrastructure

1:13:17

that that allows

1:13:20

anybody to send transactions regardless of their

1:13:22

political or Social

1:13:25

, sexual orientation

1:13:27

? Like this is not a monetizable

1:13:29

thing . And so when you start to introduce these weird

1:13:31

financial incentives

1:13:33

, like it , yeah

1:13:36

, like , like we said , there's

1:13:38

a clash of values , and it's

1:13:40

hard to bridge between those two without

1:13:42

constantly having just like the

1:13:45

same Painful discussions about where

1:13:47

they , where they diverge .

1:13:49

Yeah , yeah . But so what we see is

1:13:51

that there is a sense

1:13:53

of solidarity within the

1:13:55

Ethereum community at least those who are building Core

1:13:58

, for those who are building core infrastructure , and

1:14:00

that is kind of like a a very necessary

1:14:03

and needed thing for

1:14:05

the long term for Ethereum

1:14:07

to continue yeah , I

1:14:09

Think

1:14:11

it's important and I'm gonna keep working

1:14:14

on this mechanism as long as it seems

1:14:16

to provide value to the membership .

1:14:18

We did it like a . We did a poll , a

1:14:20

very simple poll of like did you think

1:14:22

the pilot was helpful ? Did it

1:14:24

inspire you to continue working on a Ethereum

1:14:27

core protocol into the future ? And

1:14:30

I mean maybe , maybe

1:14:33

, obvious , but like people were happy

1:14:35

to . I loved receiving money from my work

1:14:37

receiving funding for this was good and

1:14:39

protocol guild as a mechanism was

1:14:41

useful . So as long

1:14:43

as that's still the case , we're gonna keep experimenting

1:14:46

and iterating on the mechanism and trying

1:14:49

to scale it up larger and

1:14:51

Will maybe check

1:14:53

back in in a year and we can see what happened

1:14:55

in the past year and whether it's still useful

1:14:58

as a solidarity primitive to

1:15:00

bringing people together and allowing them

1:15:02

to support each other in

1:15:04

this , this Stewardship

1:15:06

of the digital Ethereum Commons .

1:15:09

Yeah , cool . Well

1:15:11

, thank you so much for coming on . Trent , is

1:15:13

there any last words ? You want to leave

1:15:15

the audience with or plugs ? People

1:15:18

should check out protocol guild check out protocol guild .

1:15:21

I'd love for you to DM me and say

1:15:23

, hey , this doesn't seem like it will work

1:15:25

long term , or here's this issue .

1:15:28

Send him hate mail Please do ?

1:15:29

Maybe not hate mail , but criticism , constructive

1:15:32

criticism mail , because

1:15:34

this , yeah , at

1:15:36

a certain point you become so embedded within it it's

1:15:38

hard to see With fresh eyes

1:15:40

, and so I'm sensitive to that and would

1:15:42

love to have other people looking at it and giving

1:15:45

me critique , or even just spreading

1:15:47

the word . If you think there's a funding source

1:15:49

we should be aware of and

1:15:52

help us get connected with , I'd love that . Yeah

1:15:54

, and nothing really else to plug cool

1:15:58

. Go support Josh on patreon

1:16:00

and Join the bread chain

1:16:02

. I'll do your pitches for you . Yeah

1:16:04

, yeah , solidarity

1:16:06

primitive . Thanks

1:16:09

for having me .

1:16:10

Yeah , thank you .