Self Curated Registries
Loading...1-Bottoms-up curation
2-Definition of important domains
Clear domain definitions proposal submission to get funding
1-Scalability
2-Working in domains without clear boundaries
POPULARIZED BY PROTOCOL GUILD
Self-Curated Registries were popularized by Protocol Guild - a group of Ethereum protocol developers. The guild is a self curated registry, an onchain list maintained by the members of Protocol Guild themselves. This registry allows members to add, update, or remove entries without external oversight, ensuring that the information remains accurate and relevant to the community’s needs. It empowers participants by giving them control over the registry’s content, fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility - and enabling projects built upon Ethereum to directly contribute to Ethereum developers upon which they depend.
A self-curated registry should be used by communities with clear boundaries. This is particularly beneficial for groups focused on domains where there is no shared funding source, such as Ethereum protocol developers.
By allowing members to directly curate the registry, self-curated registries ensure the information remains accurate, relevant, and reflective of the community’s evolving needs and contributions. This makes it easy for parties to fund their shared needs by just sending tokens to the self curated registry.
Protocol Guild ran a one year pilot from May ‘22 - May ‘23 to test their assumptions about the Protocol Guild’s funding mechanism and how to operate it. As of July 2024, Protocol Guild has received 7.9k donations from 600 donors, totalling $88mm in value at the time of donation The top donors include Ether Fi ($30m), Taiko ($24m), Layer Zero ($5m) and Arbitrum($2.4m).
Protocol Guild was initially conceived as a way to “boost the incentives around stewarding the core protocol.” In retrospect, this goal was perhaps not ambitious enough. A significant portion of core protocol development is currently being funded by centralized—and potentially unsustainable—sources, including the Ethereum Foundation (EF), ConsenSys, and a few others. To secure the future of Ethereum’s core development work, the goal was to create a new equilibrium in core protocol funding, sustained by the ecosystem built on top of it.
Achieving the above in a sustainable and decentralized way will be a years-long process, and require buy-in from across the Ethereum ecosystem. Fortunately, it’s the exact kind of challenge that our community is uniquely suited to rally around!
In Protocol Guild, the registry is maintained through a self-curation process by its members, who are typically key contributors to the protocol. Members coordinate to add, update, or remove entries on a quarterly basis, ensuring that the registry remains accurate over time.
Protocol Guild’s eligibility framework includes individuals who have made significant contributions to the protocol, such as developers, researchers, and other essential contributors. This ensures that the registry is curated by those with the most knowledge and investment in the protocol’s success.
Protocol Guild is funded by projects built on Ethereum, who have a dependency on the continued development and maintenance of the protocol.
Projects are encouraged to donate their native token to the Protocol Guild, to give its members access to a diversified basket of funds representing the value being created in the ecosystem.
Funds are managed via smart contracts, which ensure transparency and automate the disbursement process. Members receive their allocated funds according to a linear 4 year vesting schedule.
Each members’ individual allocation is proportional to the number of months they have been contributing to eligible projects.
Vesting and time-weighting ensure that the distribution is fair, efficient, and aligned with the long-term goals of the protocol.
Objective criteria are set up for inclusion in the registry. Proposals can be made to add or remove members to the registry.
Once a registry is deemed to have met the attributes of the desired domain, fundraising can begin. DAOs are then approached to fund the registry. Governance proposals are submitted.
Funds sent to the contract will vest over the course of 4 years. Members of the registry can withdraw vested funds from the contract.
Protocol Guild and other Self Curated Registries are ongoing processes - registry curation can happen in parallel with fundraising and vesting.
The guild is designed to support and incentivize key contributors to the protocol, such as developers, researchers, and other critical roles, fostering an ecosystem of continuous improvement and innovation.
Tokens or rewards are vested to contributors over time, aligning their incentives with the long-term success of the protocol and encouraging sustained contributions.
Decisions about the registry and other guild activities are made collectively by the members, often through proposals and voting, ensuring a decentralized and democratic governance structure.
The guild is typically funded by stakeholders within the ecosystem who have a vested interest in the protocol’s success, such as apps, L2s or DAOs built on Ethereum,, as well as philanthropic entities focused on funding public goods.
Members of Protocol Guild maintain and update the registry autonomously, ensuring that the most knowledgeable contributors manage the relevant information.
Unlike many other onchain mechanisms that might rely on external parties or automated systems for updates, Protocol Guild relies on its members for maintaining the registry, ensuring that the information is curated by those most involved in the protocol.
Protocol Guild only works when ecosystem stakeholders opt-in to fund the mechanism, as opposed to mechanisms that might rely on transaction fees or other indirect funding sources.
The vesting schedule for rewards in Protocol Guild is designed to promote long-term engagement, whereas other mechanisms might provide immediate or short-term incentives.
The guild aims to support individuals who play critical roles in the protocol’s development, whereas other mechanisms might distribute rewards more broadly or based on different criteria.
“The ecosystem needs to more fully recognize that cross-L2 infrastructure is a type of Ethereum infrastructure, alongside L1 clients, dev tools and programming languages, and should be valorized and funded as such. We have Protocol Guild; maybe we need Basic Infrastructure Guild.” - Vitalik Buterin, 2024