Guild Guild

Locus of coordination to gather and distribute the means of Guilding on Ethereum

🔍 Abstract

Guild Guild is an organization that serves as a locus of coordination to gather and distribute the means of guilding within the Ethereum ecosystem. We recognize significant innovation potential in the simple form of organization pioneered by Protocol Guild, a self-curating registry and splitter, that we refer to as "guilding". We believe by propagating this mode of self-organization, we can support the self-sustainability of various types of contribution groups in Ethereum that typically struggle to maintain themselves beyond grant dependency.

The core functions of our group are three-fold:

1. Build and maintain a knowledge commons around best practices for guilding
2. Support the builders of tools useful to guilding
3. Support the organizers of guilds in formation, operation, and fundraising

⚡️ Impact

The health of the Ethereum ecosystem, as well as the broader open-source and public goods ecosystem, depends on diverse contributor groups that can operate sustainably. However, many teams struggle with the transition from initial grant funding to long-term sustainability.

Guilds represent a powerful form of self-organization that reduces attention costs for both contributors and funders. They create legible group identities that reliably produce high-quality work in specialized domains, allowing members to focus on their craft while providing funders with confidence in where their resources flow.

By making this model accessible to a wider range of contributor groups, Guild Guild aims to strengthen the overall sustainability of Ethereum's contributor ecosystem. The guild model provides a viable mode of self-organization with broad optionality to fit many types of collective productivity, but requires accessible knowledge, suitable tooling, and organizational support to implement effectively.

Key Result within 6 months: 5 new Guilds with ~100 ethereum contributors that derive at least 30% of their funding from non-grant sources.

🌐 Beyond Ethereum

The guild model extends beyond Ethereum, offering a blueprint for sustainable collaboration across diverse contributor groups.

• Open source maintainer communities
• Dependency graphs
• Research collectives
• Creative cooperatives
• Educational networks
• Local community organizations

🛠️ What We're Building

1. Knowledge Commons 📚

   • Comprehensive documentation of guild patterns and best practices
   • Step-by-step guides for guild formation and operation
   • Case studies of successful implementations

2. Builder Support Program 🔧

   • Microgrants for developers creating guild infrastructure
   • Open problem identification for critical tooling needs
   • Integration of tools into knowledge commons

3. Guild Accelerator 🌱

   • Direct support to emerging guilds through workshops and office hours
   • Community of practice for guild organizers
   • Facilitation of knowledge sharing among implementations

👥 Team

Our organizing team brings together proven researchers, builders, and organizers with deep experience supporting public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem.

• Ven Gist: Facilitation, research, design, facilitation (MetaCartel, DAOhaus, Public Nouns)
• Michael Zargham: Research and systems architecture (Block.science)
• Graven Prest: Product management and mechanism design (Flow State)
• James Waugh: Ecosystem strategy and metacoordination (Fire Eyes)

With ecosystem support from Kevin Owocki (Gitcoin), Joshua Tan (MetaGov), Rena O'brien (Allo), and Paul Wackerow (Ethereum.org) and many others.

🔗 Reference Material

• Guild Guild Website and Knowledge Commons
• Guild Guild Announcement
• Guild Guild Repo on GitHub

Thanks for supporting the future of guilds

With proper support, this emerging ecosystem of guilds could evolve into a mycelial network of interconnected guilds - an adaptive system for capital allocation across the ecosystem. Like mycelium in nature, this network would direct resources to their highest impact points, develop specialized nodes for particular domains, and optimize decision-making by keeping tactical execution within appropriate local contexts.