Merge branch 'outline' into patch-6

Author: tvanepps

docs/1-proposal-rationale.md

@@ -1,37 +1,36 @@
 # 1. Proposal Rationale
 
-How can we give core protocol contributors exposure to the broader success of the projects building on top of Ethereum? This has been a recurrent topic for many years in our community. When the latest discussion resurfaced in [Oct 2021](https://twitter.com/dannyryan/status/1454065104819916803?s=20&t=UpzCC7pDSqldgV-TAIMFiA), we started researching the  existing public goods funding mechanisms
+How can we give core protocol contributors exposure to the broader success of the projects building on top of Ethereum? This has been a recurring topic for many years in our community. When the latest discussion resurfaced in [Oct 2021](https://twitter.com/dannyryan/status/1454065104819916803?s=20&t=UpzCC7pDSqldgV-TAIMFiA), we started researching existing public goods funding mechanisms, to see if any offered a solution. Ultimately, we concluded that a new mechanism was needed. 
 
-We settled on three main motivations as to why there should be a new mechanism, the individual challenges related to each, and the resulting design objectives we can use to help frame .
+What follows is a description of three main motivations as to why there should be a new mechanism, the individual challenges related to each, and the resulting design objectives for creating a new mechanism.
 
-## 1.1 Curation is difficult
+## 1.1 Curation is Difficult
 
-Apps / L2s want to sponsor, but curation of the contributor set is difficult. Protocol Contributors are interested token upside, but self-organizing is hard
-- There is no existing solution that collects all protocol contributors into one mechanism and consistently updates it. Expecting a single organization to curate and maintain this list themselves is a pretty big ask when they’re not already involved in this work
-- Design objective: existing contributors should self-curate a list
-Existing solutions usually favor teams
-- a meta-goal is to avoid governance and intermediation, giving as much agency to independent contributors as possible
-- Design objective: Avoid intermediation: individuals are the atomic unit
+Apps/L2s want to sponsor, but curation of the contributor set is difficult. Protocol contributors are interested in token upside, but self-organizing is hard.
+- There is no existing solution that collects all protocol contributors into one funding mechanism and consistently updates it. Expecting a single organization to curate and maintain this list by themselves is a pretty big ask when they’re not already involved in this work.
+- Design objective: Existing contributors should self-curate a list. 
+- Existing solutions usually favor teams.
+- A meta-goal is to avoid governance and intermediation, giving as much agency to independent contributors as possible.
+- Design objective: Avoid intermediation, individuals are the atomic unit.
 
 ## 1.2 Incentives are Imbalanced
 
-Financial incentives are skewed towards projects built on top of the protocol
-- As a credibly neutral infrastructure with no block reward, Ethereum doesn’t offer the same token incentives with the same upside as apps / L2s. However, it still needs to attract and retain talent to continue to evolve the protocol
-- As the Ethereum ecosystem continues to grow, competition for talented individuals will only increase. This isn’t to fault individuals for rationally weighting financial incentives, or protocols for leveraging the power of tokens - this is just the reality of our current context
-- We acknowledge that financial motivations aren’t the only or best motivator for people, it’s just one tool in our toolset that might be underleveraged
+Financial incentives are skewed towards projects built on top of the protocol.
+- As a credibly neutral infrastructure with no block reward, Ethereum doesn’t offer the same token incentives with the same upside as apps/L2s. However, it still needs to attract and retain talent to continue to evolve the protocol.
+- As the Ethereum ecosystem continues to grow, competition for talented individuals will only increase. This isn’t to fault individuals for rationally weighting financial incentives, or protocols for leveraging the power of tokens - this is just the reality of our current situation.
+- We acknowledge that financial motivations aren’t the only or best motivator for people, it’s just one tool in our toolset that might be underleveraged.
 - Design objective: Nudge balance back to the protocol by getting sponsors to send tokens.
 
-## 1.3 Too much contributor turnover is negative
+## 1.3 Too Much Contributor Turnover is Negative
 
 There's a steep learning curve for contributors to deliver value. It can take a while to be onboarded to a team, understand a client codebase, and start making meaningful contributions.
-- Design objective: Protocol Contributors must be active for 6 months before membership
-
-Contributor value grows over time, but there is less incentive for them to stay once they are experts
+- Design objective: Protocol contributors must be active for 6 months before becoming eligible for membership.
+- Contributor value grows over time, but there is less incentive for them to stay once they are experts.
 - Design objective: Assets should vest to reduce churn in the contributor set, to help transfer knowledge between cohorts.
-- Design objective: Weight contributor allocations  according to time
+- Design objective: Weight contributor allocations according to time.
 
 ## 1.4 Summary
 
-This mechanism will provide autonomous funding and nudge the incentive balance towards the protocol. Sponsors who opt-in will be Ethereum-based applications, protocols, and individuals - this aligns well with our community’s existing voluntaryist mindset towards public goods funding.
+The new funding mechanism must provide autonomous funding and nudge the incentive balance towards the protocol. Sponsors who opt-in will be Ethereum-based applications, protocols, and individuals - this aligns well with our community’s existing voluntaryist mindset towards public goods funding.
 
-Over the course of this ideation process, we've also realized that these questions also apply to a more general question: what would a mechanism to trustlessly fund protocol contributors look like? We believe the current design of the Protocol Guild described here in this documentation is a strong approach to addressing these questions.
+Over the course of this ideation process, we realized that we cannot answer the original question (how to give contributors exposure to the success of the application layer), without answering a more general question: what would a mechanism to trustlessly fund protocol contributors look like? We believe the design of the Protocol Guild as described here is a strong approach to addressing both these questions.

docs/10-resources.md

@@ -3,18 +3,19 @@
 ## Links
 
 - [Pilot Vesting Contract](https://app.0xsplits.xyz/accounts/0xF29Ff96aaEa6C9A1fBa851f74737f3c069d4f1a9/)
-- [Protocol Guild twitter](https://twitter.com/protocolguild)
+- [Protocol Guild Twitter](https://twitter.com/protocolguild)
 - [Stateful Works Mirror publication](https://stateful.mirror.xyz/)
 - [Gnosis Safe multisig](https://gnosis-safe.io/app/eth:0xF6CBDd6Ea6EC3C4359e33de0Ac823701Cc56C6c4/balances)
 
 ## Media
 
 | Title | Event | Date |
 |:----|:----|:----|
-| [Funding Ethereum with the Protocol Guild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVN97qA4gBs&list=PLhuBigpl7lqvMt8d7h4sbCmra9KbFmAdg) | Funding the Commons | June 24 2022 |
-| [Funding Ethereum Core Development and the Protocol Guild](https://anchor.fm/i-pledge-allegiance/episodes/Trent-Van-Epps-and-Tim-Beiko---Funding-Ethereum-Core-Development-and-the-Protocol-Guild-e1k26qh) | I Pledge Allegiance podcast | June 20 2022 |
+| [Funding Ethereum with the Protocol Guild](https://youtu.be/hSgJiZQ70k8) | Devcon 6 | Oct 12 2022 |
+| [Funding Ethereum with the Protocol Guild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVN97qA4gBs&list=PLhuBigpl7lqvMt8d7h4sbCmra9KbFmAdg) | Funding the Commons | Jun 24 2022 |
+| [Funding Ethereum Core Development and the Protocol Guild](https://anchor.fm/i-pledge-allegiance/episodes/Trent-Van-Epps-and-Tim-Beiko---Funding-Ethereum-Core-Development-and-the-Protocol-Guild-e1k26qh) | I Pledge Allegiance podcast | Jun 20 2022 |
 | [The Protocol Guild](https://thedailygwei.substack.com/p/the-protocol-guild-the-daily-gwei?s=w) | The Daily Gwei #481 | May 13 2022 |
-| The Protocol Guild ([Watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE9a9COahc) or [Listen](https://availableon.com/greenpill)) | Green Pill Podcast #10 | April 25 2022 |
-| [Funding Ethereum Public Goods with the Protocol Guild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhx7advbPLE) | ETHDay (Devconnect) | April 18 2022 |
+| The Protocol Guild ([Watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE9a9COahc) or [Listen](https://availableon.com/greenpill)) | Green Pill Podcast #10 | Apr 25 2022 |
+| [Funding Ethereum Public Goods with the Protocol Guild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhx7advbPLE) | ETHDay (Devconnect) | Apr 18 2022 |
 | [Overview of the Protocol Guild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EPRYXYQaIg) | Schelling Point (ETHDenver) | Feb 17 2022 |
 | [Announcement post](https://stateful.mirror.xyz/mEDvFXGCKdDhR-N320KRtsq60Y2OPk8rHcHBCFVryXY) | Mirror | Dec 31 2021 |

docs/2-existing-mechanisms.md

@@ -1,27 +1,27 @@
 # 2. Tradeoffs of Existing Mechanisms
 
 The existing suite of protocol funding mechanisms have so far adequately supported the ecosystem, but come with their own tradeoffs: 
-- typically not forward looking, eg. they are usually retroactive
-- tend to favor projects/teams instead of individuals
-- formed around mediating institutions
-- do not typically give exposure to the upside of application layer
+- Typically not forward looking, eg. they are usually retroactive
+- Tend to favor projects/teams instead of individuals
+- Formed around mediating institutions
+- Do not typically give exposure to the upside of application layer
 
-In the future, there will certainly be ways for these projects to collaborate and interoperate with the Protocol Guild.
+In the future, there will certainly be ways for these existing funding mechanisms to collaborate and interoperate with the Protocol Guild.
 
 ## 2.1 Grants
 
-These are a very common mechanism, seen in Gitcoin, the EF's Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) and Ongoing Development teams, and application ecosystem programs like the Uniswap Grants Program (UGP). They tend to be best at rewarding contributions from the near-past to near-future. While these mechanisms may be well suited to their current applications, there are some limitations to their direct use in something like the Protocol Guild.
+Grants are a very common funding mechanism, seen in Gitcoin, the EF’s Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) and Ongoing Development teams, as well as application ecosystem programs like the Uniswap Grants Program (UGP). They tend to be best at rewarding contributions from the near-past to near-future. While these mechanisms may be well suited to their current applications, there are some limitations to their direct use in something like the Protocol Guild.
 
-For Gitcoin Grants, it can be challenging to ensure accountability for grantees due to the amount of time and expertise it can take to perform diligence. In addition, because Round participants are effectively competing against each other for the same matching funds, it necessitates some amount of self-promotion. This wouldn't work for large groups of individuals doing similar work like core developers, many of whom are more low profile. Collections (a curated set of Gitcoin profiles) could accomplish some of our objectives, but still does not include vesting, and don't resolve the answer the questions of custody and membership management. Finally, any prospective funder from the application layer has to rely on a mediating institution (eg. the Ethereum Foundation, Gitcoin Grants rounds) to facilitate discovery, processing, and diligence.
+For Gitcoin Grants, it can be challenging to ensure accountability for grantees due to the amount of time and expertise it takes to perform due diligence. In addition, because round participants are effectively competing against each other for the same matching funds, it necessitates some amount of self-promotion. This wouldn’t work for large groups of individuals doing similar work like core developers, many of whom are more low profile. Collections (a curated set of Gitcoin profiles) could accomplish some of our objectives, but still does not include vesting, and doesn’t resolve issues related to custody and membership management. Finally, any prospective funder from the application layer has to rely on a mediating institution (e.g. the Ethereum Foundation, Gitcoin) to facilitate discovery, processing, and due diligence.
 
 ## 2.2 Retroactive Funding Programs
 
-An explicitly historic-looking variant of grants include [Optimism's RPG](https://medium.com/ethereum-optimism/retroactive-public-goods-funding-33c9b7d00f0c). These can account for past work, but are usually scoped to measure the contributions of teams or projects, usually not individuals. There is no guarantee of consistent funding, as there is a possibility of omission from a subsequent round. In Gitcoin's case, it can take a while for past contributions to be recognized and rewarded due to how discovery and grant promotion cycles work.
+An explicitly historic-looking variant of grants includes [Optimism's RPG](https://medium.com/ethereum-optimism/retroactive-public-goods-funding-33c9b7d00f0c). These can account for past work, but are usually scoped to measure the contributions of teams or projects, instead of individuals. Furthermore, there is no guarantee of consistent funding, as there is a possibility of omission from subsequent rounds. In Gitcoin’s case, it can take a while for past contributions to be recognized and rewarded due to how discovery and grant promotion cycles work.
 
 ## 2.3 Independent Non-Profits
 
-Some teams may opt to stand up their own non-profit entities, eg. the [Nomic Foundation](https://medium.com/nomic-foundation-blog/introducing-the-nomic-foundation-an-ethereum-public-goods-organization-31012af67df9) which stewards ongoing maintenance of Hardhat and other initiatives, announced in Q1 2022. The challenge is that the threshold to create a legal entity can be very high for a small team, and impossible for pseudonymous individual contributors. Additionally, the recurring burden of fundraising inevitably pits them in competition against each other, while further disadvantaging individual contributors.
+Some teams may opt to establish their own non-profit entities, e.g. the [Nomic Foundation](https://medium.com/nomic-foundation-blog/introducing-the-nomic-foundation-an-ethereum-public-goods-organization-31012af67df9) which stewards ongoing maintenance of Hardhat and other initiatives, announced in Q1 2022. The challenge is that the overhead to create a legal entity can be very high for a small team, and impossible for pseudonymous individual contributors. Additionally, the recurring burden of fundraising inevitably pits them in competition against each other, while further disadvantaging individual contributors.
 
 ## 2.4 Salaries
 
-Salaries *do* target individuals but are limited in that they can only account for the present and near future. Further, they are tied to a single legal organization, and can never be a good proxy for ecosystem value creation.
+Salaries *do* target individuals, but are limited in that they can only account for the present and near future. Further, they are tied to a single legal organization, and can never be a good proxy for ecosystem value creation.