Protocol Guild has come up with a great system for distributed core developer funding. And I think we could do a very similar system for event organizers.
- A collective of Ethereum events contributors
- working to boost the incentives around stewarding the core events
- by maintaining an onchain registry of its membership
- which allows ecosystem sponsors to directly fund the membership, their work, the public good.
Gardeners Guild (GG)
Rationale
All three of the rationales Protocol Guild present in the documentation I think apply to our segment as well:
1. Curation is Difficult → Self-curation
There is no solution that collects together some large group of individuals doing “credible-neutral” events. Existing solutions for events typically favour teams or specific events and centralisation (ETHGlobal).
The organisers themselves usually have natural deep insight into their own segment and can best assess the contribution of others.
2. Incentives are Imbalanced → Incentive compensation
Ethereum is a credible-neutral infrastructure where there is no block reward or token - just as there is no incentive for core developers, there is similarly no incentive for “core” event organizers. The ecosystem is growing and talented organizers are increasingly facing pressure from VCs and other commercial entities.
Currently, only a few entities, such as the Ethereum Foundation, are trying to balance this. They usually do it from the top, sponsoring specific events and not people - and failing to perceive local nuances.
In terms of competition, it’s not just commercial entities - but also, for example, the Polkadot Foundation, which supports many Ethereum events through its treasury.
3. Too Much Contributor Turnover is Negative → Reward long term effort
The steep learning curve for delivering value is similar for organizers as it is for core developers - it’s even steeper for hackathons. Organizing events isn’t easy and you need to have knowledge across many disciplines to make a real value. Contributor value grows over time, but there is less incentive for them to stay once they are experts.
What is a credible-neutral or “core” Ethereum event?
The definition of what is a credible-neutral or “core” Ethereum event is the most crucial question from my point of view. In Protocol Guild, everyone understand what credible-neutral Ethereum protocol infrastructure is. The definition of this is, in my opinion, one of the most important tasks of Ethereum Event Gardeners as a whole.
From my point of view, it’s all about trying to be as neutral, transparent (and open-source) as possible and especially non-commercial.
As a perfect example of totally credible-neutral or “core” event I see for example Protocol Berg. But it is clear that there are very few such events, so it will be necessary to think about this definition together, and come up with a compromise that could include more events and organizers (but at the same time pushing our interests). I think all founding gardeners events should fall into this category.
Qualifications for membership
Qualification examples:
Qualifying contributions must be:
- Transparent and open as much possible
- Continuous for at least 6 months ahead of inclusion and ongoing
Qualifying contributions must target at least one of the following projects/areas:
- Ethereum “core” events organization
- Small events/meetups - at least 3 meetups in last 6 months
- Big conferences/hackathons - at least 1 event in last 12 months
- Research and implementation experiments & specs related to events
- Ethereum Event Gardeners topics
Independent or unaffiliated contributors are considered by the same guidelines as any contributors “officially” part of teams/projects.
What do you think? Does it make sense? Thanks for the comments! 