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Benefits

Reliable Runway, Reliable Tools​

Developer tools often start off as open-source projects with no commercial motivations, created to scratch the itch of an individual or team. Over time, some of them find themselves gaining traction and communities of users form around them.

As the impact of tool grows, so too does the needs of its users, resulting in more work for the maintainer. What often starts off as a passion project grows into something that needs additional support and funding to meet the needs of its users, sustaining or growing the project.

If maintainers don't burn out before then, support typically comes from investments, grants, or donations.

  • Investment funding requires a commercial business to be built around the software, which can be to the detriment of the project and its users, as an investor wants to see a return on their investment.
  • Grant funding enables the software to continue being built and serve the needs of its community, but are can be time-consuming to apply for and only provide funding certainty for the duration of the grant.
  • Donations from users of public goods are valued, but are unpredictable and often insufficient to cover the needs of the maintainer.

The projects in the Dev Tools Guild are all public goods, which have both similar goals and funding challenges. Many are reliant on grant funding, which needs to be managed on an ongoing basis. Many projects also have shared sources they rely on for grant funding, such as the Ethereum Foundation’s Ecosystem Support Program, Optimism’s Retro Funding, and Gitcoin’s Quarterly Grant program.

By having a collective of aligned projects in the guild, the funding burden is reduced considerably as:

  • Projects no longer need to divert resources to apply individually for funding
  • Funders can donate via the guild, reducing the burden of assessing ongoing applications from each of the individual members
  • Projects can potentially be secured for longer time horizons

Coordination, Alignment, and Accountability​

In addition to fundraising benefits, the guild structure provides greater alignment between member projects and their common goal of ensuring the Ethereum ecosystem has the leading developer tooling of any blockchain network, supporting a broad range of programming languages and developer communities.

The guild structure provides a coordination mechanism between teams. Teams meet regularly and are expected to coordinate on Ethereum upgrades, roadmap planning, and community engagement.

During the EIP-1559 upgrade, there was an initiative in place to coordinate work between different Ethereum developer tooling teams to ensure they were ready for the upgrade. The industry would benefit from more regular synchronisations between tooling teams to plan for upcoming upgrades to ensure broad support for new features are available in a timely manner.

Finally, the guild structure provides a mechanism for Guild members to share updates on their work and project roadmaps. These sessions foster alignment and inspire collaboration across related projects. They also help build accountability by allowing members to track and discuss progress over time.