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FAQs

How are you different from Protocol Guild?​

Protocol Guild (PG) is a collective funding mechanism for Ethereum layer 1 R&D. Whilst PG heavily inspired the Dev Tools Guild (DTG), DTG exists to provide a coordination mechanism and collective funding for widely used developer tooling, enabling developers to easily build applications on Ethereum.

DTG membership consists of both projects and individuals, compared with PG which is only individuals.

Why am I donating to projects I don’t personally use?​

DTG supports a broad and diverse range of developers. By remaining accessible to a wide range of developers using different languages and frameworks it increases the surface area of which Ethereum can attract developers, which is key for continuing to grow the Ethereum developer community.

A diverse tooling ecosystem also mitigates against risks of over-reliance on specific tooling or teams. The removal of the left-pad dependency from NPM and OpenSSL’s Heartbleed Bug are a couple of examples of widely-used libraries that resulted in high-profile industry disruption in recent years.

In addition, many of your favourite application developers likely use projects which are in the Guild behind the scenes, which translates into a better end-user experience for you.

Why are there overlapping projects?​

In short, each project in the guild serves an important subset of the Ethereum developer community. Even tools in the same language domain can serve different use cases, niche markets, or different developer personas.

Further, some overlap isn’t a sign of inefficiency but rather a hallmark of a healthy ecosystem, where competition and collaboration drive progress. Each project contributes to the community in its own way, empowering developers with options tailored to their specific needs. Supporting this diversity in tools and approaches is a fundamental value of the Dev Tools Guild.

What is required of member projects?​

We want to avoid having very specific criteria which can be gamed or are subject to Goodhart’s Law. However, participating projects are expected to:

  • Participate in the governance of the guild
  • Provide accountability reporting for peers and the public
  • Engage with guildmates, e.g., attend meetings and share feedback, ambitions, lessons learned, etc.
  • Remain aligned with the stated purpose of the guild

How do new projects gain membership?​

Until the pilot phase of the guild (1 year) completes, it is unlikely that new member projects will be onboarded.

During the pilot phase, one goal is to codify the criteria for membership. Broadly speaking, we want to ensure a pathway exists for projects to join the guild if they have demonstrated significant positive impact to the Ethereum development community over a sustained period, are aligned with the mission and values of the guild, and have a team working full-time on the project.

Why isn’t project fill-in-the-blank included?​

The initial set of members includes tooling with a significant track record of serving the Ethereum development community. For the sake of proving the concept within a pilot program, the scope of projects included is limited.

How can a project lose membership?​

There are a number of ways in which this could happen, but examples could include:

  • Project switches focus to a commercial model instead of remaining a public good
  • Project team ceases development
  • Project no longer aligns itself with the mission or values of the guild
  • Project switches focus away from Ethereum developer tooling

How is a Guild different from a DAO?​

A guild is a member-owned advocacy organisation supporting a more abstract goal that is not specific to a particular project, but the general improvement of public goods used to create many different projects. Guilds use rough consensus among their members to make decisions.

DAOs are member-owned communities which may utilise voting with governance tokens for decision-making among members. They are usually aligned with a particular project or protocol which they exist to govern.

I'd like to contact the Guild, how can I do this?​

You can send us a DM via X.