10 - The Protocol Guild with Trent Van Epps

hello coordination welcome to green pill today we are talking to trent van epps who is an ecosystem person at the ethereum foundation and is also one of the core coordinators of the protocol guild the protocol guild is basically a way to retain and incentivize protocol developers in the ethereum network and basically what trent is engineering is a smart contract that anyone can send funds to in order to give protocol

developers an upside or tokens in their project why do that because we need to retain protocol developers that create the public good of a efficient reliable secure performant ethereum base layer so basically the incentives to work on the protocol are much different than to work on the application layer of the ethereum ecosystem and by creating a protocol guild trent has created a crypto economic incentive that augments protocol development and i think that's

a really important public good for the ethereum ecosystem so really excited about this episode trent is just such a smart humble individual and coordination i think that you're really going to enjoy this episode without further ado i give you trent van impe's so you've got some money but how are you gonna use it you want to spend me shopping now bro when you know you should be saving you'll never buy a house at this rate but what if you could spend and save at

the same time for the enlightened kind with inquiring minds a new world awaits set yourself free with completely flexible self-repaying loan technology supported on desktop and mobile sees the power of alchemix allowing you to spend and save at the same time leverage your wealth without risk of liquidation take out a loan that repays itself by using yield from your deposit

to pay off your balance you're only dead his time what was once inconceivable is now within your grasp if you're trying to grow and preserve your crypto wealth optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem alto ira can help you invest in crypto in tax advantage ways to help you preserve your hard earned money also crypto ira lets you invest in more than 150 coins and tokens

with all the same tax advantages of an ira they make it easy to fund your alternative ira or crypto ira via your 401k or by contributing directly from your bank account there is no setup or account fees and is all you need to do to invest in crypto tax-free let me repeat that again you can invest in crypto tax-free diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches open an alto crypto ira to invest in crypto tax-free just go to altoira.com bankless that's a-l-t-o-i-r-a-dot-com

bankless and start investing in crypto today i am here with trent van epps who is an ecosystem person at the ethereum foundation and working on the protocol guild what's up trent how's it going man thank you for having me um i'm actually really stoked to just talk to you about all of this stuff this crazy nonsense that we're building totally so trent what led you to establish the protocol guild uh sure so i guess establishing is maybe a bit strong and so me personally i'm just one of many

members um it's been really a collective project uh given that it's made of you know members from many different client teams it's not just me though i am like the maybe the public face is is a little strong given it's only been around for a few months but people are starting to associate me with it but really like this this collective effort wouldn't be uh it wouldn't exist at all if it didn't have buy-in and membership from all these client teams and you know their involvement so uh maybe that's important

context but um so yeah why did i create it or why have i why have i put my time into something like this um i guess the answer is so i've been um adjacent to protocol development for a couple years now uh you know just going to core dev calls observing mostly i don't really have a ton to contribute on these chord f calls but you know getting familiar with the people and the players the client teams people who are contributing to core ethereum protocol um

and over the years i've just gotten more familiar with how this space works um core protocol is different from the application and layer you know where a lot of user facing stuff happens and over time it became apparent that uh you know the incentives uh to build on the application layer are much much different than contributing to the core protocol so you know one of those is financial incentives it's the reality of how things work an application can have a token and you know the upside of working on a

project like that or a layer two that has a token is much much higher so part of it is like you know it would be nice if there was a way for these uh protocol devs to share in some form of this upside um financial upside specifically uh and they were also um you know over the years there have been um applications or layer twos whales people with with assets who are like okay i want to donate to core devs how can i do

this and you know there have been a couple projects over the years i've been i've been involved in a couple of them there was uh molok dao which is like one of the earliest examples where people who had eath would kind of band together and um they got together put their eat in this contract and then would disperse it to community projects um really one of the first experiments in community funding of different projects throughout the ecosystem and there was a lot of great outcomes from that some

like research studies produced uh tornado cache came out of molok dao um and then i was i was involved in it as well dispersing some money and then other experiments like um open grants which is a vested e-stream um and then i did a couple other projects here and there like uh the beacon book which was a book that had some nfts associated with it and then any eat that was raised went to the the core protocol people who were involved in launching the beacon chain

and then last year we also did 1559 nft series which is again going to people who worked on um 1559 the the protocol upgrade so there's been a bunch of these stuff over the years that i've started to like experiment with and be involved with about how do we get this value back to people who are maintaining doing the crucial maintenance work of keeping ethereum alive and evolving for the long term um and finally we came to this point from you know those experiments

and mutual discussions with people of like okay there needs to be this mechanism of um it needs to have an on chain representation and it should treat the individual as sort of the the atomic unit it shouldn't go to a team it shouldn't go to uh somebody else that can interrupt the flow of that value so um you know i guess i'll summarize because i've been talking well but the the intent is to like share some of that financial upside the incentive that people miss out on when they're um

when they're contributing to the core protocol and then uh you know some of the design decisions were informed of these other experiments that i've done over the years um but yeah those those are kind of the big big picture idea of why this thing is necessary got it seems like you've been working on ecosystem development for a few years i'd be curious how this has evolved for you has have you always been into public goods ecosystem public goods and how has your views sort of evolved through all these different projects and how has that led

you to the to the protocol guild sure so um yeah i was doing this i guess for like like i mentioned i was sort of adjacent to the protocol for years and like just showing up on core of calls when and when really i have like no business being there i'm just kind of along for the ride and and the weirdness that we're all making here um uh but it it my interest probably started um you know i've always been

like probably a little bit more left-leaning politically and like you know public goods are kind of a key tenet of like the state should have some responsibility towards um you know making sure its citizens are taken care of the market can't solve everything so that's probably where a little bit of it comes from but you know even from the early days the stuff bitcoin was doing was always like pretty amazing to me of like you're able to mobilize uh capital that would be doing something else completely and put it towards

projects that wouldn't be able to access that that funding in any way um so that's probably where my first like crypto public goods things uh where it first originated um and then just the idea of like uh you know ethereum bootstrapped itself it it had the the initial pre-sale and then took those funds and it's just kind of like pouring money into creating this novel internet infrastructure so like all of these different influences were probably important

right and um i guess like can you take me through the the protocol guild how does it work and and you know what will the first iteration of it of it look like sure sure uh so in like the most basic explanation of what this thing is it's a it's an on-chain contract a weighted split contract that the membership self-curates and it vests over time those are kind of the

key the key components for what this thing is and um i mean we can we can we can dive into what that actually means um what we actually get out of it is this sort of if you take a step back it's like i mentioned earlier it's like recognizing the individual as the atomic unit for um what who's building the protocol obviously individuals slot into teams but in reality they're uh recognizing sort of the sovereignty of what individuals are doing

the membership of the split goes to the individual to do whatever they'd like to um and those are the kind of the key components um uh vesting is important sorry go ahead oh i was gonna say one of the things that i just felt was really smart like i guess elegant about this design was having the individuals who are building the protocol being the ones who are curating the list of where the money goes which kind of creates that that locality of the knowledge

it also reflects in the smart contract so it just seemed very elegant to me yeah um i i i can't claim uh exact invention of that but like uh i was just listening to your recording with tracheoptrix uh and you know that's a huge inspiration is like the people who are actually working on this stuff are the ones who are doing the curation that's like um massive influence on on what this is um and then i mentioned

if anybody is interested in reading the docs i'm sure they'll be um linked in the show notes but a key component of this is yeah that's self-curation and the reason it's a little different from other solutions like um bitcoin uh or optimism's retroactive public goods there's some nuance there as to why self-curation is important so i'll go through that really quick um you know git coin uses the the wisdom of the crowd and and people who are actually using these products to understand

what should get the the largest allocations right um unfortunately for core development and the protocol itself it's really hard to have an accurate view into some of this stuff you know it's really technically complicated um the people who are working on it usually don't have a git coin grant or they may not have like a public profile so it's really hard for the average ethereum community member to understand how uh

or how to wait between these different projects um the other thing is like uh ethereum has a multi-client culture so you wouldn't want to be sort of pitting these projects against each other like competitively like oh you should donate to this client or this client if you were to ask people what is a public good what is the core client of ethereum or like the core protocol components they would i probably 80 or 90 would say guess like that's their understanding of what the client

landscape is but in reality you know uh or if you've seen and i think we talked about this before but the protocol guild is over a hundred members now and most people uh the a few that i've interacted with are like wow this is actually way larger than i anticipated or you know which is totally understandable given people don't have the time to understand like the just the breadth of uh who's actually making the protocol work and what goes into maintaining it it's a lot more than people understand so that's one of the reasons why

bitcoin's a little different and why uh the benefit that we get from self-curation is that um i think jordan hall said like or one of your recent guests said the the knowledge is like pushed or the curation has pushed the edges of the network and that's that's a really great way to frame it because uh like if it were if it were just me or uh like some somebody at the ef who is um curating people and trying to to

delineate those relationships exactly there's always going to be somewhere where it falls short um so when you say okay client x tell me the the 10 or 15 people who are contributing to your client and who deserve to be on this split and they'll be like okay i've got the exact list i know the exact contributors and the capacity they're working um that's uh really the best way to do it and then other things like retroactive public goods uh funding like optimism's experiment they they use a little bit of a different model but they have a council of these badge holders which do the

curation and then they do like a ranking vote um uh i think one of the key things that we really wanted to push for with the protocol guild is again having that autonomy and if you were to have some sort of council or uh like external people that have to then evaluate similar to if it were you know uh the ef or somebody else who's making these evaluations it it loses a bit of that autonomy and independence so you know the membership curates itself uh we're hoping hoping

that it will work you know long term and it doesn't degrade or or you know just completely fail but uh we'll see how that goes right speaking of long term i know that you mentioned vesting is a core component here so how are you thinking about incentives for people who maintain the protocol over time and how that vests right so one of the key like one of the key things i've noticed and in discussions with other people who work on core devs is like the core

development is that uh it can take quite a while to sort of ramp up into understanding um not just the technical aspects of what protocol development is but also like the the unique ecosystem we're working in you know there's an upgrade cycle there's release cycles that may not correspond with something you'd see in like a traditional uh software startup there's a lot of considerations beyond just like okay we

write the client and then we release it but you like the the context is there's a lot more at stake here like you have basically a mini economy running on your platform so stuff has to be for better or worse it has to be right when it goes out so it can take a while for people to onboard and understand clients and once people sort of cross that threshold or you know move further on the spectrum you want to keep them around as long as possible and once they get to that point where they're like you know six to nine

months into joining a client team or something you they they start to like really uh hit their stride and contribute in in ways that are positive um so like i said once they cross that threshold you want to keep them around as long as possible um and one of the ways that we're attacking that with the protocol guild is the the vesting feature um and it's just like a linear vest and the the intent is like you get people to

accumulate this knowledge and then pass it on to whoever the next generation is and for the for the um the the pilot we're working on it's we're gonna probably target like a year for the the linear vest and then uh i think even in the future we would do something like a four-year vest i don't know if i don't know if we're leaning towards that because that's how long a typical market cycle is or something but um you know raised at the bottom of the the bear market and then uh see what happens afterwards but yeah

four years seems like a good uh balance ten years feels a little long um but yeah that's the intended to keep that that accumulated uh maybe institutional knowledge isn't the right thing but it's the network knowledge of these people who are contributing and understand you know the quirks of the client and uh the the you know the oddities of the code base and and just you know all that knowledge you want to keep it around and sort of get that mind virus transmitted to as

many people as possible right so take me through a world in which the protocol guild is maximally successful it sounds like we believe that the protocol work is a public good for the ethereum ecosystem and when the protocol guild has reached a sufficient size and scale then the people who work on that protocol and create the basis for all the economic value are rewarded which is a moral sort of good in itself but also it's kind of solves a retainment problem where if you can go make five times x by working at the app layer instead of the

protocol layer it kind of solves that retainment problem what other what else does the world look like where when protocol guild is is maximally successful you know what's your kind of dream state five or ten years out yeah uh it's that's a great question um i should probably write this up and put in the docs like what what a success for us um i've put some probably some some small notes about like um maximally successful uh

you know there's there's a relatively significant amount of money in this split um it operates without major conflicts among the members you know uh deciding who or who should not be part of this uh that would be amazing um i i expect that we'll learn a lot of things in this first pilot and have to tweak some ways that the the mechanism operates um but yeah if we can get um you know a good good chunk of of funds of tokens of

stuff from interest bearing tokens or whatever people send to this um if we can get enough of that to be sent to the to the split contract and you know starting to build the norms this is something that i've always been really i'm just bitcoin is obviously the trailblazer here but you know building these norms takes years and years and thankfully you've you and and the the contributors of bitcoin have done quite a lot of the legwork of like actually getting people aware of what these

public goods are in the mode of donating and sponsoring them so like um you know in a couple years time hopefully the norm has also been developed for the protocol guild and uh you know people are just aware that this thing exists and why it's there and why it's important yeah i mean i will say that uh at get coin we believe in a pluralistic view of funding public goods and one of the things i think is so beautiful about

this space is how the client diversity at the base layer there's just such a respect among the different teams that are working on clients for each other and there's a recognition that the anti-fragility of having multiple clients is good for the network and i think that i would like to extend that up the stack and get coin and retroactive public goods funding and clr fund and protocol guild can all be trying to build this beautiful world together that's that's pluralistic and so um i gotta say that i'm happy that we're pushing in the same

direction as you and you know thank you for for mentioning get coin but i really do hope that you're gonna be successful with protocol guild and i do think that it's really important that these protocol developers participate in the upside of the network so it's it's really neat and thank you for saying that yeah the the anti-fragility is is or like complementary approaches are huge you know the ef is an entity that does funding but they can't there's certain limitations on what they can actually do to incentivize people you know there's

there's a lot of limitations in terms of like they're not going to go out purchase these tokens and then donate them to uh you know the core developers are not gonna run this split on their own uh or the curation or like the fundraising for it um there's limitations to what what the ef can do as an organization similarly for git coin or any any or other organization that's running a retroactive public goods they each have their strengths and their weaknesses and hopefully you know we end

up with this patchwork uh patrick sounds negative but a patchwork of mutually beneficial and complementary solutions that um end up providing enough sustainable funding for these these public goods we're so passionate about yeah totally and i do think that you know the complementary-ness of the protocol guild to bitcoin to these other approaches is really important because it it it allows the funding to go through multiple different

places and and reach public goods and different diverse mechanisms when you shop for plane tickets you probably use kayak expedia or google to compare ticket prices so why would you limit yourself to just one exchange when you trade crypto when you make your trades you want to make sure you're getting the best possible price on your trade and that's why you should be using matcha matcha has smart order routing that splits your trade across all the various liquidity sources in ethereum and is also operational on polygon avalanche finance smart chain and other chains trading on matcha is super easy because it pulls the liquidity for me in a

single easy to use platform and allows me to make limit on chain orders so you can set and forget your d5 trades and they will go through automatically while you're away so when you're making a trade head over to matcha.xyz bankless and connect your wallet to start getting the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets opolis is a member-owned digital employment cooperative offering payroll health insurance and membership perks that go beyond the basics that you would find at your normal 9 to 5. opolis offers not only health benefits but also pay stubs and w-2s workers comp and

unemployment insurance as well as disability benefits for independent dow workers that are traditionally reserved for regular employment situations opolis provides a tax-compliant way to get your paycheck in crypto and professionalize your work-life situation opposed members enjoy an average of 20 to 50 savings on top-rated national group health insurances as well as self-sovereign portable employment you can also get tokenized rewards based on consumption staking and referrals and also the ability to fund payroll in fiat and stable coins without the use of centralized exchange you can also

receive paychecks in fiat and white listed digital currencies so sign up for opolis today and get a thousand work and a thousand bank tokens when you become a member of opolis by may 25th 2022 and get started working your self-sovereign life great well i'd love to dive into your background how'd you get into crypto and how did you get kind of pulled down this this route of working for the ethereum foundation working on ecosystems and and you know what what pulled you into the crypto rabbit hole

sure uh okay um so my background and education are actually in architecture and design which is um i mean i suppose everybody in crypto comes from another field at least for a few years until we start getting like solidity master's degrees and things but um my i come from a completely different non-technical field uh i studied architecture and i did that professionally for a few years and i guess this this context isn't maybe maybe it's

relevant and i'll just share it because uh maybe maybe it'll speak to some people who are listening to this but um so coming from a non-technical field and especially architecture um you are the way that the the discipline is taught and the way that you're encouraged to think about things is there's these sort of role models of these master designers and architects who are masters of their craft sort of like kind of like a midi mini like god god mode of like i'm gonna design the world

in my image um and that's kind of what you're taught to believe is like the profession is gonna be like and um and then you're taught like a lot of heavy theory about you know what what what is the relationship between buildings and humans uh how do these systems interact um what are the ways that they can fail things like that um but then you get into the real world and maybe this like i said maybe this is helpful for some people to express their

experiences you get into the real world and the practice of this degree you've spent uh significant years on is very very different from what you've learned in in university uh so you get into the professional world of architecture and um you it's very very different you're working on a team for clients and you are no longer the the god mode designer you're just kind of like doing drawings for a bathroom layout and it's like what the [ __ ] this is ridiculous um and the the

the profession is super slow moving it's been around for a long time in the us there's like many you i i worked in architecture but i wasn't an architect because the licensure process is so uh complicated so like you end up going from this this wild expansive view in school and then you get into the real world and it's like well hang on this is very different from what i learned uh and basically what i'm saying is like there was this disillusionment with like what i what i had experienced and and then

practicing it in the professional world so enter you know reddit and our ethereum i found it in 2016 and uh 20 2015 or 2016 and just started getting deeper and deeper um i was involved with the dao i didn't really understand what was going on back in the day you know i'm still like following this stuff but that was really my sort of rude introduction uh looking back it was kind of insane like i

remember some people like having these these intense discussions on our ethereum but about like the future of this protocol but i was just like oh maybe i'll get my eighth back i don't know um it's just it's kind of funny to look back on this uh so yeah like just just started to like get deeper and deeper drawn in um still working in architecture and uh eventually realized that like i don't have to be stuck in this this field or this profession which is like first completely different from what i

expected from school and like it's very clearly not affecting change in the world uh how i imagined it to be and then i remember like some early devcon talks from like vitalik and maybe alex van der sand of you know here's this these crazy ideas for like a user-owned internet and and the applications that we can have on it and you know i was like well that's sick like i want to be a part of this um and like yeah just got deeper and deeper into um

what what ethereum is and then like you know trying to make it what it is today and what it's going to be in the future so i've worked for a couple different companies um uh white bloc eth global which does online hackathons and and now in-person hackathons again and now i work at the ef um doing ecosystem stuff so i'm working uh with the core dev call which organizes all the client teams together every two weeks and uh plans network upgrades

plans changes to the protocol for example like 1559 you if you're a listener maybe you've maybe you've heard of this um it was a pretty big upgrade last year which changed the the fee protocol for ethereum and you know uh started to burn some of the ether as part of that that's maybe what's your reference your reference point is um but that all goes through like the core dev process and people refining proposals and coming to consensus on the way something should be designed um and then you know the merge coming up those those are all projects that i'm

involved with or associated with in some way um and the cool thing is like i guess to wrap up my my degree wasn't completely useless so what you learn in school with architecture is how to design and how to engage with systems and really if you if you step back and squint hard enough like everything is just systems and networks of value and actors you know um interacting with each other and so you know a design system for uh a building or a design system for