MGP (Dec 2022): Ethereum Cat Herders

Moloch Rises
#1

Project Title

Ethereum Cat Herders

Description

Since 2019, Ethereum Cat Herders is a group of individuals, working together to support the Ethereum core developers and the larger Ethereum ecosystem with research, project management and other aspects of communication and coordination.

In the past ~4 years, we have supported Ethereum Core Protocol development with more community involvement. In addition to availability of Ethereum Protocol public meetings notes, our contributors are engaged with

  • EIP process Improvement and consensus building

  • Producing EIP and protocol related educational content

  • Collecting information through surveys & meetings

  • Community building

  • Identifying potentially needed support for client & tools

Key Deliverables

EIPs related

  • EIP Editing Office Hour

    • With the onboarding of new reviewers & editors, we concluded the first series of EIP Editor Apprenticeship Meeting.
    • We started a new series of meetings called EIP Editing Office Hour to extend support to EIP authors to understand the process and help move the proposal to the next status of EIP standardization. Any EIP author or interested parties may join the call to follow EIP review with experienced EIP editors.
    • A platform forbidding opportunity to ask and resolve questions in this bi-weekly meeting has been greatly appreciated by the community.

  • PEEPanEIP: EIP & Upgrade related educational resources.

  • EIPs Insight: Shares a monthly summary of the standardization efforts for the Ethereum blockchain.

    • It helped understand the real picture of the number of proposal submissions per month and the effort made by EIP editors to move them along the process.
    • We may discontinue the publishing of the hackmd version once the tooling website EIPsInsight.com is ready for the community.

  • All Wallet Dev Meeting

    • After hosting half a dozen preliminary URL/URI meetings, we decided to merge this with the All Wallet Dev Meeting which is also organized with a similar goal.
    • ECH continued support with organizing and video uploading.

  • EIPIP meetings

    • We have hosted 8 EIPIP meetings since the last grant. Happy to share the achievements
      • An agreement to the External link policy with EIP-5757:Process for Approving External Resources
        • Update EIP-1: add devp2p repo as accepted external resource Ref: PR
        • Update EIP-1: Add first two external origins Ref: PR
      • Update EIP-1: Clarify when to use requires Ref: PR
      • Update EIP-1: Suggest that EIPs use RFC 8174 (updates RFC 2119) Ref: PR

  • ECH engineering (EIP-bot & EIPV/EIPW maintenance)

  • GitPOAP distribution to community contributors - Merge, EIP editing and other GitHub +non-GitHub contributions. (More to be announced in Jan 2023)

Blockchain events & talks

  • Co-organizer for the The Merge community call
  • Connected with mainstream media (CNBC) to communicate Ethereum’s Merge upgrade.
  • Mentoring ETHWMN fellowship program
  • Multiple talks on EIP process & Merge on blockchain events like Mainnet NYC & various TwitterSpaces.

Community communication & coordination

Validation

Ethereum cat Herders group sincerely appreciates having received multiple grants in the past few years from Moloch DAO. The Dec 2022 grant round could probably be the last from Moloch DAO. Thus we request funding for 12 months to support Ethereum Cat Herders.

We’ve received kind words from the community leaders supporting the work done by the Cat Herders. (Ref: community feedback on ECH Website)

“Wanted to share I think @EthCatHerders are awesome: they help make ACD and other protocol-related things accessible to more folks with transcripts, blog posts, and video series. It’s also a great way to onboard new Ethereum contributors ” Tim Beiko

“Support efforts from people like @TimBeiko/@trent_vanepps/@poojaranjan19 who are working to build community relations with core devs.” Hudson Jameson

Progress

Apart from the links shared above, progress by the team can be followed on Twitter and Website. We have over 1450 users on Discord. Users are highly engaged in discussion leading over 400 messages per week.

Differentiation (from other projects)

ECH is the only working group whose primary focus is coordination and project management around the Ethereum protocol. It also acts as an onboarding resource for newcomers who wish to contribute to the community.

Team

  • Pooja Ranjan
  • Matt Garnett, PandaPip
  • William Schwab
  • zkDoof
  • George Hervey
  • Jose A.
  • Shubhangi Gokhale
  • Edson Allyon
  • A pool of contributors for meeting notes (~10)

Grant Request $

  • For 12 months* - $320k USD

Ethereum is a community supported blockchain and Ethereum Cat Herders is seen to be around for at least 5 years down the line to help onboard mainstream users.

Securing operational funds in the beginning of the year 2023, will provide us the comfort to continue working without being worried about the funding.This will also help us focus on looking into future funding to continue supporting in 2024 and onwards.

Here we share the expense summary of 2022 (till Nov) and projected expenses (Jan - Dec 2023).

Expenses Jan-Nov 2022

Projected expenses Jan-Dec 2023

Why a buffer?

Considering the volatile nature of ETH, and looking into the history of the Moloch grant provided to ECH in 2022, it only seems logical to budget the buffer to keep us afloat.

*This grant request is based on the estimated tasks & resources foreseeable in the near future.

New additions since the last time are expenses for GitHub & YouTube backup, Wallet Dev test event coordination, and Learn2Earn app development.

What the Funds Are For

  • Herder in chief
  • EIP
  • ECH Podcast production, Arweave backup
  • ECH engineering (EIP bot)
  • Public meeting notes
  • ECH Ops, ECH website hosting plus misc.

Additional Resources, Links, Portfolio