The Arbitrum Developer Guild was first introduced in January 2024 alongside the Arbitrum Expansion Program.
We have published the first version of the Guild’s specification and it is available in the Arbitrum Foundation’s documentation.
The Guild is an invite-only and merit-based program facilitated by the Arbitrum Foundation. Membership is assessed based on demonstrated proof of work on the core Arbitrum Protocol or other high-impact technical contributions to the ecosystem. Members must also demonstrate strong alignment with Arbitrum such that their company’s success substantially depends on Arbitrum winning.
The Guild is currently funded through 2% of Net Protocol Revenue from Arbitrum Chains alongside 3% of the Priority Gas Auctions (PGA) and the Sequencer Fast Feed proceeds from Arbitrum One. There are more than 30 Arbitrum Chains who are already contributing to the Guild.
Each member will receive an allocated percentage of the funding on a regular cadence. This funding is intended primarily as an additional incentive on top of the member’s core business revenue. With this framework now in place, we are pleased to announce the first member of the Arbitrum Guild: Offchain.
Offchain was invited to join the Guild in recognition of their role as the primary architect and maintainer of the core Arbitrum Protocol as well as their longstanding contribution to the growth of the wider Arbitrum ecosystem. They will receive the funds currently held by the Guild alongside 100% of the revenue going forward as long as they remain the sole member of the Guild.
While the Guild’s current funding remains relatively nascent, its long-term revenue potential remains substantial. We expect Offchain’s membership in the Guild to push the company to focus more of its work on growing the DAO’s revenue as Offchain now receives a small share of the cash flows. Additionally, we expect the Guild to become one of Offchain’s funding sources and thus reduce the amount Offchain needs to request from the DAO in the future.
More broadly, the launch of the Guild marks the beginning of a longer-term effort not only to expand the set of teams contributing to Arbitrum’s core technology, but also to better align incentives around revenue generation. Teams building core infrastructure can deploy their work across the Arbitrum ecosystem, creating value for users while also opening new revenue streams or strengthening existing ones. Where those contributions increase revenue flowing back to the ecosystem, Guild members can directly share in that upside.
Over time, this can create a reinforcing model: technical contributions support ecosystem growth and revenue generation, while a portion of that revenue flows back to support an increasingly broad and diverse set of contributors to Arbitrum.