Protocol Guild: L1 core developer salaries are 50% lower than the market, currently being poached by high-performance new chains with salaries 10 times higher.

Foresight News reported that Protocol Guild contributor cheeky-gorilla stated at the EthCC[9] conference that salaries for Ethereum L1 core developers are 50% to 60% lower than similar roles in the market, while high-performance new chains like Monad and leading L2 projects are aggressively headhunting with salary packages more than 10 times higher. He warned that once senior researchers familiar with underlying protocol logic leave, key roadmap items like PeerDAS and Verkle Trees will face the risk of substantial halts.

Protocol Guild has currently accumulated over 100 million USD in assets, donated by project teams such as EigenLayer, ether.fi, and Taiko that benefit from the Ethereum ecosystem. These assets are distributed to more than 160 core contributors via smart contracts, with linear vesting over four years, aiming to retain critical talent through long-term incentives. To maintain the ongoing operation of this mechanism, cheeky-gorilla reiterated the "The 1% Pledge" initiative, urging projects profiting from the Ethereum ecosystem to give back 1% of their token supply to Protocol Guild. He stressed that the health of L1 core development is foundational for the entire Ethereum ecosystem, and this contribution is not charity, but a necessary cost to ensure Ethereum's ongoing evolution.