Global asset management company VanEck will contribute 10% of the total profit from its upcoming Ether futures ETF to core Ethereum developers over a span of 10 years, the company announced on X (formerly Twitter) on September 29th.
The beneficiaries will be The Protocol Guild, a group comprising over 150 developers who maintain the core technology of Ethereum. According to VanEck, asset managers returning a portion of their earnings to the community building the cryptocurrency protocol is fair. The company stated:
“If TradFi benefits from the contributions of Ethereum’s core contributors, it’s only right that we contribute to their work. We call on other asset managers/ETF issuers to consider giving back in a similar way.”
With this move, VanEck joins other cryptocurrency communities supporting the Ethereum network, including Lido Finance, Uniswap, Arbitrum, Optimism, ENS Domains, MolochDAO, and Nouns DAO.
According to the public donation tracking dashboard sent to the Guild’s mainnet, 4,846 contributions have generated over $12 million in donations. The funds are subsequently distributed to members based on their contribution timelines.
Core network developers are believed to be working on the Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding). The upgrade will introduce a new type of transaction for Ethereum, promising to reduce transaction fees for layer-2 protocols.