Guilds

TL;DR:

Guilds are organized groups—like working circles or departments—that receive funding to support contributors within a specific function. They allow ecosystems to decentralize funding and decision-making while maintaining structure and accountability.

Originating from medieval and craft traditions, Guilds in Web3 and DAO ecosystems are functional subgroups—self-organizing teams aligned around a particular skillset or domain. Examples include Dev Guilds, Design Guilds, Governance Guilds, or Regional Guilds.

Each Guild typically:

Has a defined mandate or scope (e.g. build infrastructure, run events)
Contains members with relevant experience or interest
May have internal roles, voting, or coordination tools
Is allocated funding from a central treasury or through its own revenue sources
Distributes funds to members through internal proposals, task bounties, or shared budgets

Guilds enable bottom-up coordination and distribute decision-making closer to where work happens. They can also function as gateways for new contributors and provide continuity for specialized domains.

Guilds are often paired with mechanisms like Delegated Domain Allocation, Direct Grants, or Impact Streams, and may operate under their own governance frameworks.

Best For

Large, multi-role ecosystems
Decentralized organizations with recurring contributor work
Functional specialization (design, dev, governance, etc.)
Environments that want both autonomy and alignment

Good At

Organizing contributors into clear areas of work
Distributing funding based on role or skill domain
Building shared culture and accountability
Creating pathways for contributor onboarding

Dependencies / Requirements

Clarity around domain scope and purpose
Internal coordination (voting, budgeting, review)
Funding source (central treasury or revenue)
Systems to track contributions or distribute rewards

Not Good At

One-off, unstructured funding needs
Communities that lack functional specialization
Highly top-down orgs that don’t want to decentralize authority
Very early-stage groups (can introduce premature complexity)

Who Should Use It?

Protocol DAOs with distinct workstreams (dev, research, governance, etc.)
Public goods ecosystems with many contributor types
Networks that want to give contributors more control over how they’re funded
Organizations building long-term functional teams

Example Use Cases

A Dev Guild receives quarterly funding to distribute to open-source contributors via internal proposals
A Governance Guild runs onboarding, policy writing, and forum moderation with its own budget and coordinator
A local Guild in Latin America receives funds from a global DAO to run region-specific events and translations