The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a global non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ethereum and related technologies. Our mission is to do what is best for Ethereum’s long-term success. Our role is to allocate resources to critical projects, to be a valued voice within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to advocate for Ethereum to the outside world.
Role Description
The EF is hiring an ERC & Standards Coordinator to help steward the development and adoption of common application & wallet standards across the ecosystem. The work will involve both direct contributions to Ethereum’s application, wallet and infrastructure standardization processes as well as close collaboration with internal and external stakeholders on the development of various standards. Your objective is to drive the evolution and adoption of standards that enhance interoperability and innovation across the Ethereum ecosystem.
The types of problems you’ll be thinking through include:
-How the ERC process should differ from the EIP process to meet the needs of application developers;
-How to prevent the emergence of multiple similar “standards”, each tailored to an individual project’s specifics and instead drive the ecosystem towards uniform solutions;
-How to lower barriers to entry for the development and adoption of new standards across the Ethereum ecosystem;
-How should changes to the core protocol be surfaced as part of application, wallet, and infrastructure standardization processes.
Given Ethereum’s nature, the EF can’t unilaterally answer these questions. The vast majority of our work happens in the open, in collaboration with different parts of the Ethereum community. This role can be approached in many different ways. There’s a lot of room to shape the specifics around your strong suits!
Unique aspects of our working environment include:
-Working in public, with external stakeholders & collaborators: by default, the public thing is the main thing. You should expect the bulk of your contributions to happen in that setting. This means you’ll need to collaborate (and often compromise!) with people outside the team/org over which you have little to no “control”.
-Loose guidance & high agency: while EF teams do coordinate internally, and individuals are always available to help, the responsibility to run with things is yours and no one else’s. You shouldn’t expect a career ladder with clear levels, but to be the architect of your own role over time.
-Wide design space & deliberate, high-leverage actions: the EF is in the privileged position where it only needs to consider what is best for Ethereum, with minimal other constraints. This creates a wide design space when thinking about potential solutions to problems. The flip side is that the EF is only a single actor in the Ethereum ecosystem and must be thoughtful about choosing what to allocate resources to, and the second order impacts of doing so.
This isn’t a fit for everyone, but for the right people, it’s an extremely stimulating and empowering environment. A word we often to describe good fits here is “activated”!
Requirements:
-Deep understanding of Ethereum application standards & processes. You should be familiar with ERCs, their implementation patterns, and common challenges in standards adoption.
-Technical writing ability. Standards documents require precise, unambiguous language. You should be comfortable writing and reviewing detailed technical specifications.
-Coordination experience. Much of the role involves working with projects across the ecosystem to drive standards adoption and gather feedback, you should have experience working with diverse sets of stakeholders over which you have little formal control.
-[Preferred] Production deployment of standards. Ideally, you should have experience working with standards in a production environment. For example, by having worked on smart contracts leveraging ERCs to handle significant transaction volumes, developed a wallet managing user funds, etc.
