Our Story
The Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians self-organized in order to make better decisions about the Ethereum protocol, smart
contract standards, and issues in the community.
Our story begins with EIP-615. In Fall, 2017, Greg Colvin did not understand why EVM-related upgrade work he had been developing at the Ethereum Foundation was not being considered for inclusion in the protocol, and why an open process did not exist for deciding on the issue. While the core devs calls were seen as helpful and crucial for protocol updates, the prevalent use of chat rooms and GitHub comments prevented meaningful discussions outside of the calls.
On discussing the situation with Jamie Pitts at Devcon3 in Cancun, we decided to work on ways to address the problem of communications and decision-making in the community. This culminated in the creation of an Open Invitation to Participate , which outlined the principles and practices for a proposed open “dis-organization” of Ethereum developers in the community. The emerging group decided to call ourselves “Magicians" in keeping with the humor widely used in the community, and also acknowledging that technology is a kind of magic.
The first gathering of the Magicians was held in March, 2018 at EthCC in Paris. In the hallowed halls of the Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Métiers, a large number of people from the community came together and formed a very large circle... to discuss “governance”. But the discussion was not dominated by vague, philosophical musings! In our circle, we talked about how we currently govern the protocol, how we communicate about the technical issues, and how we could improve that process.
Thus began our path to holding regular gatherings, hosting discussions, and helping the community organize its work!
The original group of participants was joined by many more leaders who then began to form “Rings”, which are working groups to focus on different aspects of the protocol, smart contract standards, and community issues. The Rings are documented on the Wiki, and all are welcome to start one! Although we don't use term "Rings" much lately on our forum, the groups organically started to use term "Groups" instead.
A key Ring which formed in 2018 was the Operations Ring. This group has organized numerous events, and generally manages the various assets and technical resources for the community, including the Magicians’ Forum. The Magicians do not have a central authority, rather people in the community are encouraged to self-organize into Rings, lead, support each other, and get work done! Leaders in the Operations Ring have recently included Boris Mann,María Paula, Tomislav Mamic, and Anett Rolikova.
The Operations Ring continues to organize events and support community discussions. We are here for you, so please reach out to us on the forum if you would like some help with organizing your work. Lately the active supporters of Operations Ring (team) has been Anett Rolikova and Jamie Pitts, don't hesitate to reach out to them in any case of support.