About

The Protocol Institute is an independent research organization dedicated to the study of protocols — the rules, procedures, and coordination structures that shape how individuals, organizations, and systems interact.

Protocols are everywhere: in diplomacy and software, in medical practice and parliamentary procedure, in how cities manage traffic and how communities manage conflict. Despite their ubiquity, protocols remain poorly understood as a category. The Protocol Institute exists to change that.

The Institute evolved from the Summer of Protocols, a research program funded by the Ethereum Foundation that brought together over eighty researchers across multiple disciplines to investigate the deep structure of protocols. That program produced over 270 published works and established a growing community of protocol researchers and practitioners.

Today, the Protocol Institute carries that work forward through ongoing research, publishing, convenings, and mentorship programs. Our work is interdisciplinary by nature, drawing on traditions from organizational theory, infrastructure studies, governance design, software engineering, and the history of institutions.

We are independent, member-informed, and committed to producing work that is both intellectually rigorous and practically useful.