Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are emerging material class for the past few years due to its tailorability characteristics for various applications. However, the research and development (R&D) of MOFs is still scarce for fuel cell system. This may be due to several difficulties faced in selecting a good MOFs based electrolyte, which consequently affects both proton conduction and methanol crossover especially for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) system. Owing to excellent thermal and chemical stability with controllable pore size possessed by Zeolitic imidazole framework-8 (ZIF-8) crystal structure has make it most widely been investigated. Furthermore, super-hydrophobicity of ZIF-8 allows high proton conductivity and methanol barrier properties especially in DMFC system. In fact, there has been a huge development on fabricating ZIF-8 membrane, regardless the effects on proton conduction and methanol permeation for fuel cell application. Thus, in this paper, the specialty possessed by MOFs as proton conductors been discussed; in conjunction with the properties, synthesis and fabrication of ZIF-8 membrane as alternative proton conductor and methanol barrier for DMFC application also been highlighted. © 2019 MPRL.