[5.4.1] [Social] Funding Request: ENS Meta-Governance Working Group Term 5 (Q1/Q2)

🗳️ Meta-Governance MetaGov Discussion
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I misunderstood some of the numbers. Thank you to @5pence.eth for calling me out on it.

There are 2 things that still bother me about this situation.

#1 The Steward role is part time, and most stewards have other jobs, so $200k-$300k/year is going to part time contributors, and that just seems too high. 48k USD + 10k ENS for governance sounds reasonable but the 10K if it’s liquid doesnt seem like its for governance, which leads me to #2

#2 The intention of the 10k ENS was for governance, but honestly the way we are giving it just seems weird, and puts me off a little bit because its really small for governance… and it’s liquid, so its really just money. I think it makes sense for them to get the 10k ENS for governance, but it should be locked so it is used for governance and for long term alignment.

I would love to see a quick change to simply vest the ENS, so that there is long term alignment for the stewards and so that the ENS given meets it’s stated objective of Governance power. It sounds like that’s in the cards for future rounds, so maybe its not such a big deal to do it for this round?

I really like the idea of giving stewards more governance powers, we should maybe include a solid delegation of ENS to the stewards, and do it the way everyone else gets voting power, by delegating to them, not handing them liquid ENS, that really doesn’t meet the stated objective. I would totally support that they get this10k ENS as that was the deal, but that we vest it… and let’s be real and call it aligning the long term interests because thats what you do when you give someone custody of the tokens.

But then, let’s also REALLY give them governance power, we can quickly spin up some multisigs and delegate 20k-50k of ENS to each steward so that they have real voting power to engage with the other delegates.

It doesn’t seem right to make promises that rely on a future DAO vote, and if that was done, it was a mistake. The stewards most of all should understand that payments depend on certain DAO votes passing, I really don’t think its fair to say that voting no on this proposal is breaking some sort of previous agreement. The original agreement was that the DAO makes these agreements on-chain. Either we make agreements and there is an on-chain execution to back it up, or we just didn’t make any agreements. Maybe there was a plan… but the real agreement is the DAO vote that moves the money.

THAT SAID!

Whether the vote passes or not, everyone wants the stewards to get funded, we are only talking about some of the details, I would prefer they get exactly what they were promised, with one caveat, they can’t sell the ENS we give them right away, they just have to hold them for a bit, as that was the stated purpose of giving it to them. I don’t think that should be seen as a HUGE deal, it’s a compromise that makes sense given the change in circumstances.

tl;dr

Let’s give the stewards exactly what they are supposed to get, except, let’s add vesting to the ENS.

Side Note

I worry about the vibes on this thread starting to get a little heated. We are all on the same team, we all love ENS and all want what’s best for ENS. Talking about money is really hard for sure, so it’s understandable that things get a little rough. But lets try EXTRA HARD to assume positive intent and be excellent to each other.

:heart:

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59

Ok so i’m reading multiple things in this thread that seem to be interesting - But i think a clear next step is to put a snapshot vote up about adding vesting to all steward ENS allocation, especially considering the precedent around stewards selling a large portion of the ENS tokens distributed previously (then voting yes on distributing themselves more (currently 20-30% of all votes on the funding request are from stewards themselves))

Wondering what the best next step here is given the voting ends tomorrow - Just putting a proposal straight on snapshot? Or posting on the forum first? - Open to feedback from other delegates or stewards but at minimum will get a snapshot vote up in the next 72 hours. (Note; apologies for the time delay in me getting this up, have been IRL coordinating in Kenya for Magma which had some solid ENS conversations!)

Also the ask would be the Meta-Gov stewards don’t distribute these ENS incentives before the vesting vote has been discussed (and voted on) further by the DAO.

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@lightwalker.eth voiced his opinion about current state of affairs within Stewardship institute, it is totally normal to criticise existing practices. Moreover I feel exactly the same way, I think he was absolutely spot on with his phrasing. His opinion is particularly important as he’s got stuff to loose as service provider, he put his reputation on the line and was not afraid to speak up. :clap: We need more people like him who are not afraid to call things for what they really are.

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61

How lovely it is to wake up on a Sunday morning to see being called a Fraudster and a Grifter by people who only have a job at the moment because of a initiative I decided to take while I wasn’t even a delegate.

This thread is becoming circular, with a lot of questions on things that have been answered already, so in the light of the fact that we all here are locked in a working relationship for the next year or more, for which I hope will still be productive, I will be muting it for me.

The governance steps start by posting a temp check in this forum with a proposal. While anyone can post to snapshot it’s better to coordinate with Metagov stewards to make sure that multiple votes are combined in the same week, so that delegates don’t need to be always available. As the largest delegate opposing the budget I expect @Griff will be leading the initiative to write a draft policy on ENS disbursements, proper market pricing and vesting. After a feedback period then the new proposal would be put to vote in the next voting cycle, which would happen end of April.

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I’m happy to make this proposal, will get it up on the forum for a temp check before the vote ends in 24 hours. Makes sense to coordinate with the meta-gov stewards and get the proposal live end of April - assuming we’re all in agreement that the tokens won’t be distributed (or move out of the meta-gov steward multisig) before the delegates have a chance to vote on vesting - Otherwise can get the wheels (or vote!) moving quicker if required :fire:

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63

This conversation has shown me that I made the right choice by first participating as a contributor in January 2022, and it further reinforces my decision to have stepped up and nominated myself as a Term 5 Meta-Governance steward. I am grateful for this position, and I take the responsibilities that come with it very seriously.

If there’s one thing we can all take away from this discussion, it’s that we genuinely care about the long-term good of the ENS Protocol, its developers, contributors, stewards, and everyday users who passionately advocate for this technology in their everyday lives.

My intention is to continue holding this conversation in good faith and to extend the benefit of the doubt to comments that appear to undermine, trivialize, or disparage the efforts of the Working Groups in upholding and executing the mandates outlined in the ENS DAO Constitution. However, I will quickly call out any discourse that is inappropriate or crosses the line.

As a steward, I feel it is my responsibility to address some of the misrepresentations that have been circulating throughout this discussion. As a contributor, I see this as an opportunity to further strengthen the bonds that have been made throughout our journey together as we work tirelessly to ensure the success of the ENS Protocol.

Below, I will highlight a few comments that are personally upsetting to me or that I view as uncalled for:

This is a callous and sarcastic remark — while I partially agree with your technical evaluation of historic steward compensation, what makes you believe that stewards aren’t putting in their 100%? On the other hand, lightwalker.eth, I view this as an opportunity for Working Groups’ to more thoroughly communicate milestones they have completed throughout their term, as I suggested in the discussion for the Term 4 Funding Request Discussion.

—

There is currently no objective method to determine the level of each individual steward’s commitment to their responsibility based on signals alone. Thus, writing off the steward role as ‘part-time’ without any empirical or verifiable data seems brash, honestly.

If we want to justify steward compensation, then we should formalize a compensation plan, guided by a set of KPIs, that has been explicitly voted on by the DAO. We can talk more about this when discussing the DAO Bylaws which are being prepared this term.

—

Thank you for your participation in this conversation, but I encourage you to think more carefully before posting about circumstances that you may not be privy to. Stewards are certainly not earning $25,000 per month.

A standard monthly salary for a steward is approximately $4,000 in USDC as @5pence.eth mentioned above, and governance distribution should not be framed strictly as compensation. Instead, we should all begin to frame governance distribution primarily as a voting utility, which in truth it has always been.

—

I believe you are taking this out of context and misleading the readers. Katherine is speaking from her firsthand experience as a former Meta-governance steward and she may be alluding to previous disparaging and unnecessary commentary. To me, this includes your recent attempt to single out an Ecosystem steward on baseless claims.

—

Sorry to bring you into the line of fire again, lightwalker.eth, but I have to disagree with your comment. Just because stewards will not freely divulge their works in progress to you, it doesn’t mean they are ‘dodging’ your inquiries. Each steward has served the DAO well, and it does not bode well for you to throw shade on them based merely on an unfounded suspicion you harbor.

—

First, you state that you are not accusing the stewards of any malfeasance…

Then you quickly rebuke and even go so far as to allege fraud? You assert that you are holding a conversation in good faith, but I do not believe you.

—

I would like to remind everyone participating in this discussion that governance distribution is NOT strictly about compensation; it is far more nuanced than that. Governance distribution is about putting dedicated, hardworking, and competent people in a position to shape the future of the ENS Protocol.

As for the next steps, I agree with the approaches of both @nick.eth and @AvsA, and I look forward to helping coordinate the proposal from @James and discussing it during next week’s Meta-Governance call.

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I think you meant to say steward and your initiative didn’t fund us. The only funding we got was thanks to Nick poking the Ecosystem WG to give us $10,000 USD in September 2023. We don’t owe anything to you.

Secondly, the comment wasn’t even directed at you since you have forgone compensation to my knowledge. You are therefore clean in my view. It was directed at those involved in textbook self-dealing.

In different and calmer times, read the definition of self-dealing and wonder why ENS Foundation is registered in Cayman Islands far away from legal reach. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a…

It’s textbook self-dealing. Ask your favourite lawyer.

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Not to be callous or sarcastic, but here are the facts:

@Coltron.eth is also working for KK judging from his twitter profile so part time
@slobo.eth is also running a startup (several?) from what I understand that is his main line of work
@184.eth is also working as ENS support
@nick.eth is ENS, even though he refused his part of that “bonus”, I think it’s worth mentioning that yet another Steward is running it part time, I recognise that Nick is a special kind of case, all of this is essentially his creation, he can’t be seen as part time or full time, but anyway, his attention span is clearly spread over so many things apart from being a Steward
@vegayp from what I’ve seen he would not even show up on time to conference calls, I assume he must be running something else, full time contributor would at least show up promptly to calls

these are some obvious people who are doing it part time

I don’t know what was @katherine.eth up to, between working for Messari and that fund of her, I think it’s safe to assume that she is running a very busy schedule and Stewarship was most likely a part time for her

I don’t have information about @simona_pop maybe she can shed some light herself whether she is full time or part time contributor - EDIT - from twitter profile - PG steward @ensdomains | Gov @element_fi , @OptimismGov | ex @schellingpoint_ | ex @gitcoin | co-founder @ethBounties | Orga @0xliscon | Advisor-at-large - so I don’t see how Simona can be full time focused on ENS only

@5pence.eth is dedicated to be full time it seems, at least from public information I can’t tell if he is running any other gigs

@Limes I don’t know either, frankly I’m a bit confused with Limes, he stated that he used to work as accountant, I don’t know if that is still the case, he is also DAO secretary. Does that mean that he is getting salary as steward and also as a secretary? If that’s the case, that would be quite odd as well.

@AvsA specifically mentioned that he is doing it part time as he’s got a lot of other commitments

You Marcus yourself appear to be full time as well.

So that makes a majority of Stewards working part time.

EDIT:

Some anon just forwarded me a couple of additional details on this:

Limes is also working on something called Layer 3 project as growth. He is also earning salary as both Steward and Secretary - Etherescan

4kUSD + 5.5kUSD

Isn’t it like doing the same job? Double compensation? What is secretary doing anyway within ENS DAO? I’ve been around since the start of DAO haven’t seen a single deliverable which was authored by secretary or was responsibility of secretary? Maybe I’m missing something here.

@estmcmxci is being paid as Steward and additionally compensated for Newsletter - link. Isn’t it also a double compensation for the same work?

It’s a good thing that Stewards are very active in the community, but squeezing money from every single place button and click is a bit over the board, don’t you think.

So

I’m not saying that Stewards don’t care, but this is kinda misleading

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66

EP4.8 was passed November 8, and adds the following requirement to the bylaws:

Note that it doesn’t require the DAO to approve a proposed compensation plan - an omission I agree should be rectified in the forthcoming bylaws.

The metagov stewards complied within the limited time available and produced this recommendation. Of note, it included:

and:

No objections were raised at the time. As I stated above, while I believe that compensation plans should be approved by the DAO going forward, a requirement to do this was not part of EP4.8.

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67

@lightwalker.eth I also want to draw attention to your disingenuous use of current prices in this conversation. You said:

At no point in term 4 was 40,000 ENS worth $891,600. The highest price it reached was $10.70, on December 26, which would make 40,000 ENS nominally worth less than half the figure in your table. At the time the compensation plan was proposed, it was worth even less than that - about $8.50, working out to approximately $42k worth of ENS for each steward.

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68

We do all realise that the capacity for work and impact of different people is different, right? Punch cards - should we do that? Looking at Twitter bios (that in my case include some of the main ways I have been building in this ecosystem for seven years don´t all mean current, right?) is also not the “proof” of someone´s commitment? We also realise that we are in a space where we do look at impact and we are all in the boat of moving things forward vs leaning into negativity or calling out or assuming that all energy put in is visible to make a point?

Perhaps I am here moving work forward so do not have the time to trawl bios or argue in forums that makes me less than what “should” be my behaviour? Context is a hard one - it´s probably one of the hardest. To judge is easy, I used to do it more often than I do now. And emotions run high - self regulating and understanding the reason for our judgement is also a useful thing to consider when entering discussion.

I will leave these here as to what I/we´ve been up to while this whole dialogue has been ensuing:

https://x.com/Sim_Pop/status/1769407844606984645?s=20
https://x.com/ENS_DAO/status/1768697204703653936?s=20
and adding this https://twitter.com/Giveth/status/1764969613010305184

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There are a lot of passionate people here supporting ENS protocol; we are fortunate. We are ENS Protocol stakeholders, and these discussions reaffirm our commitment and dedication with ENS technology and processes. From contributors to stewards, everyone is deeply invested in the long-term success of the ENS protocol.

Despite differing opinions and understanding on the steward compensation (and governance structures) situations, there’s a shared understanding that governance distribution is about more than just monetary rewards–it’s about empowering passionate individuals to shape ENS protocol’s future, and it’s about individuals stepping-up. I think there’s a consensus on the need for clearer communication and transparency regarding steward responsibilities, compensations, and achievements.

It is great that so many people care about ENS, and are paying attention to our potential issues, opportunities and solutions–It is even better that we are able to resolve questions and next steps in the public forum; developing constructive feedback and solutions. Overall, the dialogue here demonstrates a collective desire to strengthen the ENS Protocol and to ensure it continues to thrive. I appreciate learning from you, this process, and these conversations.

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Genuinely, I am making an effort to understand, and my intention was to offer my perspective, considering that there is an ongoing proposal on which we need to vote.

Perhaps an annual comprehensive report on resource allocations would be helpful, so that everyone can have an overall picture to better evaluate how much these expenses account for and provide some clarity on aspects that people find confusing, such as governance distribution that leans more towards compensation rather than voting power in its current form.

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Oh boy there we go again. Another heated discussion in this forum.

Some questions from me.

  1. I spent quite some time trying to follow through old links and read the entire post here. Its’ stll not clear to me what each person is being paid and what for. Same as it was last time we had these conversations.

Then why are we having a vote? If this action was voted in the previous term and now needs to just be executed why put it again to a vote? What’s the point?

  1. I see stewards who are going to get compensated by this actually voting yes in this proposal. This is bad. You should not do this. This is the definition of self-dealing and conflict of interest.

  2. The ENS part of the compensation should be vested yes.

  3. Commitments should be honored. If we voted for this compensation in the past and had people agree to put their time with those terms we should honor it

  4. That said it’s quite a big amount of money for part time compensation and for the token part of the compensation vesting is a standard. And not hard-cliff vesting. Something like a stream where you can claim anything vested till the timestamp you claim.

  5. Alternatively since crypto market is volatile do not commit to any hard amounts for ENS tokens. Say we will pay $X in ENS at the price at the time of payment. Nobody loses this way and agreements are clear.

Now as for what I should vote. I don’t like a lot of things here. And I am put in the ugly position of having enough tokens delegated to equalize negative with positive vote and maybe stop this.

There is not enough time to have a clear back and forth with people here.

I believe in honoring one’s commitments even if it was not clear to me when they were made that this would be the outcome. I also voted against the previous proposal where the commitment was supposedly made (Snapshot) . I have a lot of issues with what is happening here. See the above bullet points.

To that end I will be voting abstain.

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Thank you :pray:t2:

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  1. As per this - indeed, it was already decided so in my view this vote isn´t about this, it´s about the MG working group budget for the next period and my support for the stewards in that group.

hence

the vote I personally cast was not about this disputed issue because point 1, it was in support of the overall budget which includes things like:

MG Steward + Secretary Compensation
DAO Tooling

I made no vote on the PG budget which is what I would be partly responsible for spending so if the community would not agree, ofc we´d have to revise. I think this is maybe the piece that needs clarity in policy re don´t vote on issues pertaining to the group you are part of.

Imho this is a vote that contains a contested line item that has already been voted on. So the confusion and tension come from a call for a change to a past vote within a new vote.

Add on: @lefterisjp´s I appreciate your breakdown actually and thoughtful stance given all the above

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Using ChatGPT with an example:

"Conflict of interest and self-dealing are ethical and legal issues that arise when individuals in positions of authority, such as board members, prioritize their personal interests over those of the organization they serve.

In the context of a board member voting for their own compensation, conflict of interest occurs when the board member’s decision-making ability is influenced by their personal financial gain. This situation creates a conflict between the duty of loyalty the board member owes to the organization and their personal financial interests.

Self-dealing, on the other hand, refers to actions where individuals in positions of authority use their influence to benefit themselves or their related parties at the expense of the organization. When a board member votes to approve their own compensation, they are engaging in self-dealing by using their position to secure personal financial gain.

For example, imagine a scenario where a board member of a non-profit organization proposes a substantial increase in board member compensation during a board meeting. The board member fails to disclose that they would directly benefit from this increase. Despite potential objections from other board members or concerns about the organization’s financial health, the conflicted board member votes in favor of the proposal, ultimately approving their own compensation increase.

In such a scenario, the board member’s actions undermine the integrity and impartiality of the board’s decision-making process, potentially harming the organization’s reputation and financial stability. Additionally, it may violate legal and regulatory standards governing conflicts of interest and self-dealing."

tl;dr You should not vote on resolutions that decide your compensation.

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Again though, what I was referring to re logic is what I stated - that vote was already passed so this one technically is not to about revoting on that which seems to be what this whole convo is about. I am approaching it from the logic of gov process as it stands

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Arguably, I have not a clue what you do for ENS DAO.
Before recently, as in the past 24 hours, the last time you posted on this forum was this in December of 2023, which is pushing one and a quarter years.
Not only that but you have also never not once created a topic of discussion.
Which quite frankly is bizarre for how many times you have been voted in as a steward.

I hate to use myself as a comparison, but if you look at my forum statistics

image
image1374×315 30.8 KB

and then look at your activity

image
image1374×315 27.4 KB

and while I have provided a list of things I have done and requested to be compensated.

Maybe this sort of thing sheds light on why I’ve been quietly singled out as “aggressive” or "frustrated" without consideration of clear and obvious facts like the aforementioned.

disclaimer: these are facts and not a personal attack

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I would absolutely totally love punch cards :melting_face:

But seriously though

There is no judgement here, it’s just factual, that’s all.

I even invited you to comment in your own words if you think you are full time or part time contributor. That’s all there is to it - just facts. Amount of involvement was one of the pivotal points within that discussion, so that’s why I thought it was important to highlight this.

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