[6.42] [Social] SPP3: Program Authorization and Committee Model

Coltron.eth · May 2, 2026, 4:08am

This is an idea I would support, but with the current ambiguity regarding DAO structure and organization I don’t see us effectively coalescing around specific needs or goals. Unless we decide to do a full pause on these type of programs and rethink things, which can be registered by voting against this proposal, this is the best shot we have at continuing to fund service providers in a structured way.

In your post last year, From Stagnation to Structure: Fixing ENS Governance, you said:

We’ve had differences of opinions on how this should move forward, but I think share similar underlying goals. Switching to this committee should remove room for performative participation if it existed while increasing accountability. With the required reporting from both providers, and now a committee, disappearing into the shadows shouldn’t be a thing.

lightwalker.eth · May 2, 2026, 5:33am

Appreciation

This proposal moves SPP forward in some notable ways, including:

1. Attention to market-oriented outcomes

I note how this proposal makes repeated reference to market-oriented outcomes. For example, the budget methodology takes DAO revenues into consideration and defines objectives that include growth in registrations, integrations, and revenue.

This is on target!

We share the call for ENS to put market outcomes at the top of its values and priorities. The adoption of ENS is still in its early days and is far from its potential. The ultimate success of ENS is not guaranteed. Momentum in market adoption feels to have slowed. It’s right for ENS to feel a sincere sense of urgency and to demand true market-oriented value creation.

2. Attention to SPP accountability

Noting how this proposal explicitly cites:

“A standing committee addresses (SPP) accountability gaps …”

and that SPP3 evaluation criteria includes:

“Prior delivery history …”

Happy to see this proposal demand high standards, proven results, and ROI.

3. New committee model

Highly supportive. This is a key step in the right direction.

Suggested refinements

Grateful to @Coltron.eth for all the work to champion the next steps on SPP3. This is a serious lift!

Having had some time to organize thoughts, here’s specific suggestions for improving the next steps on SPP.

1. SPP2 year-1 accountability review

The proposal correctly already calls out SPP accountability gaps. So far it’s been unclear exactly which body had the authority to solve this. Therefore, SPP accountability reviews continue not to happen.

This is changing now! For the first time, a SPP committee is being formed!

SPP2 year-1 accountability reviews are sure to be a high ROI for ENS. Past performance must be meaningfully critiqued and taken into account before deciding on SPP3. ENS has already invested millions into SPP2 year-1. Before millions more are invested in SPP3 we should complete this fundamental step.

It is recognized how the chief purpose of this committee is for SPP3. But it wouldn’t make sense for the committee to form judgements on how a SPP2 year-1 service provider might fit into the SPP3 cohort without first completing a structured accountability review for how that service provider performed under SPP2. Doing otherwise risks meaningful errors in how the committee might decide on SPP3 capital allocations.

Suggested SPP2 year-1 accountability review considerations include:

Each provider’s deliverables relative to commitments
Each provider’s quarterly reporting cadence and quality
Notable successes, shortfalls, and lessons learned
Value creation and ROI assessment
Aggregate observations about SPP2 program design and execution

This accountability review serves to inform the committee’s strategies for SPP3 cohort selection (based on lessons learned from SPP2 year-1) as well as supporting the ENS DAO with optimizations to any / all future SPP seasons.

2. Committee ENS context building

ENS is on track to invest millions of dollars here. The better the committee’s mastery of ENS context, the better their cohort selection judgements will be.

This calls for the committee to perform structured “ENS context building” to make better informed and more strategic judgments when the time comes for them to propose the cohort for SPP3.

Committee context building should include:

Research of barriers to ENS growth and adoption (market needs, technical challenges, and otherwise), new growth opportunities, and financial performance metrics.
Research the parties and strategies the ENS DAO is already investing significant funding into (with the purpose of advancing the topics cited in the bullet above), including via interviews with ENS Labs and current ENS Service Providers. What are they working on already? How is this work proceeding? What outcomes are being achieved?

Note how this is not suggesting that everyone in the committee become a technical expert in every nuanced detail of the ENS protocol. @gregskril is on the committee and will no doubt do an exceptional job at that. This is about the bigger context of affairs in ENS. A structured opportunity for all committee members to invest time into this study before SPP3 proposals are submitted is sure to be a high ROI for ENS.

3. New timeline proposal

The following is an enhanced timeline proposal for SPP3 with benefits that include:

Prompt committee seating and an efficient transition into SPP3.
Process harmonization with SPP2 milestones, including SPP2 Q4 service delivery that’s already in progress and due for completion on May 25.
Time allocations for the committee to complete ENS context building and a SPP2 year-1 accountability review.
Schedules the termination of all SPP2 1-year streams well before the exhaustion of their allowance.
A bit more time for prospective SPP3 Service Providers to build maximally thoughtful proposals and therefore to create more value for ENS in SPP3.
A bit more time for the committee to review proposals and negotiate the best possible cohort recommendation.

Markdown tables have their limitations, so I’ll share screenshots instead.

Phase 1: Seat Committee (ends ~May 14)

Phase 2: Committee ENS context building & SPP3 artifact prep (ends ~June 7)

Phase 3: SPP2 accountability review & SPP3 application prep (ends ~June 26)

Phase 4: SPP3 application review & cohort recommendation (ends ~July 15)

Phase 5: Ratify recommended SPP3 cohort (ends ~July 24)

Phase 6: Action SPP streams (ends ~July 30)

Phase 7: SPP3 Service Delivery (1-year period from ~Aug 2026)

Phase 8: SPP3 Season Closure (~Aug 2027)

4. Committee term and payment

The original proposal defines the compensation for committee members based on a 12-month scope of work. However, it’s actually a 15-month scope of work from the time the committee is seated (~3-months lead up to SPP3 ratification + 12 month SPP3 service delivery period, see timelines for details).

Therefore recommend that compensation for committee members is adjusted as follows based on this term that is 15-months, not 12:

Chair: From $45,000 → $56,000 / cycle
Member (compensated): From $35,000 → $44,000 / cycle

This added overhead would be deducted from the SPP3 budget.

It is also noted how the committee has a meaningfully higher workload in the first ~3 months. Therefore suggest adjusting their upfront tranche from 20% to 30% of their overall compensation.

5. Budget

The budget for SPP3 should be defined relative to DAO revenue, not protocol revenue (which excludes DeFi returns). What are ENS’s DeFi returns for if not to contribute to the growth of ENS?

The revenue source can therefore be the ENS DAO Quarterly Revenue Reports published by Limes) and anchored to the end of Q1, 2026.

This produces a budget cap of approx $4.03M for SPP3. After deducting the adjusted committee comp referenced in the feedback above, this leaves approx $3.85M available for service provider funding.

6. Program Authorization

Suggest that this proposal includes language such as the following to harmonize with efforts that @katherine.eth is leading related to the new ENS Foundation Board:

It is recognized that the DAO is currently considering updates to the ENS Foundation Board (per Katherine.eth’s temp check) with expanded responsibilities, potentially including unified oversight of major DAO-funded operations such as ENS Labs and ENS Service Providers.

At the moment the exact shape of responsibilities for an updated ENS Foundation Board is under discussion and has not been confirmed by the DAO. Simultaneously, the official 12-month cycle of SPP2 concludes soon on May 26, 2026. While SPP2 provides a stream allowance for 1-year SPP2 streams through Aug 26, 2026, timely clarity on SPP3 is called for. Therefore, this proposal serves to define next steps on SPP3 without waiting on decisions for the updated ENS Foundation Board.

The exercise of harmonizing the governance of any future SPP cycles after SPP3 with potential updates to the ENS Foundation Board is outside the scope of this proposal.

7. “SPP3 Outcome Alignment Incentive Program”

We have suggestions for an “SPP3 Outcome Alignment Incentive Program” that would provide committee members with a percentage of DAO net revenue increase achieved over the duration of SPP3 beyond a minimum floor and up to a max incentive cap of $100k USDC per committee member if DAO revenues scale by sufficient millions during the SPP3 service delivery period. The explicit objectives and evaluation criteria for SPP3 reference DAO revenue growth being a key north star for the program. The goal would be to incentivize committee members to meaningfully invest their efforts to align their cohort recommendations to this explicit “first-order” desired outcome for SPP3. A number of mechanic details have been planned out for how to execute this, including normalization of revenues for potential upcoming name price changes, etc. This reply I’m writing is already exceptionally long and therefore I’ve decided for now to cut the detailed writeup I made that proposes a framework for this. I may share another reply in this thread later with the details but didn’t want to distract from other key topics above at the moment.

8. Expand committee to include member with strong commercial background

All the named committee members look solid. Confident each has strong insight and wants to see that SPP3 achieves good outcomes for ENS.

At the same time, not having deep knowledge of the named committee members (and therefore just going off of short bios), I note the presence of public goods funding and technical backgrounds. What about a committee member with a strong commercial background? Someone who has proven judgement on what delivers successful market outcomes, go-to-market strategies, business development, sales, marketing, and other ROI-oriented capital allocation contexts?

For example, in the proposal above, I note use of the word “grants” in the following phrase:

Incomplete or abandoned prior grants are weighted negatively.

I disagree with a framing that funding for ENS Service Providers is a “grant”. I read that to suggest we are hopelessly detached from measurable market outcomes that contribute back to the bottom line for ENS, or perhaps that we are charity projects.

Each ENS Service Provider should be held to a high standard of accountability. ROI and value creation should be demanded. We are not here to play games or do academic research or build technical curiosities with no hope of real use. If the work a service provider delivers doesn’t drive market adoption for ENS (directly or indirectly), the work fails.

Getting back to the main point: Suggest expanding the named committee by 1-member with a strong business background.

9. Google Doc with Suggested Redlines

See this Google Doc with redlines of the exact suggested changes for easier diffing.

NOTE: The new “Timeline” section in the doc linked above has redlines representing a new writing of the schedule. This is a simplification for readability to avoid what would otherwise have too many noisy redlines. This new “Timeline” section provides a recommended process for SPP3 (matching the screenshots posted here to the forum) and consolidates ideas that previously were distributed across the “Pre-Submission Work”, “Process”, “Next Steps”, and “Timeline” sections.

Coltron.eth · May 2, 2026, 4:16pm

Refinement 1: SPP2 accountability review
This proposal does not scope a full review of SPP2, but that does not negatively impact renewing providers.

For providers who were recipients of SPP1 or SPP2 and are reapplying, past work will be reviewed and taken into account during the SPP3 application process. This provides an efficient and holistic approach.

Refinement 2: Committee context building
Sure, I’ll add an extra week for committee context building. This time can also run concurrently with the submission process to allow more time for providers to develop their applications. Good for the committee and providers.

Refinement 3: Timeline
Regarding streams ending in May, my goal with this proposal is continuity. If a continuing provider is shipping a deliverable during the last two weeks of their annual stream, the committee will fairly take that into account. The is no negative judgement for things shipped on time.

Refinement 4, 5, 7, 8: Committee compensation, budget, outcome incentive, commercial committee member

Will remove the “grant” language referenced in point 8
Not looking to expand base committee compensation without a significant scope change
Don’t see a strong case for the Alignment Incentive Program. The committee will meaningfully invest their efforts towards cohort recommendations without any dangling carrots

I think everything else (budget, committee composition) has already been discussed elsewhere in this thread.

Refinement 6: Foundation Board language
It’s hard to harmonize with a proposal that hasn’t passed, but these will be sufficiently disconnected, and the provider cohort steam is protected because it will be provisioned by an on-chain executable proposal. An incoming Foundation Board would need an executable vote to make any changes to a stream.

To be sure, i’ll include language providing clarity such as “SPP3 is not contingent on the outcome of any ongoing governance discussions. The two tracks can proceed independently. The SPP3 provider cohort shall not be unwound or restructured mid-cycle by an incoming foundation or working group.”

Refinement 9: Revised draft
Thanks for the rewrite, but I’ll redraft to include revisions drawn from other commenter as well.

lightwalker.eth · May 4, 2026, 1:40pm

Thanks @Coltron.eth for your feedback and for taking the suggestions into consideration.

It’s great to hear that the committee will review past work. The review of past work and ENS context more broadly will be key to the committee achieving the best outcomes with SPP3.

There’s a lot of context here. The committee needs to do its best to deeply understand the work the DAO is already funding, the organizations doing it, and the outcomes that work is producing. Selection follows from that understanding.

Worth thinking through what makes that review substantive enough to be useful. Two components seem non-negotiable for any SPP committee:

Structured conversations with each current SPP team, both to understand outcomes in context and to gather input that informs SPP3 selection criteria. These interviews would be focused exclusively on the past work with these past / current service providers who are planning to apply for SPP3. This is a distinct interview from the SPP3 application interview which would then be focused on proposed future work.
A published written assessment from the committee summarizing findings across the SPP2 cohort. This gives the DAO a document to reference next cycle, supports any future SP program design decisions, and signals that accountability work was done, not just considered.

Both take real time, likely 2-3 weeks of focused committee effort.

Good to hear how continuity is a key goal. We share this goal. However flagging how SPP2 1-year streams do not end in May. What ends on May 25th is the SPP2 Q4 Scope of Work. For the transition from SPP2 to any successor program, the ENS DAO has already approved and funded a 3-month allowance period on all SPP2 streams beyond their contracted Scope of Work. This was already ratified in EP6.13. The allowance of SPP2 1-year streams is not exhausted until Aug 26.

Therefore, for continuity what’s important is to have SPP3 outcomes clarified before Aug 26. In the timeline suggestions I shared above is a detailed proposal for how all the key steps in the process can very elegantly be scheduled and completed. This includes achieving all the clarity on SPP3 outcomes by July 24th, more than a month before any continuity might be at risk.

Additionally flagging how it won’t be appropriate for the time period allocated for the building of SPP3 applications to commence until after the SPP2 Q2 Scope of Work and related SPP2 Q4 Quarterly reports are complete.

Our team is working on the bleeding edge of ENSv2 development on key infrastructure for the launch of ENSv2, working in tandem with the ENS Labs team to support. The DAO has already approved this scope of work and its associated funding for SPP2 and we consider ourselves as under contract for shipping the related deliverables before the end of SPP2 Q4. We are pushing hard with sleepless nights to keep everything here on track as is already committed to on contract.

Please note how it will be a significant undertaking (and interruption in the regular work of each current SPP2 1-year provider) for each applicant who wishes to apply for SPP3 to prepare their SPP3 application.

It’s very important that the work on SPP3 applications only begins after SPP2 Q4 and the associated SPP2 Q4 quarterly reports are prepared and submitted. Otherwise it significantly disrupts existing work under contract with ENS.

Great. Echoing once again the importance of the SPP3 budget methodology taking into consideration ENS DAO revenues (which includes DeFi returns) and not only ENS protocol revenues, which doesn’t.

If DeFi returns are not for the purpose of being invested into the growth of ENS then what are they for?

Thanks again for all the efforts going into leading the organization of this. Appreciate it is a big lift!

Coltron.eth · May 4, 2026, 2:02pm

SPP3 Draft Updates

Based on forum feedback, the following changes have been made to the draft:

Milestone accountability. Clarified that milestones are targets, not gates. A provider is in good standing as long as they have not abandoned the work and are maintaining their reporting cadence. Stream continuation is tied to reporting and continued engagement, not milestone completion.
Term limits. Removed. The two-consecutive-cycle limit was over-engineered for a program that requires a new DAO vote to renew anyway.
Minimum application size. The committee will not consider applications requesting less than $200,000. This keeps evaluation effort proportionate to program value.
Submission and review windows. Both extended from 7 to 14 days. The committee may extend the review window further with public notice if more time is needed.
Context-building. Committee context-building now runs concurrently with the provider submission window, not before it. Providers and the committee work in parallel during the same 14-day period.
CoI and removal. Clarified that CoI disputes are handled within the committee. In the absence of a functioning accountability body, the fallback is social coordination among delegates or an executable DAO vote.
Committee accountability. Added a new section listing pass/fail committee obligations for the cycle, including a mid-cycle update (Q4 2026) and an end-of-cycle retrospective (within 30 days of close, May 2027). Program-level reporting covers provider milestone completion rate (80% target) and any indicated movement in registrations, renewals, or integrations.
Carry-over providers. Added language to the Relationship to SPP2 section. Work delivered on schedule during the final weeks of an expiring SPP2 stream carries no negative weight in the evaluation.
Governance independence. Added to the Abstract: SPP3 is not contingent on any ongoing governance discussions. The provider cohort shall not be unwound or restructured mid-cycle by an incoming foundation or working group.
Timeline. Updated to reflect the extended windows. Snapshot opens May 4, committee seated May 8, submissions open May 19.
Service Agreement. Selected providers will be required to sign the ENS Foundation Terms of Use before funding begins. The Terms establish the legal relationship between the Foundation and funded providers, covering conditions of fund use, open-source licensing requirements, sanctions and OFAC compliance, AML obligations, quarterly reporting, and the right to suspend or terminate streams for material breaches or reputational harm.

On budget

For voters weighting the budget discussion heavily, my opinion is that the “budget cuts” framing isn’t accurate. SPP2 distributed $3.1M per year to six providers. SPP3 proposes allocating $3.25M to one-year streams, landing at the same annual spending level. The nominal cap is lower than SPP2’s total authorized budget only because SPP2 included two-year streams. On a one-year basis, the programs are nearly equal.

Program	One-year Stream Budget
SPP2	$3.1M
SPP3	$3.25M (+5%)

Several comments requested a larger budget, generally targeting the dollar amount distributed last year ($4.5M). Two approaches came up: including DeFi returns or extending the trailing-revenue window to five years at a smaller percentage to smooth year-over-year swings. I considered both, but made no changes.

I chose to exclude gross DeFi returns (~$3.2M) because considering this program’s growth-oriented objectives, I want this proposal budget tied to direct protocol revenue, not investment performance.

A longer trailing window would make a good case for smoothing fluctuations. It would also raise this year’s cap depending on the final calculation used. Despite this, as a delegate and the author of this proposal I want to keep the budget conservative and tight to one-year window while revenues and registrations are suppressed.

Unless there are substantial revisions, the proposal will go to Snapshot at end of the day today. I am trying to base the calendar so that voting periods fall majority on week days.

brantlymillegan · May 4, 2026, 2:48pm

I’m agree with everything but your decision to keep the budget the same. I will register again my request that the budget uses a longer trailing window.

lightwalker.eth · May 4, 2026, 7:15pm

Trust in the committee’s judgement of ROI

It’s fair to note revenues and registrations having a downward trend lately. We’ve been beating the drum for urgent attention to ENS revenue and growth, including in our SPP2 proposal. The “revenues are suppressed” framing is valid, but also leaves out the part where SPP2 itself is already contributing meaningfully to that revenue, to say nothing of the future. This was the case we made with SPP2, and the work since has borne it out.

The DAO is already earning $1M+ annualized revenue thanks to SPP2 work that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Two examples:

The ENS Referral Program (funded under SPP2) is already driving new ENS integrations with a major web browser and a 15M-user wallet provider. Public announcements coming soon.
Funding for Grails (Brantly’s EthId team) comes from SPP2 (with supplements via referrals), while the relaunched ENS Vision now relies on referrals as its sole revenue source and means of continuing to exist.

Detailed accounting data on these DAO revenue impacts is available on request.

Additionally, when ENSv2 launches, the onchain data model for ENS significantly changes. These changes are going to break many existing ENS integrations that build on indexed ENS data, which includes apps like Grails and Vision (to say nothing of many other important ENS integrations). Thanks to our work on ENSNode as part of SPP2, these existing ENS integrations (and many future ones) will have a strong and easy upgrade path available. The first key to growth is to avoid a terribly leaky budget. Noting also how the new ENSv2 apps are building on ENSNode. The ROI here from SPP2 is fundamental to the future of ENS.

Now, looking to the future with SPP3, our team already has plans for projects that will confidently contribute millions $$ / year more to the ENS DAO, even before the 1-year period of SPP3 concludes, to say nothing of the far larger recurring revenue impacts beyond that. And this is just from our team. I assume other teams will have compelling plans to grow revenues as well.

However, if the SPP3 stream budget is capped at $3.25M it proactively handcuffs the committee under too strong of an unvalidated assumption that the SPP3 proposals will make a weak case for a strong ROI, including as measured strictly through hard revenues.

Teams seeing real revenue opportunities will be submitting proposals that match those opportunities in scope. That’s why we (and I assume other teams) who see these big opportunities for ENS growth, will be making meaningfully larger budget requests under SPP3. Without adjustment, this Snapshot looks to force the committee to either reject strong revenue generating proposals on budget cap grounds or push providers to descope work that would have generated strong returns. Neither outcome serves the DAO.

Without even the potential of more resources available to SPP3, under what seems to be an incorrect assumption that SPP has not already demonstrated its potential to be a revenue-center, not a cost-center, and before the SPP3 proposals have been evaluated, it suggests a frame that the committee should not be trusted to exercise good judgement in recommending a cohort that achieves a good ROI for ENS.

Noting again how it is important to formally separate the max SPP3 streaming budget from what will become the effective SPP3 streaming budget. The committee has the right to decide that far less than the max should be what is effectively spent if the committee decides the received SPP3 proposals do not show strong enough ROI.

In conclusion:

SPP has already proven its ability to contribute meaningful revenue impacts to ENS. The “revenues are suppressed” framing is technically true, but the bigger context is that revenue decline would have been far worse without SPP2. ENS is still very early. Growth is achieved through investments that deliver ROI, not by proactive budget cuts disconnected from a ROI analysis.
The methodology should reflect total DAO revenue, including DeFi returns. The DAO holds the endowment specifically to support program continuity. Excluding endowment yield from the budget formula treats the DAO as paycheck-to-paycheck, which it isn’t.
The max SPP3 streaming budget is the potential available to fund a strong cohort. The effective spend is what the committee actually allocates. These are different numbers. Proactively capping the budget at $3.25M inappropriately constrains a decision that hasn’t been made yet, based on assumptions about proposals that haven’t been written or reviewed yet. The committee should be trusted to make ROI and budget judgements when they are forming their cohort recommendation. I’m making the case here that the committee can and should be trusted with this.

The budget cap for SPP3 streams should be $3.85M based on the DAO revenue methodology. The budget for the actual cohort recommendation may be less.

lightwalker.eth · May 4, 2026, 9:25pm

Violation of DAO ratified actions in EP6.3, EP6.13, and active ENS Service Provider contracts with ENS

In the currently proposed timeline, the rubric for SPP3 proposals will be published from May 14 or earlier and SPP3 proposals must then be built and submitted by June 2.

There’s a major scheduling issue here. If SPP3 proposals need to be built and submitted between May 14 - June 2, that completely interrupts work on deliverables that we (and other SPP2 1-year teams) are already under contract with ENS to deliver by May 26 and then to prepare and submit Q4 reports (which is formally part of our contracted and scheduled scope of work for SPP2) by June 10.

Thanks but this is not the concern. It extends the period of conflict rather than removing it. The concern is that if the currently proposed schedule for SPP3 proceeds, it will require SPP2 year-1 teams such as ours to break our contracted commitments to ENS for SPP2 Q4 deliverables and the SPP2 Q4 report.

The DAO already ratified the scheduling solution in EP6.3. Here, @avsa wrote:

… and we will add another 3 months of runway to make sure the program is not interrupted by eventual delays in the 2026 vote.

The proposed schedule is forcefully interrupting the SPP2 program through the 2026 vote. The currently proposed schedule for SPP3 is directly in contradiction with the DAO’s earlier ratified actions.

The DAO has further already ratified this allowance for SPP2 streams to have a streaming allowance (up to 3-months) for the optimized transition of SPP2 to any successor program as specified in both the EP6.3 social vote and the EP6.13 executable vote.

Therefore SPP2 streams have an already DAO ratified allowance for the transition to SPP3 through Aug 26.

There can be no argument that an effective and efficient schedule solution to harmonize SPP2 with SPP3 does not exist. The updated scheduling proposal we shared includes a clear timeline: SPP2 Q4 delivery wraps May 25, Q4 reports are submitted by June 7, the committee uses May 14 to June 7 for context-building and structured review of SPP2 outcomes, and the SPP3 submission window opens June 27. SPP3 funding decisions are still locked in 33+ days before the SPP2 cushion expires on Aug 26.

Stepping back: it is a bad sign when a funding program is optimizing for how to allocate tomorrow’s dollars without full consideration for what is being delivered for today’s. The DAO is currently spending real money on large teams doing real work. The proposal as drafted moves directly to the next allocation decision without an ROI assessment of what the current allocation produced. That is not a proper capital allocation process, and it is not how the DAO should be modeling future funding cycles. The DAO deserves to know the ROI of what it got for $4.5M+ before it commits the next $3M+.

The burden is on the currently proposed timeline to explain why it is calling for SPP2 1-year teams to break their existing service agreements with ENS for SPP2 Q4 while also contradicting the DAOs previously ratified decisions in both EP6.3 and EP6.13. What exactly is the case motivating each of these destructive and unnecessary actions?

taytems · May 4, 2026, 9:36pm

I don’t see how $1M+ ARR could be attributed to the listed examples, unless extrapolating beyond reasonable bounds. A referral program that offers 50% revenue share to participants could only realistically be considered as earning the DAO revenue if the revenue has increased beyond the cost of the program (including the cost of funding its development). Visibility on how you came to this figure would be useful here.

A statement of confidence doesn’t do anything to justify in real terms why funding for SPP should be increased. If your plans are within your proposed budget, you can execute on them, increase DAO revenue, and then justify funding increases in the future with hard data from prior cycles.

Framing the SPP budget equation as a percentage of protocol revenue ensures the behavioural alignment of providers. Results of the program, so far, have shown to cost more than they have been worth. If providers have fantastic grand plans for increasing DAO revenue, that’s fine. Attempts to do so will be rewarded if successful, and that aligns with the DAO prioritising the long term sustainability of the protocol. That doesn’t mean that all providers need to directly contribute to DAO revenue, but it does mean when there is less revenue, less money can be spent on those providers.

lightwalker.eth · May 4, 2026, 10:29pm

@taytems Existing messages already answer a number of your questions. Please read them more carefully next time.

The referral program offers a max revenue share of 50%, not a 50% revenue share. This distinction is impactful as I explained in this message. In the first-half of April the effective revenue share was 10%, not 50%.
The $1M ARR is simple: without SPP2 and the ENS Referral Program, how would Grails and Vision be created / continue to exist? Combined, as tracked through explicit onchain referrals, this alone gives $1M ARR. For example, in Dec 2025 the ENS DAO earned $82,386.71 via referrals. In April 2026, the DAO earned over $81,110.26 via referrals. Annualizing this already gives $1M ARR that the DAO is explicitly earning as revenue through referrals and SPP2 funding.
I would further make the argument that this is $1M+ (add the “plus”!) because explicit onchain referrals discounts the actual revenue contribution ENS receives from Grails and Vision. The case for this is also simple. A meaningful amount of ENS revenue comes from speculative name ownership. That might be taboo around here but lets be honest. This speculation-driven revenue is in far excess of $1M ARR. If all specialized secondary markets for ENS names (such as Grails and Vision) ceased to have any model to sustain their creation or existence (such as SPP2 and referrals), then spending on the speculative ownership of ENS names would collapse with it because there would be no proper secondary market for speculation to occur. A lot of these names that are speculatively owned are not being registered or renewed directly on Grails or Vision but rather through the ENS Manager App – therefore the full revenue impact on ENS is far greater.
You’re conflating the max SPP3 budget with the effective SPP3 budget after the committee judges the ROI of proposals. Reread my post above. We support the call for the SPP3 budget cap to be set based on a rational methodology-based approach that takes DAO revenues into consideration. I’ve made a strong and clear case against the SPP3 budget cap being set absent of past or future ROI analysis. No proper capital allocation process works this way. There’s no argument for skipping ROI analysis except to make the budget what we make it just because, which is the exact opposite of a rational methodology-based approach. ENS needs leadership that wisely considers the value of things, not only their cost.
From your stated logic, the many millions the ENS DAO has invested into developing ENSv2, the overwhelming amount going to ENS Labs which includes your salary “have shown to cost more than they have been worth” (your words, not mine). Your stated logic though only considers cost and leaves out the crucial question of value and ROI. I believe the funds the DAO is spending on ENSv2, including the overwhelming amount going to ENS Labs (including your salary) are a good value and ROI for ENS

lightwalker.eth · May 4, 2026, 11:23pm

It’s now past 3am here and only just opened Twitter in bed to see this:

And no, to the boringly predictable irrational skeptics who are continually proven wrong, we never asked for that Tweet to be written.

Listen to the voice of the ENS community speak.

Coltron.eth · May 5, 2026, 12:08am

I don’t understand how this proposal forces you to break your contracted commitments, or prevents you from producing a Q4 report. Reports are due (June 7th) before the review period closes (June 16th).

Submissions are due May 19th and streams wrap up on May 25th. Unless you’re delivering your entire deliverables in the last seven days of your stream, this should have no effect.

In the Meta-Gov working docs, I read this as an allowance. This is a buffer to ensure continuity, not a guaranteed extra three months. With what I have proposed, we may need ~30 days of that allowance.

taytems · May 5, 2026, 2:24am

I don’t see how this changes any context here.

This does not equate to revenue earned by the referral program. I am disagreeing on the premise of what is “earned” here. It cannot be stated that those provided revenue figures were caused by the referral program. There is only correlation from these figures, not causation. It can only be stated that ~$1M ARR is associated with your referral program. These are, fundamentally, completely different things. Saying that counts as earned revenue is pure speculation, in the same way one could speculate that none of the correlated revenue was caused by your referral program.

I’m not arguing against the existence of SPP, nor am I arguing against the existence of referrals. I do though think that speculation is not usually aligned with the goals of the ENS DAO.

No institution of any sorts should spend beyond its means, especially when long term sustainability is an explicit goal.

This is completely irrelevant, and incorrect. ENS Labs created the ENS protocol, and maintains an array of core applications, services, infrastructure, and relationships, to proliferate ENS. All of these things created the revenue that the DAO has today. There would be no revenue, and no treasury, without ENS Labs. We should not be the sole contributor to ENS. But we have the trust, knowledge, and experience, to commit to longer term projects than may otherwise be available for SPP providers. ENS Labs is not perfect, but as far as protocol teams goes, it is a very cost-effective one.

ENSv2 significantly expands the capabilities of ENS as a protocol. We do not need to justify the direct revenue impact of ENSv2, because we have shown over time that we truly care about the ENS protocol, and we determined it necessary from a combination of internal and external feedback.

That is not to say that no SPP provider could never get to that position. However, no SPP provider is currently in that position. SPP is novel. ENS Labs is not.

As for my salary specifically, it has not materially changed since we started work on ENSv2, and my scope of work is far more than just that of ENSv2.

Coltron.eth · May 5, 2026, 2:46am

This proposal is now live for voting on Snapshot.

Curia · May 5, 2026, 5:43am

Supportive of the program overall, thanks @Coltron.eth for putting this together.

For disclosure, Curia applied to SPP2 as well so this is partly from an applicant-side perspective. Two things worth considering:

First, on feedback for non-selected applicants. The proposal already commits the committee to publish rationale for the selected cohort which is great, but it would be really helpful if non-selected applicants also got written feedback within ~14 days of cohort ratification. Doesn’t need to be public, just private to the applicant. Helps teams improve for future cycles and adds some rigor on the committee side too.

Second, seconding @vegayp point on conflict resolution. The current language is a bit thin for a program this size. A simple documented path would help: Chair receives complaints, initial response within 7 days, escalation to accountability body if unresolved, and outcome documented publicly. Protects both applicants and the committee.

Also agree with @lightwalker.eth that SPP3 timeline should respect SPP2 Q4 deliverables. We don’t have that conflict ourselves but the principle matters for future cycles.

Will support either way, but think the above would make the program stronger.

5pence.eth · May 5, 2026, 5:34pm

Thanks to @Coltron.eth for the substantial coordination work here and for keeping this process moving.

I continue to have concerns about the size and structure of the SPP spend, and I’ll restate them here:

In the current environment, with the protocol’s current financial picture , this is too much capital to pre-commit.
We still do not have enough historical evidence that this allocation strategy is delivering strong DAO-level ROI.
Setting a large top-line budget before we know exactly what will be funded is backwards; scope should drive budget, not the other way around.
This model can work for smaller grants programs, but spend at this scale needs tighter sequencing and stronger budget discipline.

This is consistent with my prior voting rationale on SPP budgeting, where I made the case for a more conservative baseline and incremental increases based on demonstrated outcomes: EP 6.3 post #7

I will be voting “No”, not as dissent against the overall approach, but because the evidence to date suggests the SPP currently functions more as a community support program than a model with clearly demonstrated DAO-level return, and this social post is both program authorization as well as approval of the committee model.

I appreciate the work that has gone into SPP3, but I am not convinced the existing evidence supports this as prudent use of the protocol’s revenue.

nick.eth · May 6, 2026, 3:13pm

You’re attributing every dollar that came in with a referrer associated with it to the referral program - making the assumption that none of those registrations or renewals would have occurred without it. It should be plainly obvious that this is a false assumption.

Here’s registration and renewal revenue for the period concerned; I’ve bolded the two months in which the referral program was active:

Month	Total Revenue (USD)	Annualized (USD)
2026-04	$574,013	$6,888,154
2026-03	$603,019	$7,236,228
2026-02	$830,239	$9,962,873
2026-01	$965,969	$11,591,633
2025-12	$594,734	$7,136,810
2025-11	$489,773	$5,877,278
2025-10	$744,040	$8,928,475
2025-09	$766,531	$9,198,373

Do you see a clear $1M increase in annualized revenue for those two months? I certainly don’t; in fact, those two months are the third and fourth lowest revenue months from the 8 months in the table above; average to slightly-below-average.

lightwalker.eth · May 6, 2026, 6:01pm

Yes it would be wrong to say that every dollar associated with a referral would not have happened if the ENS Referral Program did not exist.

Ex: If generic registrar app X implementing referrals ceased to exist, some subset of the revenue ENS receives via referrals from X would still be achieved through some alternative generic registrar app Y.

But I didn’t say this.

It’s important we return to the context motivating what we are now discussing: the budget methodology for SPP3. I’m very happy to see a defined methodology that includes consideration of revenues. My suggestion (which doesn’t matter anymore, snapshot is already active, I have zero interest to continue debating it now) was that the budget methodology for SPP3 should include formal consideration of the ROI from SPP2 and the committee’s assessed ROI from SPP3 proposals. I’ve been beating the drum on ROI focus for years, including for the SPP3 committee to lead formal accountability reviews of SPP2 before proceeding with SPP3. Etc. The SPP3 snapshot doesn’t include these ideas but that’s ok I’m moving on, focused on the positive and the important next steps.

Above are two examples where SPP is being attacked under the assumption it’s not creating meaningful value and is a “community support program” (ex: some kind of a charity project).

That is wrong.

Correcting that is what motivated me to make a case for the value produced by SPP2 for ENS. There’s many ways to create value outside of a direct revenue contribution, but I exclusively focused on direct revenue impacts.

Here, the case I made is:

$1M+ / year in revenues is downstream of the speculation on .eth names (consider much of the 999 club, the 10k club, other short names, recently released premiums, etc.. to arrive at this number).
If there’s no marketplace tailored for speculation on ENS names (such as Grails or Vision) then the $1M+ / year in revenues that’s downstream of speculation should be expected to collapse. Let’s note that speculation features are not features of a generic registrar app.
The marketplaces tailored to speculate on ENS names (Grails and Vision) now exclusively receive funding via SPP2. Grails receives funding via SPP2 and the ENS Referral Program. Vision now exclusively receives funding via the ENS Referral Program. Our work on the ENS Referral Program is funded under SPP2.
… therefore, SPP2 is already making a meaningful direct revenue contribution to ENS with an annualized run rate confidently in excess of $1M+ / year (to say nothing of many other huge value creation deliverables from SPP2 I can point to).

I agree with you that net NEW revenue growth delivered by SPP2 maybe isn’t much? I would need to analyze deeper, but happy to make a quick assumption it’s not.

However, the case is clear how SPP2 has helped ENS avoid revenues dropping by more than they have already dropped, helping ENS retain $1M+ / year in revenue.

Retention of revenue / users is a foundation of growth. SPP2 is plugging what would otherwise be a big hole in a leaky bucket. We explicitly raised the alarm for this ENS revenue risk impact in our SPP2 proposal. We described the looming shutdown of the old Reservoir platform, which we understood would put the old Vision under, and it did. Hats off to all who took action to plug this hole, including the Grails team and the new / reformed Vision team.

Plugging holes in buckets is important, but is not enough. With SPP3 we will look to deliverables that can deliver net NEW revenues. Let’s make the water level in this bucket grow.

nick.eth · May 6, 2026, 6:54pm

You claimed:

I don’t think you’ve substantiated this. If you’d like to withdraw the claim, you’re welcome to.

Where are you getting this figure from? I’ve demonstrated that there’s no immediately obvious correlation between DAO revenue and the referral program, and you didn’t respond substantively to my rebuttal; instead you’ve just repeated your claim that the SPP is responsible for $1M in ARR.

I don’t think that you’ve made that case, either.

lightwalker.eth · May 6, 2026, 7:53pm

Hmm. Seems we’re talking past each other?

Sure please feel welcome to attack. Can you point me to specifically where you feel the case for this isn’t being made in points 1..4 above? Happy to answer questions.

Sure let’s do some super quick and dirty napkin math. Checking Grails now I see:

999 club has 997 names either actively registered or in grace period: 997 * $640 / year = $638,080 / year in revenue.
10k club has 6,099 names either actively registered or in grace period: 6,099 * $160 / year = $975,840 / year in revenue.

And checking the latest revenue report there’s $3,503,709 in recently released premium revenue for the year proceeding the end of Q1 2026.

As a super quick and dirty napkin math calculation, that adds up to $5,117,629 / year in revenue.

Obviously not all of the 999 club, 10k club, and recently released premium revenue is associated with speculation. There’s no perfect mechanism to explicitly determine the % that is, but completely confident it’s over $1M / year in ENS’s revenue.

Note how I only took 2 categories of short names into this calculation. Additionally note how we’re seeing 90% of ENS DAO revenues attributed to Grails and Vision through referrals being either short-name premiums or recently released premiums. That’s supporting evidence.

We should also flag the distinction between:

Set 1: Speculatively owned names that would cease to be renewed / registered if marketplaces tailored for speculation on ENS names (Grails & Vision) ceased to exist.
Set 2: Speculatively owned names that are explicitly registered or renewed through Grails & Vision (as opposed to say.. the official ENS Manager App) and are therefore explicitly attributed to Grails & Vision through referrals.

Set 1 is meaningfully larger than the Set 2. Which further supports the case being made.

I’m not making a case about correlation between DAO revenue in SPP2 and impacts exclusive to the referral program in it’s limited budget scope as it has existed thus far within SPP2.

I’m making a case about DAO revenue impacts from SPP2 overall. Grails and the ENS Referral Program come from SPP2. The ENS Referral Program is the now sole revenue source for Vision. The details of the case I’m making are all in my points 1..4 in the earlier message above.

Preventing $1M+ of revenues from being lost is a contribution of $1M+.

My goal here is simply to defend SPP2 as having contributed real value back to ENS. The points I’m making here are also meaningfully constrained. There’s many other big value deliveries coming from SPP2 that are not so easy to attach directly to current revenues and so I haven’t mentioned them.

Nearly midnight here but if you have follow ups please feel welcome to share. I’ll check after I get going tomorrow. Cheers.