A small infographic on the topic of a small talent pool

I was very interested in the topic of the small ENS talent pool, which was raised in the discussion about the amendments to the Working Group Rules. Therefore, I decided to analyze what methods the working groups are currently using to develop this pool. By methods here, I mean funding - no matter what anyone says, receiving funds is the main motivator for contribution.

I counted how many unique individuals/organizations received money from ENS in different quarters since the working groups existed and which of them were newcomers when they received it. I did not include salaries, compensation for travel to events, hackathons, and service providers.

As you can see, in 2024 there was a significant decline in unique organizations working with ENS. In addition, the number of new grant recipients decreased from a total of 98 in 2023 to a total of 37 in 2024.

Why is this happening?

I believe it is because people and organizations do not see opportunities to safely build a business or career within ENS from scratch.

I have not done a deep analysis, but using the Ledger, you can see that working groups have become less likely to allocate funds for small incentivizations, and the number of grant categories under which you could receive funds has decreased.

The Small Grants program, which allowed contributors to democratically receive funds from the DAO for project development, has been closed.

The Builders subgroup has been eliminated, along with the Builders Grants program, which rewarded contributors for improving the ENS code.

The Fellowship and Scholarship programs have been closed. Through this tool, Solo contributors could receive funds and build a larger project within ENS in the future.

The Community/Support subgroups have been closed. Previously, Discord moderators and active community members could receive rewards for helping the community grow. Now, only 1 person receives funds under this payment item.

The Translators subgroup was dissolved. One could say that this category does not replenish the talent pool, but in fact, @letfrz came to ENS in this way, and now writes review articles on grant recipients. My first contribution to ENS was also translating the application into Russian. If we talk about the PG focus of this category, Fabio Anaya, who translated the application into Spanish, founded the web3 company Bucks Pay this year. Let me remind you that the current version of the ENS application has been translated into only 6 languages, and French, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese are not among them.

It is worth noting that Ecosystem WG allocates so-called Mini grants - 3 ETH every six months. A great initiative to support small contributions. PG had similar Growth Grants, but they closed for some reason.

Why is this important?

This discussion comes amid the steward debate, but there will also be an SP election coming up soon. I found that the current stewards and SP founders either worked with ENS before the working groups were formed, or started small initiatives that helped them build their seed money and reputation.

Service Providers:

Wildcard Labs was founded by @stevegachau.eth (Ledger), who received regular and small grants.

Namespace was founded by @cap (Ledger), who received small and Builders grants.

Unruggable was founded by @Premm.eth (Ledger), who received small and Builders grants, and was also a Fellow.

Blockful was founded by @alextnetto.eth (Ledger), who received small grants.

Namehash Labs (Ledger) was founded by @lightwalker.eth, then received small and regular grants.

ETHLimo was a grant recipient for several years before becoming a provider. Unicorn, Resolverworks, and EFP were founded by people who worked with ENS before the WGs were founded.

Stewards:

Marcus (Ledger) did a bunch of communications projects, was a DAO SMM manager, and wrote a newsletter before becoming a steward. To me, this is a golden example of how you can develop talent by financially rewarding their small and medium-sized projects.

184 (Ledger) was a Discord moderator and an active community member. I don’t know if he got paid for this, but it’s safe to say that the “from Discord to stewards” path worked before.

Eduardo (Ledger) received financial onboarding. This is actually a great practice, and it’s unclear why it’s not used more widely.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Coltron, Slobo, Limes, 5pence, and Simona joined ENS either before the WGs were formed or shortly after.


To become a service provider, you certainly need to prove your usefulness to ENS first. And to do this, you need to hire employees, build infrastructure, and implement several small projects. This obviously requires money, so you either need to already have funds, or find an investor, or receive grants from ENS through fewer channels than before, which do not include such boosting features as Small and Builders grants.

To become a steward, you certainly need to prove your usefulness to ENS first. You don’t need any seed money for this, but you need money to exist at least. Who knows, it may take more than one year to get the position, and working for free for a person without savings sounds like gambling. And such a concept as savings, I will not hesitate to remind you, exists only in developed countries. Previously, you could get a boost through working with the community or scholarship programs.

Questions for Steward Candidates

The elections start tomorrow. I am not a delegate, but a relatively active participant and would be glad to see the answers to the questions below. They probably concerns Metagov stewards less, since this group is focused on working with existing and developed structures.

Do you see a problem here? What ways do you see to correct the situation in which an organization with a billion-dollar treasury has a “small pool of talent”? Maybe revive old practices or come up with new ones?

7 Likes

Is that including the service provider program?

No, it’s not. Because decisions on them are made not by working groups, but by the DAO directly. For the same reason, this does not include ENS Labs and the recent Blockful grant.

Well if you want to make the point of either we are widening our talent pool or not then we should definitely include the service providers on the list. I am not sure we have data on how many people they employ but it would be great to have that and Labs data.

1 Like

My point is not that ENS doesn’t create career opportunities (it does, directly, through providers and ENS Labs). It wasn’t me who said the words about a small talent pool – moreover, I strongly disagree with this statement.

I just wanted to highlight with this statistic that routes that have always worked well have become less successful this year because smaller initiatives are being supported less. Maybe the total number of people receiving ENS funds through service provider employees has increased, but how that has affected the pool of potential Stewards or service provider candidates is unclear.

The service provider program is to provide sustainable funding route to already active members and while @danch.quixote 's research is more focusing on the entry point so I do think it has meaning on its own. If new people are hired through ENS labs or these service providers, these people are less likely to kick start new initiatives, let alone applying as DAO stewards (we have a case of DAO stewards joining the ENS labs but not the other way around).

I am curious to hear collective insight from the stewards the reasoning behind closing these programs and see the discussion of ways to bring new kind of people.

3 Likes

The “Manhattan Project” of ENS at the moment is Namechain—it’s all hands on deck. Therefore, the most valuable contributions would align with the ENSv2 Project Plan.

Other valuable contributions include improving developer tooling—for example, @raffy’s blocksmith.js , a minimal Ethereum JavaScript testing framework—and innovations at the app layer, such as those being developed by @cap (Namespace Platform) and @slobo.eth (Durin).

When it comes to ENS, I believe this is the kind of talent we should aim to attract.

Therefore, Labs could consider creating an open-source contribution program—where junior developers can work on beginner-friendly tasks, such as addressing “good first issues” or small pull requests, gaining hands-on experience while actively contributing to ENS’s ecosystem growth.

The DAO could sponsor this program with some ETH and host competitions to attract challengers. Either the Ecosystem stewards or the Public Goods stewards could oversee and operate it.

—

When it comes to the ENS DAO, it can support ENS’s overall mission by addressing secondary objectives, as long as they are well-defined and align with the Constitution.

Supporting the translation program appears to be low-hanging fruit, especially considering that the Manager App still lacks Chinese and Spanish, two of the world’s most spoken languages. Having been part of this initiative in the past, I would consider writing an RFP for it.

4 Likes

If I can summarize what I think Danch’s point here is, it’s that the smaller grant programs served as a pipeline for DAO talent. Absent these ‘getting started’ options, we’re likely to see fewer new individuals get as far as being credible candidates for stewardship positions, because there’s no easy way for them to establish a reputation first.

4 Likes

Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. Thank you!

Here’s another great example. GasHawk first won small grants through a voting system. Then PG stewards recognized the project and awarded a development grant. Eventually, the organization went on to win large grants from PG multiple times.

Now, GasHawk’s CEO is nominated for stewardship because he already has a reputation in the community and can be said to be part of the ENS talent pool.

This is a very clear path where a person or organization continually gains a reputation based on their performance.

1 Like

If I were picked to be a steward tomorrow, or anyone else, I would like to know what was the reasoning behind starting this and more importantly why we decided to close them. This would help me avoid potential mistakes, optimize my efforts to have the best results, and bring me up to speed on what worked and what didn’t work in the past. Also, it would be amazing if we had a measurable impact and results these programs brought so we can understand them better.

It would be great if no matter who the stewards are, did something similar to what some Service Providers are doing with Quarterly reports. Slightly more oriented towards impact and measurable results. These would be very helpful not only to our entire community but primarily to future Stewards as a reference and great learning material. Seeing what we tried, what results and impact some grant programs had, obstacles and problems it brought, etc. would be very helpful.

@estmcmxci has been doing these for MetaGov (Q1, Q2, Q3) and they’ve been very helpful for me. And I’m sure they will be helpful to someone new who decides to join our DAO and especially those who aspire to become a Steward. It would be great to ‘standardize’ this practice in my opinion.

This is not necessarily true but is a good point. We bootstrapped for more than a year. We were working full-time jobs and did ENS stuff nights and weekends for more than a year. Although I don’t see a lot of people willing to do this.

Thanks for asking these questions. Great questions for a Twitter Space today hosted by @estmcmxci.

The Service Provider Program feels like the natural evolution, and in some ways, the culmination of previous experimental grant programs. We had a group of talented, dedicated contributors who had been supporting ENS for years, and we wanted to amplify their impact. This led to the creation of the Service Provider Program, which accelerated ENS’s growth by channeling the efforts of builders into nine focused Service Providers.

That could be the main reason why we have fewer smaller grants. I am in full support when it comes to thinking about more programs. As I mentioned a few times before – it’s important we make sure no one falls into complacency and stop being on the lookout for new ways to bring more builders and other contributors.

1 Like

Another idea is to have an individual with strong working relationships across all Working Groups compile a comprehensive quarterly report. This report could serve as a qualitative extension to the one @Limes has been preparing.

4 Likes