I believe there is broad consensus that ENS DAO has core structural issues that are preventing it from being a stable and competent steward of the ENS protocol.
With that diagnosis, it is easy to look at the existing governance structure and take a knee jerk approach. The three Working Groups are not coordinating well, so delete two of them and assume that will solve the coordination problem?
I am not convinced that is the right framing.
That approach feels a bit like a field hospital in a war that is too quick to use the saw. It may remove the visible problem, but it may also remove functions that the DAO still needs. Ecosystem support and public goods support are not just abstract governance categories. They represent real contributions from real contributors, including support for the broader Ethereum foundation that ENS itself is built on.
From my perspective, ENS DAO is not suffering primarily from having too many governance bodies. It is suffering from missing fundamental structure and clarity of direction.
Many people have asked for ENS DAO to state clearly what its priorities are, and to align its administration and processes around those priorities. I think that is the right place to focus. To go far, we need to go together, but we also need to know where we are going. Clarity of direction helps contributors, teams, delegates, and stakeholders understand whether ENS DAO is the place they want to put their time, energy, and work.
ENS DAO has in many ways been an experiment in minimalism. With no full time staff and no traditional foundation structure, the idea was that the DAO could hold key protocol responsibilities, control important protocol security functions, approve upgrades, manage key variables like pricing, and steward the treasury. Over the last few years, serious challenges to that model have emerged.
The treasury is a good example. Deciding what to fund and what not to fund requires more than passive governance. It requires the DAO to have a clear sense of direction, and then to be able to assess whether treasury spending is actually advancing that direction.
At the same time, ENS itself is strong. The protocol has weathered multiple bear markets, and like Ethereum, it is well positioned to benefit from the rise of AI agents. Compared with many SaaS businesses, for example, ENS is more likely to be strengthened by AI than threatened by it. ENS has the potential to become fundamental infrastructure for identity, reputation, trust, and security in an internet increasingly used by AI agents.
That makes this moment especially important. The future for ENS is bright, but ENS DAO needs to mature into a competent steward of the protocol and treasury.
I do not think we need to take knee jerk actions. I think we need to learn from other successful stewards of internet protocols and copy the patterns that have worked after many years of trial and error. Some of the missing structures seem clear, a way to set direction, full time professional administration, clear processes for contributors and teams, and governance structures that bring in more stakeholders who can meaningfully help shape the direction of ENS as core internet infrastructure.
I support an incremental and measured approach to change, and I agree that the current structure needs to evolve. But I would be cautious about framing the problem as simply having too many Working Groups. The deeper issue is that ENS DAO has not yet built the structure necessary to become the competent steward that the ENS protocol deserves.
The ENS protocol is strong, and has the potential for exponential growth in the future with the rise of a new internet with unlimited potential for new users in the form of AI agents. The ENS DAO is young, when it comes to internet protocol steward bodies. I believe that if we look to successful models that came before us, and learn from their many years of trial and error, the ENS DAO can also become a model for protocol stewardship, and successfully navigate the transition to an AI first web.
As an individual contributor since 2021, and as co-founder of Unruggable, a service provider, I am grateful for the contributions of everyone who has helped build and support the ENS protocol. I am also grateful for the ENS DAO’s support of our work, and I marvel at how far we have come in making ENS a foundational protocol of the internet. I look forward to working with everyone who cares about ENS to help it live up to the vision of becoming the decentralized, platform independent identity and naming infrastructure for building the next public and open internet.