Comments on ENS Foundation Director Nominees

Umm, thanks I suppose? :wink:

@AvsA so not only you meet minimum requirements, but you also have great sense of humour! :slight_smile: ENS foundation is in luck! :slight_smile:

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Addendum: I only have one thing to add. I will be reducing my full-time (and well-paid) day job to half-time, if elected. I highly doubt that the position of Director of ENS will be equally remunerated but I am committing to it beforehand to show skin in the game. I intend to take the Directorship role seriously.

https://discuss.ens.domains/t/nominations-for-ens-foundation-director-to-replace-brantly-eth/10634/6?u=inplco

@AvsA with his background and unique set of skills is a great fit, further i disagree with the the no compensation for first year.

anyone working putting efforts and/or taking risk, shall be compensated in a clear manner, no matter he/she needs that particular income today or not but it is for the benefit of project success, position sovereignty and overall accountability,

We need to discuss (maybe in a separate thread) director compensation structure, salary/benefits adjusted annually as well as all relevant KPIs

Thank you for the time you spent providing this response.

I’d like to propose putting this up for vote on the 21st, including anyone who has nominated themselves in the relevant thread in a Snapshot vote. Any objections?

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I would like to see an updated draft proposal before a Snapshot vote goes live. What are we actually voting on here?

There has been no DAO vote yet to remove Brantly from his ENS Foundation Director position, so first that must happen before we proceed to vote on nominees right? Or is this being lumped into one proposal, with one of the options being “none, keep Brantly”?

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On one hand, putting a Yes/No vote on removing Brantly would make it clearer if people want him removed or not.
But on the other hand, if we lump it up with other options and we don’t reach a quorum decision on which new director to hire, it implies Brantly keeps his position until we do.

Do you think there is some merit to splitting this into two proposals to vote on?

The “Council” is defined as the ENS Tokenholders not the DAO. Per paragraph 15 of The ENS Foundation Articles of Association, the Council has the power to appoint or remove a Director, exercisable by notice to the Foundation. There is no mechanism that the DAO must vote to remove Brantly, before a vote of the ENS Tokenholders. The vote, to be legitimate, must be a two vote process: 1) vote to remove Brantly and then 2) vote to appoint a Director.

Further, vote 1 and 2 should not take place at the same time, if the goal is to keep the Directors at 3, because until there is a result on vote 1, vote 2 should not take place, since there is no vacancy; otherwise, there is a scenario of keeping Brantly and voting for a fourth Director.

@KingZee
@nick.eth

Using ranked choice voting, people can express their preferences correctly without the need for multiple votes.

A vote of the DAO is a vote of the ENS tokenholders.

Why do you believe that to be the case?

@nick.eth

My answers are from the expressed language in the Foundation’s Articles, and being a legal document, it must be faithfully followed or changed as provided therein (see, paras. 24 and 78).

Rank voting is not referenced in the Articles and has not been voted on by the ENS Tokenholders, as the method of voting. The legal interpretation would be the plain meaning of “vote”, as it is not defined, and “ranked voting” is a special type that goes beyond the plain meaning and would have needed to be expressed in the Articles.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree, because the definition of Council says ENS Tokenholders and not a portion (i.e. DAO), opening up the vote to a challenge.

The language uses “appoint” and “remove” and not “replace.”

I hate to be hypertechnical [I know lawyers], but the ENS Tokenholders have not yet voted to remove Brantly, who has not resigned, so there is a possibility he may not be removed.

All of this can be changed by a vote by the ENS Tokenholders, under paragraph 78 of the Articles, to alter the Articles to address all of these issues.

@berrios.eth @nick.eth @serenae @KingZee

Glad to see a move on this. Since I am drafting the EP6 [Social] so far, I will suggest rewording the proposal to make it bi-functional i.e. EP6 [Constitution] [Social] Removal of a Director of ENS Foundation and the appointment of a substitution Director. It could potentially look something like this:

a) include the constitutional amendments to address the issue of “appoint” vs “replace” vs “remove” first to align with @berrios.eth’s hyper-technicality (although I would argue that remove + appoint = replace is an a fortiori argument). If one was being hyper-critical, without a constitutional amendment, it does seem like a two-vote scenario.

b) a single run-off vote with Brantly Millegan on the ballot along with the other nominees titled ‘Election of new Director to replace Brantly Millegan’. There is no need for a second vote if Brantly is on the ballot. If he garners more votes, he stays. If someone else pips him, they take his position.

Both Social and Constitutional proposals can/may be lumped together since both issue the exact same criteria for passing, although in the correct order. However – this is a big one – if Brantly keeps his role, it will also signal that the constitutional amendment has failed by association; the two results are tied together which is starting to sound weird now that I am typing this. In that case, if there is enough interest in still making that constitutional amendment afterwards, it could go up as a one-off independent constitutional proposal. I am afraid making it two votes trivialises the voting process in a DAO and unnecessary votes should be avoided wherever necessary. Just throwing an idea in there, which has sort of lost its appeal in these last two sentences.

@inplco

The first part is to “Alter” (change) the specific Article paragraphs by changing the language to:

  1. Change the definition of “Council” to include the DAO.
  2. Add a definition of Vote: Vote shall include ranked voting when deemed appropriate.
  3. Change the wording to say appoint, remove, or replace.

You must cite the particular Article (i.e., this vote is to alter The ENS Foundation Articles of Association, Article 1 (definitions) as follows: . . . ; this vote is to alter . . . Article 15 to include “replace”).

Then have your vote, as you state, to appoint a Director for the position presently held by Brantly.

How do you define what is the “council of tokenholders”? A formal vote execute by all willing tokenholders? Because that’s the DAO. Does it need to have a round table where everyone is formally dressed and nick uses a bell to announce that the session has started?

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I agree with @berrios.eth the more I think about it. The constitution should be amended in a first separate EP6 [Constitution] [Social] proposal to clear the ENS Foundation of any legal liability arising purely out of technicality; such things are commonplace when there is position of influence in question. I know this is a trivial step but it is part of due diligence. The current EP6 [Social] can be moved to EP7, and will have to be voted on separately. In principle, the second proposal cannot be active until the first one passes. If the first one fails, yikes.

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The Articles doesn’t say or use the phrase “council of tokenholders”; it separately defines both “ENS Tokenholders” and “Council”, and only uses “Council” to refer to the ENS Tokenholders. Definitions are extremely important and are to be read as written. A lot of case law is determined by definitions.

I did not write the document; I’m just telling you what it says. I’ve already provided a path to change the language to comport to what @nick.eth thought it said or may have intended.

@nick.eth @AvsA

I have made the changes as I thought relevant and created a pull request; the diff lives here: https://github.com/ensdomains/governance-docs/pull/16/files

I am happy to hear about changes and perhaps others can do it the Git way with their own forks and pull requests.

Based on this, [EP6][Constitution] can be has been drafted rather quickly.

Thanks for that clarification @inplco .

ENS DAO, a subset of ENS Tokenholders (…) who are participants in voting

The ENS DAO is not a “subset” of ENS tokenholders, but the method in which token vote is executed. Deciding to abstain or not participate at all in a vote is part of the process of a democracy. This is a weird definition.

Should I say ‘eligible’ for voting? But by definition, all ENS Tokenholders are eligible for voting. Plus, I think abstaining from voting is part of the electoral system and counts as implicit participation. I am open to a better word or phrasing of course! Fire away.

First change Articles of Association of The ENS Foundation, then comport the Constitution to the language, if needed.

Resolution to alter the Articles of Association of The ENS Foundation as follows:

Article 1: change the definition of “Council” to read in its entirety as follows: “Council” means the ENS Tokenholders and ENS DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), with any actions to be taken by the ENS Tokenholders or ENS DAO evidenced by the affirmative vote of the ENS Tokenholders or ENS DAO by receipt of messages signed with their Ethereum public keys.

Article 1: add the definition of Vote to read as follows: Vote is defined to include ranked voting.

Article 15: changed to read in its entirety as follows: The Council has the power, exercisable by notice to the Foundation Company, to appoint, remove, or replace one or more directors of the Foundation Company.

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