[Draft] Reform DAO governance by delegating 5M ENS tokens

🗳️ Meta-Governance
21

I wanted to put some numbers on the proposal.

Past Delegates

I downloaded all 48 DAO proposals of the last 2 years (33 Snapshot + 15 onchain, Jul 2024–Jul 2026). For each voter, average voting power used = sum of voting power actually cast ÷ 48 (missed votes count as zero). Factor = √(that average). Eligibility requires voting in ≥24 of 48 proposals. The pool is distributed proportionally to the factor among the 51 eligible delegates. I excluded the largest delegate and myself to avoid looking like self-dealing (it would be an opt in proposal anyway). I can share the CSV details if anyone wants. I ran two scenarios, delegating a total of 1M or 2M ENS.

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Delegate Current power Factor √(avg used) +1M pool +2M pool Notes
nick.eth 3,260,165 408.0 — — Excluded: largest delegate
jeff.eth 190,668 117.3 — — Below participation cutoff (15/48)
scratch.ricmoo.eth 181,229 225.5 — — Below participation cutoff (14/48)
fireeyesdao.eth 154,854 436.3 100,435 200,869 :white_check_mark: 45/48 — highest factor
avsa.eth 130,653 326.4 — — Voluntarily opted out (proposal author)
imtoken.eth 121,058 72.6 — — Below participation cutoff (2/48)
coltron.eth 112,918 309.2 71,171 142,342 :white_check_mark: 45/48
slobo.eth 108,494 284.2 65,419 130,837 :white_check_mark: 47/48
brantly.eth 94,536 328.5 75,616 151,233 :white_check_mark: 47/48
liubenben.eth 92,231 203.9 46,944 93,888 :white_check_mark: 35/48
dylanb.eth 85,200 198.5 45,688 91,377 :white_check_mark: 42/48
lefteris.eth 73,021 259.2 59,661 119,322 :white_check_mark: 26/48
superphiz.eth 63,998 149.3 — — Below participation cutoff (14/48)
ethdotlimo.eth 60,000 185.4 42,681 85,361 :white_check_mark: 30/48
simona.eth 57,069 232.5 53,522 107,043 :white_check_mark: 39/48
rainbowwallet.eth 56,876 37.4 — — Below participation cutoff (1/48)
spencecoin.eth 56,573 34.3 — — Below participation cutoff (1/48)
griff.eth 50,864 275.1 63,334 126,667 :white_check_mark: 44/48
governance.kpk.eth 50,299 166.2 38,265 76,531 :white_check_mark: 28/48
obstropolos.eth 50,098 64.6 — — Below participation cutoff (4/48)
daostrat.eth 50,000 140.7 — — Below participation cutoff (19/48) — near miss
sovereignsignal.eth 46,351 196.5 45,243 90,486 :white_check_mark: 40/48
0xe5501bc2 44,244 32.7 — — Below participation cutoff (1/48)
clowes.eth 41,300 69.3 15,956 31,912 :white_check_mark: 34/48
0x48dbb9b7 40,794 44.7 — — Below participation cutoff (2/48)
danch.eth 33,210 71.2 — — Below participation cutoff (17/48)
premm.eth 32,398 73.7 — — Below participation cutoff (10/48)
she256.eth 30,118 88.8 — — Below participation cutoff (11/48)
devdao.eth 21,434 43.2 — — Below participation cutoff (3/48)
0x8b3347fd 20,106 46.5 — — Below participation cutoff (4/48)
5pence.eth 18,438 260.2 59,898 119,796 :white_check_mark: 38/48 — largest relative gain (7.5×)
luc.eth 17,500 38.2 — — Below participation cutoff (4/48)
netto.eth 10,458 158.9 36,574 73,149 :white_check_mark: 45/48
matzo.eth 10,161 20.5 — — Below participation cutoff (2/48)
spikewatanabe.eth 10,159 127.2 29,282 58,564 :white_check_mark: 34/48
gov.blockful.eth 10,152 119.2 27,437 54,874 :white_check_mark: 37/48
0x1d921dff 10,000 64.5 — — Below participation cutoff (20/48) — closest miss
ens.184.eth 9,960 94.0 21,644 43,287 :white_check_mark: 46/48
mihal.eth 9,925 33.3 — — Below participation cutoff (5/48)
cap.eth 9,523 88.6 20,386 40,773 :white_check_mark: 40/48
namehashlabs.eth 7,053 76.0 17,490 34,980 :white_check_mark: 35/48

At 1M votes, we are talking about giving less than 100k for the largest delegate. At 2M the total sum of their voting power would now be just enough to equal the top delegate. So it’s, in my opinion, an improvement without significantly shaking everything up.

Top level domain owners

I think we want to encourage other companies to add and manage their domains via ENS and I believe that any organization that commits to being value-aligned (including of course article I of the ENS constitution, Name Ownership shall not be infringed) should get a slice of the votes. The issue is there aren’t many organizations like this and the few that exist show sparse results..

TLD On-chain ENS registrations (L1) Status
.box ~3,800 (100% onchain, on Optimism) every .box name is a 3DNS token by design — 0 on mainnet, all L2
.art 856 unique names on main net steady claims 2020 → April 2026
.locker 27 started mid-2025, active
.hiphop 8 stalled since Dec 2023
.kred 60, all pre-2020 PeopleBrowsr — re-claimed its TLD at the ENS root in Feb 2026, no new names yet
.luxe 1,845, all pre-2020 GoDaddy (ex-MMX). Once the largest TLD integration on ENS; dormant since the acquisition
.club 1 GoDaddy (ex-.CLUB Domains). Effectively never used
Side note: .art has ~380k DNS registrations of which only 856 ever claimed their ENS integration, while .box has ~3,800 names that are all onchain by construction.

I would advocate for delegating 1M to this pool. Of course, this would mean that they would want to participate and opt in. The less companies want to join, the more delegated power one would have.

Infrastructure Development

EthLabs (the offshoot from former EF members), has come forward interested in helping ENS governance. I think we should extend this invitation for other Ethereum-native companies that have a stake in ENS working: Ethereum Foundation, Gnosis (via Safe), L2 orgs, etc. I would also advocate another 1M delegated in total for these.

I would also like to extend something similar to a Builder’s House — companies in the Service Provider Program, authors of ENSIPs, and maintainers of widely used ENS libraries — and another for sites and wallet apps with a significant number of active ENS names. These are harder to put clear numbers on, so I’ll leave them for a follow-up.

1 Like
22

What makes a delegate eligible in this calculus? There’s a whole class of smaller delegates with consistent participation who don’t appear here, so it’s not clear whether inclusion is being determined by participation or by historical voting weight.

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This table seems to show that many TLD integrations are sparse, dormant, or moribund. Why should TLD owners be treated as a unified stakeholder class worthy of 1M delegated votes on that basis?

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Based on this logic, if fewer companies opt in, wouldn’t this just concentrate a very large amount of delegated power in the hands of a very small number of TLD operators?

1 Like
23

Here’s the full dataset. Downloaded the latest 2 years of voting, excluded anyone who didn’t vote for at least half of the votes, averaged out votes they did participate in. This was done in Fable so there might be errors, so it would be good to recalculate it manually if this goes to a vote. I also had excluded anyone not from the top because otherwise the smaller delegates are getting only hundreds of votes which honestly doesn’t seem to tip the scale much. But I see the argument for including them.

24

@AvsA, I like this a lot, the DAO retains governance instead of airdropping tokens that will eventually be sold. I’ve been toying expanding your idea: a treasury delegation pool for each bucket, but rebalance delegations each epoch based on membership criteria and recent voting behaviour.

Membership criteria

  • Users, min tokens held
  • Integrations
  • Developers
  • Legacy naming systems
  • ENS Governance Community
    • added to distinct sets via Snapshot, Each Group would need to confirm to that groups unique criteria.

I think the TLD owner data is interesting, of the 7 only 3 have 500+ registrations. If that bucket was fully activated I feel that would be a failure. I feel a cap makes sense say 150k which leaves a pathway for new participates who wish to participate in that category.

i.e A new TLD provider has a clear goal of getting 500+ regs to get 150k delegated power from the treasury. At 10+ participants at each rebalance() delegated VP would naturally decrease.

Voting behaviour
I feel we can tune the algo to be more inclusive. As it stands 50% cutoff could feel insurmountable to most. Long stewardship should be rewarded with perhaps a boost but not at the expense of new participants.

Some ideas for how voting behaviour could be computed to be eligible for a treasury delegation.

  • Participation (vote cast) of 80% of last 10 votes
  • Maintain an average voting weight of X of the last 10 votes
    • missed votes as zero;
  • Multiplier of 1.x if participation rate is 70% of lifetime votes
  • Exclude treasury leases from the score, avoiding self-reinforcing allocations;

Rebalance at desired cadence. Allocations at each rebalance are deterministic and can be published as a Merkle root per epoch and even automated, making the mechanism relatively easy to audit, reproduce but most importantly adaptive.

Simply put, if you meet the membership requirements for one or many of ENS DAOs defined stakeholder buckets and you maintain a voting cadence; You MAY be delegated some VP. If your voting cadence diminishes, VP will be undelegated.

Another side thought: It’s not inconceivable that for users who are eligible for a treasury delegation, the program could bake a % fee that is payable every X days relative to their treasury delegation. The most interesting thing here that we are distributing ENS to users who have provably been participating.

25

This is intended to address only the “delegates/stewards etc” stakeholder group, I assume?

It seems like a very algorithmically driven way of allocating more voting power. I preferred the approach in the original proposal where people in each of the stakeholder groups can be nominated, and allocation is decided based on nomination rather than existing voting power.

1 Like
26

Thanks for sharing the dataset.

I think it’s a worthwhile effort. Rather than handling it informally, I think it could make sense to issue an RFP for it, especially if we’re getting more accustomed to using that process.

The format could be something like:

  • Purpose
  • Scope
  • Deliverables
  • Budget
  • Evaluation

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Would appreciate a champion for this RFP, happy to lend a hand in drafting it if you’re keen!