With the DAO on track to take control of the ENS treasury, it feels like a good time to start thinking about how the DAO will coordinate work and manage contributors on an ongoing basis.
The purpose of this temp check is to start a conversation that can be used to build out a proposal for the formation of Working Groups for the ENS DAO.
Proposed Working Groups
My thinking at this time is that there will initially be four Working Groups:
Meta-Governance: related to DAO governance and management
ENS Ecosystem: related to the continuing development and improvement of the ENS protocol and ecosystem, with a focus on all technical matters related to ENS
Community: related to the people and organisations that are users of ENS, with a focus on non-technical matters
Public Goods: related to the amplification of ENS as a Public Good and funding Public Goods within the ENS ecosystem and more broadly in web3
Background
Article III of the Constitution gives some guidance here about what should be prioritized, with an emphasis on ensuring āthe long-term viability of ENS, and to fund continuing development and improvement of the ENS systemā. A Working Group focused on building out the ENS ecosystem, is a logical starting point. There is also specific mention in Article III of using funds that are not needed to fund the ENS ecosystem, to fund Public Goods within web3. It follows that a Working Group focused on the funding of Public Goods in web3 is also important.
Outside of these two foundational Working Groups, we will need another Working Group related to meta-governance, which includes things like treasury management and legal/ accounting considerations. Given the large number of $ENS token holders and the widespread interest in the project, it is also important to consider a Working Group that focuses on non-technical matters related to community management and engagement.
High Level Overview
Each Working Group will have its own budget and effectively operate as a sub-DAO of the ENS DAO. Almost all work undertaken by members of the DAO should fall within one of these Working Groups.
Here are some examples of the guilds that might sit under each Working Group:
Meta-Governance:
DAO governance
Treasury management
DAO law and accounting
ENS Ecosystem:
L2s
Bug Bounty
Integrations
Hackathons
Community:
Discord support
Media and Growth
Swag store
Public Goods (PG):
PG comms team
Funding ENS related PGs
Funding web3/Ethereum PGs
Feedback Requested
I would like to put forward a proposal for the creation of Working Groups in the next few days. Any feedback is appreciated.
I would like to start working on how ENS can be used to support the arts. One way I can see doing this is by starting an arts grants program.
I have a few ideas about the criteria. For example I think that grants should only be awarded to artists who have had an ENS name for a certain amount of time, for example 6 months.
There has been some discussions about letting name holders customize the appearance of the metadata in Open Sea, for example removing the overlaid white text over the avatar image. If this was possible then NFT projects could launch as subdomains on any ENS name.
We could also start to use the tools available on Mirror.xyz. For example we could have a collection of NFTs minted under the ens.mirror.xyz blog. We could offer grants to ENS community member artists to make the NFTs. We could split the NFT sales with the artists, such that successful drops would return the grant to ENS, so the program could be regenerative.
The overall goal of the project would be to highlight the way in which ENS domains can be used and support the arts at the same time. If anyone is interested in this, feel free to find me in discord, comment on my post, or make a friend request. My DMs are off, but I can still be reached.
Alisha, Iād be interested in a working group focused on beefing up the dao financial trackers. Nick is currently running an ENS financial position dashboard and I think this could be fleshed out considerably. This might fall under treasury management or a comptroller type team. With streams being brought into the discussion alot of questions will arise regarding use of funds/recipients and I would like to help ENS develop this transparency.
How are you thinking about how the work of the ENS ecosystem & Community working groups would intersect with those of the core team? How about non-technical product contributions?
I think the proposal should also include a process for forming new working groups (and sub-groups) as the need arises.
I think this is a great step towards moving quickly on some of they areas youāve identified.
Each Working Group will have its own budget and effectively operate as a sub-DAO of the ENS DAO. Almost all work undertaken by members of the DAO should fall within one of these Working Groups.
How do we envision non-delegates fitting into the working group model (if at all)?
this is a good. will help streamline efforts. go forward with draft proposal. I can foresee each working group further subdividing in a similar way as the dao grows. so this will be a good roadmap. also, Iām very excited to learn of a swag store.
Better customization of ENS NFT metadata would be super valuable for using an ENS NFT as a form of identity
Iām working on the Twitter NFT pfp project. Using the ENS NFT as the pfp sounds amazing but the overlay + limited customization doesnāt lead to the best user experience
Weāre absolutely on the same wavelength. The creation of these four Working Groups is a starting point that will give the DAO a stable working structure that facilitates the long-term management and coordination of workflow and contributors.
Once the Working Groups have been formed, my hope is that we will use concepts like guilds and squads to coordinate people into groups dedicated to working on a particular project or managing a specific responsibility.
Here is an example of how this might work: within the Meta-Governance Working Group there will be a Treasury Management guild. Within that guild, there might be a need to support the Treasury Management guild with visualisations or a dashboard. The task of a Treasury dashboard can then be assigned to a squad that sits within the Treasury Management guild.
I canāt wait for the swag store. I havenāt taken off my alisha.eth cap since I got it yesterday
Iām glad you asked. This an opportunity to clear up some of the misunderstanding around the idea of Delegates within the ENS DAO.
A Delegate within the DAO is anyone who has been delegated voting power. If someone has been delegated the voting power of 1 $ENS, they are a Delegate. The term Delegate within the DAO relates to any person or organization represented by a wallet that has voting power. As it stands, Delegates do not hold any additional standing within the DAO simply by virtue of being a Delegate.
Participation in Working Groups is open to all. Community members who are not Delegates are most welcome to participate. I expect that it will be community members outside the Top 10 Delegates who are most involved in Working Groups on a day-to-day-basis. It is also important to note that in order to participate in a Working Group you DO NOT need to hold any $ENS.
There will be some sort of leadership group within each Working Group responsible for coordinating guilds/squads. Any proposal put forward relating to the creation of Working Groups will not include details on the internal structure within each Working Group. Establishing the best structure for leadership within each Working Group, along with any processes for the creation of guilds and squads, can be discussed within each Working Group once they are created. I am hopeful that the community will be very involved in this discussion.
hey @teju.eth, I imagine that each team member will be deeply engaged in 1 - 2 Working Groups. The core team will be overrepresented in the ENS Ecosystem Working Group as all of the devs will be active in this WG. Overall, each Working Group should have at least 2 core team members engaged with it. (This is not set in stone, but based on a quick poll of team members.)
Alisha: Community + Public Goods + Meta-Governance
Makoto: ENS Ecosystem + Public Goods
Nick: Meta-Governance + ENS Ecosystem
Muhammed: ENS Ecosystem + Public Goods
Jeff: ENS Ecosystem + Meta-Governance
Leon: ENS Ecosystem + Meta-Governance
Kevin: Community + Public Goods
Brantly: Community + ENS Ecosystem
Achal: ENS Ecosystem
By having core team members publicly committed to different Working Groups, the idea is that True Names Limited and the ENS DAO will stay aligned on the roadmap for ENS, and the lines of communication between the core team and the community will be formalized.
There will be ample opportunity for non-technical product contributions. I imagine this would fall under the ENS Ecosystem Working Group. Happy to dig into this more if you want to tag me in the DAO-chat channel in Discord and provide more detail about what youāre thinking about.
The process for forming a new Working Group will require a new proposal as it is required. My preference is for there to be quite a high bar for the creation of new Working Groups as most of the work carried out by the DAO will fit within one of the four Working Groups proposed.
The Working Groups themselves will have a lot of autonomy over how they operate and the process for creating sub-groups - what I think of as guilds - within the group. Based on the needs of each Working Group, the process and requirements for creating or abolishing a guild may vary. For example, the formation of a new guild might need to be approved by a āCouncilā. This raises the question of how a Council is chosen and what powers it has. Alternatively, we may implement a conviction voting mechanism whereby the creation and funding of guilds and/or squads is approved based on some voting mechanism that is continuous, rather than waiting for approval from a Council or a Snapshot.
The point is there is still a lot to discuss when it comes to the specifics on how each Working Group operates. I see this as an opportunity for experimentation and feel that by setting out the process by which sub-groups are created in the proposal for the creation of Working Groups, I would be limiting the potential of possible solutions that we might otherwise land on as a community. For that reason, I have intentionally omitted details about how each Working Group might deal with the creation of sub-groups/guilds.
Hey @Alex-moore2021, I agree that there is plenty of room to increase the transparency around the financial position of ENS, as well as visualise other metrics related to the DAO in a way that is accessible to community members.
I imagine that a guild or squad for what you are describing would fall within the Meta-Governance Working Group as a starting point. The Treasury Management guild might create a specific squad committed to maintaining a dashboard for the Treasury, and that might be enough.
Alternatively, the Meta-Governance Working Group might deem it necessary to create an entire guild committed to transparency that is anchored in the Meta-Governance Working Group but works across the DAO, involving squads from each Working Group. For example, I imagine there will be significant cross-over between matters related to Treasury management and Public Goods funding and there may be a squad that sits within the Public Goods Working Group that reports back to the āTransparency Guildā (or whatever it is named).
There are many possibilities and Iām excited to get the Working Groups created so we can start experimenting with what works best
Will be most curious how the groups plan to communicate & coordinate. Sure that will be worked out over time and might be different for each Working Group.
Will there be the concept of leadership within Sub DAOs? How will that electoral process be managed?
Maybe worth funding https://themint.fund/ who does onboarding of artists for NFT in exchange for extra incentivisation for artists to set their own ENS name?
Iām currently trialling Basecamp with two community projects/squads that are active at the moment. I am drawn to the fact that pricing is based on a flat fee, irrespective of how many users there are. A pay-per-user model across multiple different platforms doesnāt feel like a scalable option for the DAO but Iām definitely open to suggestions. I do agree that each Working Group may land on a different stack for coordination. Something I am trying to be especially mindful of is that the stack allows for easy onboarding (and off-boarding) as I imagine the DAO will be more dynamic than a typical company.
Yes, there will be a concept of leadership within the Working Groups (sub-DAOs). Each Working Group will have the autonomy to decide what that leadership looks like within that Working Group and how the electoral process will be managed.
I expect discussions around leadership and coordination processes within Working Groups to kick-off once the proposal for the creation of the 4 Working Groups proposed is live on Snapshot, which should be later this week.
I love these ideas @Premm. A guild committed to the support and promotion of the arts and artists within the ENS ecosystem would make sense within the Public Goods Working Group.
The ENS Ecosystem Working Group will likely have a guild or squad for Metadata. Within this group I imagine there would be members from the Arts guild from the Public Goods WG so that the needs of artists are represented when it comes to developing Metadata standards.
Experimenting with NFTs on Mirror while also amplifying artists sounds like a wonderful use of Mirror, NFTs, and ENS. Initiatives like this could be a way to demonstrate to the community how features like the name wrapper will work in practice and provide real life examples of use cases that are unlocked with such developments.
I know there are many artists and musicians within the existing ENS community who would be interested in participating in this group. I have created a thread off the DAO-chat channel in Discord called āArtists + the Artsā. Iām hoping we can pick up some momentum there so when the Working Groups are up and running, this could be one of the first initiatives in the Public Goods Working Group.
Alisha, itās super excited to see ENS DAO taking off and executing projects! Overall aligned with the direction of Working Groups. A great move.
How are you thinking about localization / translation work? Is it under āCommunityā or something else (e.g. as itās cross-functional, each work group has its sub groups of localization)?
