Thanks for starting this discussion. It’s obvious that the DAO should put its treasury to productive use, and you’ve outlined some interesting approaches.
- ENScribe is a no brainer, although perhaps either of the Working Groups could allocate ENS they currently hold and run a pilot program instead, in order to first measure how effective this approach is. No DAO voting is required for this—it’s a small bet for a potentially big return. Since @Meta-Gov_Stewards have a mandate to further decentralize the protocol by distributing governance ($ENS), it would be reasonable to task them with leading this initiative. Though it wouldn’t hurt for other Working Groups to chip in as well.
- Pokémon is fun! But I wonder about the possible NIL infringement and the exposure to litigation this opens the foundation up to—especially from Nintendo, who I imagine ENS Labs would probably want to work out a deal with at some point to integrate ENS into their gaming ecosystem. Maybe @Alexu can shed some light here? Why not continue to develop the ‘FRENS’ brand through curated activations instead?
- I love to see Labs thinking of ways to sweeten up those Web2 deals, and this approach feels like it could be the most promising and highest-impact of all. That said, my sense is that those allocations would have to be very sizable ($1M or more, perhaps) in order to get any real bite—these are quite material distributions, after all. danch.eth has recently started a thread that provides a very rigorous assessment of the second- and third-order effects of changing protocol registration fees at different increments and scenarios. My suggestion here is to tread lightly and begin with a similar research approach. The pricing thread offers a solid precedent: we should apply that same rigor to model downstream effects and ensure $ENS distributions are not just generous, but genuinely catalytic.
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Don’t want to read the wall of text? Here are bullet points that summarize my thoughts:
- ENScribe good. Allocation could go through through the Working Groups instead.
- Watch out for potential exposure to litigation if you don’t secure NIL rights for Pokémon fun.
- Highest ROI idea, if done right. Consult @kpk @danch.quixote and do a quant analysis.