Hey @mikemetagov, appreciate the suggestion to form a representative advisory body — the proposed composition strikes a reasonable balance across the key stakeholders in ENS DAO.
This approach addresses the concern several delegates raised about moving forward on structural changes without first discussing or incorporating key considerations and outputs from the research, and establishes a clear accountability threshold.
To move forward, we’ll need a Temp Check per the Governance Process to gauge whether there is sufficient will to proceed.
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Regarding the structure of the proposed body: my concern is the methodology for forming it. A standard election process wouldn’t be appropriate here, given that some seats are fixed by design — ENS Labs and the Metagov research team are invariants, not elected positions.
Because the proposal to expand the ENS Foundation Board preceded the suggestion to form the advisory body, it should inform the formation methodology — specifically, the variable seats (Delegate, Service Provider, Stewards) could be nominated by ENS Labs rather than filled through a formal election, given the time constraints and the absence of an established process for doing so.
The reasoning behind this is that we are giving procedural seniority to the entity that created the ENS DAO, respecting that fact, while allowing for flexibility in how the next iteration evolves according to its constituencies’ inputs.
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Regarding timelines, realistically, the DAO would need at least a week to mull over its options, and since this coming week is ETHCC, I don’t expect any consensus in the short term. I wouldn’t take a lack of a formal position here as a sign that this isn’t something the DAO wants to do—it’s just the nature of distributed work.
To that extent, I’m happy to draft a Temp Check to formalize the proposal. I’ll share one with the community by early next week, prior to March 31st.