TL;DR: A purpose-built streaming infrastructure that solves ENS DAO’s current payment inefficiencies, streaming yield optimization challenges, and provides reliable alternatives to existing streaming solutions.
Problem
- Superfluid incident. August 2025: ENS DAO’s Superfluid autowrapper failed. The relayer didn’t trigger, the buffer didn’t refill, and streams dried up. Service providers got cut off mid-month. DAO had to pass an emergency governance proposal to reactivate payments and process backpay (400k USDCx). Superfluid covered the $3K liquidation damage, but that’s not the point - the point is the system was brittle. One relayer miss = all payments stop, governance overhead, provider friction, emergency mode. This is exactly the kind of systemic fragility that streaming infrastructure shouldn’t have.
- Idle capital. Superfluid streaming mechanism demands a liquidity buffer, and all allocated budgets for streaming currently sit idle, generating revenue neither for the ENS DAO nor for service providers.
This creates operational overhead, reliability risks, and missed yield opportunities on unspent funds. This idea was mentioned by @netto.eth here earlier, and now ENS DAO has the infrastructure to bring it to life.
The Solution: ENS Streamer
A universal streaming infrastructure capable of enabling:
Yield-Optimized Payments with DAO Yield Cashback
Instead of streaming vanilla USDC, the Steamer allows payments in aUSDC (Aave USDC) or cUSDC (Compound USDC). The Yearly Average Supply APR on Aave is 5.05% (source: aavescan).
Benefits for the DAO
- All generated yield is returned to the DAO once the stream ends. The sweep can be triggered permissionlessly by anyone. No governance proposal is required.
Benefits for service providers
- Claimed funds immediately start earning yield for the service provider after withdrawal.
Modeling Example 1: Service-provider-payments optimization
Scenario:
- Deposit 4,500,000 USDC into Aave at an average 5.05% APY.
- Stream aUSDC linearly over 1 year, with claims happening continuously (every second).
- Total aUSDC streamed over the year = 4.5M.
If we ignore compounding and assume the streamed balance decreases linearly from 4.5M to 0, then the average balance is ~2.25M. DAO-earned yield: 2.25M × 5.05% ≈ 113,625 aUSDC
Modeling 2: Full-stream yield optimization (all USDC payments)
Scenario:
- Deposit 17,600,000 USDC into Aave at an average 5.05% APY. ENS Labs 2025 budget: $9.7M + Service Provider Program: $4.5M + Working Groups: $3.4M.
- Stream aUSDC linearly over 1 year, with continuous claiming (every second).
- Total aUSDC streamed over the year = 17.6M.
If we again ignore compounding and assume a linear decrease from 17.6M to 0, the average balance is ~8.8M. DAO-earned yield: 8.8M × 5.05% ≈ 444,400 aUSDC
Yield-Optimized Payments with Vendor Yield Cashback
Instead of streaming vanilla USDC, the Steamer streams aUSDC (Aave USDC) or cUSDC (Compound USDC) via a 4626-wrapper. The Yearly Average Supply APR on Aave is 5.05% (source: aavescan).
Benefits for the DAO
- With the same annual budget, providers can deliver more value, because the final budget becomes larger through passive yield.
Benefits for service providers
- Budgets become yield-bearing at all times through Aave or Compound yield.
- This effectively provides additional revenue to teams without increasing DAO spending.
The underlying math follows the same logic as in “Yield-Optimized Payments with DAO Yield Cashback.”
Risk and mitigation
Risk 1: Smart contract vulnerability of the Steamer
Mitigations:
- The Steamer smart contract was audited by OpenZeppelin (audit report available).
- WOOF! and other Compound Finance service providers - Certora, Gauntlet, and ChainSecurity received over $10M in payments via Steamer. This demonstrates that the system is already used in production by multiple vendors.
Risk 2: AAVE/Compound smart contract vulnerability
- Mitigation: Aave and Compound are one of the largest and most battle-tested lending protocols in DeFi, with extensive audits and a long-standing security track record. The projects are already used in KPK’s endowment strategy. The KPK team can advise on the underlying yield-generating protocol(s).
Risk 3: Steamer smart contract upgradability
- Mitigation: Steamer contracts are deployed permissionlessly via a factory, ensuring no centralized upgrade authority and minimizing governance-related attack vectors.
Additional Streamer functionality
Volatile asset streaming.
A Steamer could stream any volatile assets, such as ENS token or large ETH-USDC TWAP swaps that are regularly performed by the DAO, using price data from the AggregatorV3Interface compatible price feeds.
Slippage prevention.
The Steamer could incorporate a pre-configured slippage percent, ensuring predictable execution costs.
Stream termination.
A stream could be configured with a termination delay to protect the vendor from sudden cancellations. This adds a built-in notice-period mechanism that ensures predictable off-ramping.
Remaining asset sweep to the treasury.
If volatile assets appreciate and the stream ends with a leftover balance, the remaining amount can be safely swept back to the treasury by anyone.
About WOOF!
WOOF! is a dev team focused on building DeFi and infrastructure solutions. Core Compound contributor, shipped for Benqi, Silo, King Protocol (with EtherFi), and others. Delivered across major ecosystems, including Avalanche, Optimism, Kava, and Ronin. Complex problems demand solutions. We’re the ones who deliver them.
Proposal & next steps
WOOF! proposes that the DAO consider using the Steamer for next year’s payments. The Steamer does not charge any hidden fees. The core idea is to make payment flows more efficient, with benefits reflected either as improved service-provider efficiency or as direct value returned to the DAO.
While adopting new technology can feel complex, we suggest the following onboarding flow:
- Responsible DAO group(s) review the Steamer and provide a soft commitment indicating initial interest in the technology.
- WOOF! develops the dApp that allows the DAO to deploy streams, manage claims, and monitor a dashboard showing all streaming activity.
- Future payments are executed directly through the Steamer, enabling immediate efficiency gains for the DAO.
Common-sense integration. If the cost of onboarding, integrating, and maintaining the new system is lower than the yield it generates, adopting the Steamer becomes an unequivocally value-positive decision for the DAO.
Streamer website: https://streamer.woof.software/
GitHub: GitHub - woof-software/streamer
We look forward to hearing ENS community feedback.