Q1 2026 Spending Summary
Total Working Group spending for Q1 was $493k.
Ecosystem
The Ecosystem Working Group spent 318,690 USDC in Q1.
Hackathons - $312,500
The Ecosystem working group sponsored two community ran hackathons (ETH Prague and ETH Mumbai) and paid for sponsorship in ETHGlobal events for 2026.
Services - $6,180
Ongoing payments for newsletter curation, and social media management:
- Newsletter - $4,500
- Social Media - $1,680
Meta-Governance
The Meta-Governance Working Group spent 170,626 USDC during Q1.
Compensation - $149k
The Meta-Governance working group provides compensation to working group stewards, the secretary, and scribe as provisioned in the ENS DAO Steward Compensation forum post.
- Steward Compensation - $121,500
- Secretary Compensation - $16,500
- Scribe Compensation - $9,000
Legal Counsel - $12k
The Meta-Governance Working Group engaged legal counsel to assist with legal matters related to the Service Provider Program.
DAO Tooling - $8k
DAO Tooling consists of costs associated with tools needed for DAO functions such as automation, voting, coordination.
Events - $4k
The working group paid a reimbursement to Netto for Meta-Governance related travel.
Public Goods
The Public Goods Working Group spent 4,000 USDC during Q1.
Grants - $4,000
The Public Goods working group continued ICANN Engagement and Policy Advocacy ahead of the 2026 ICANN gTLD application round.
Note 1: The Public Goods Builder Grants program moves USDC and ETH to the builder grants contract on OP Mainnet to ensure streaming is supported for approved grants. As this is a cash-basis report, spending is counted when funds move from the main.pg.wg.ens.eth wallet. Grant allocation continued through Q1 2026 totaling 9.95 ETH and 50k USDC via builder grants but the funds to cover this were counted as spent in Q4 2025.
Note 2: Differences between the Sankey diagrams and the figures listed above are due to rounding to the nearest thousand.