ENS Working Group Spending Summary - Term 4 (JUL 2023 - DEC 2023)
Introduction
In July 2023, the Ecosystem, Metagovernance, and Public Goods Working Groups published budgets that set the intended spending allocations for the term. This post can be seen as a retrospective report that recaps the actions taken.
The post consists of two sections, Spending (ETH and USDC) and Governance Distribution (ENS).
Spending
All Working Groups
The total working group spending for the term was $1.5m. ETH to USD price conversions are done utilizing month-end prices for the months that ETH transactions occurred. Price data was sourced from Coingecko.
Ecosystem
The Ecosystem working group spent 395,685 USDC and 84 ETH
Spending Across Initiatives
Spending occurred across all ENS Ecosystem multi-sigs as defined in the Q3/Q4 2023 Budget: ENS Ecosystem Working Group. This table depicts spending rolled up into meaningful categories to broadly illustrate the use of funding this term.
Grants
This category combines several grant initiatives including ENS Fellowship, Small Grants, and Rolling Grants provided to top ENS projects. These grants funded numerous projects throughout the term, including but not limited to, ENSTools, Fluidkey, Namesys, ETH.LIMO, Buidl Guidl, and 1w3.
The largest expenses in the grant category are as follows:
Bug Bounties
During the term, The Ecosystem Working Group compensated a security advisory report that demonstrated how a malicious DAO update could reduce the registration duration of registered .eth 2LDs.
IRL Expenses
IRL expenses relate to money paid to put on events in real life. This includes such things as commissioning art for POAPs, materials for booths, merch, travel expenses, food and beverages for events, etc.
Hackathons
Payments and planning for Hackathons can happen in the term before they actually occur. The hackathon budget for the term was mostly spent on ENS’s upcoming sponsorship at ETH Denver.
Meta-Governance
The Meta-Governance working group spent 379,673 USDC and 50 ETH.
Spending Across Initiatives
Spending occurred across all ENS Meta-Governance multi-sigs as defined in the Q3/Q4 2023 Budget: ENS MetaGovernance Working Group. This breakdown depicts spending rolled up into meaningful categories to broadly illustrate the use of funding this term.
DAO Compensation
The Meta-Governance working group funds compensation to DAO stewards, secretary, and scribe as provisioned in the Metagovernance Term Q3/Q4 Budget Request and subsequently updated in November in ENS DAO Steward Compensation codification.
DAO Tooling
DAO Tooling consists of costs associated with tools needed for DAO functions such as voting and coordination. A majority of this cost is associated with the funding of the ENS Governance Site built by Argora and a pre-payment for their work in the first half of 2024.
Endowment Fees
Endowment Fees are costs paid to Karpatkey for managing the ENS treasury. The status of the treasury can be seen in Karpatkey’s Endowment Reports
Audit
The Meta-Governance Working Group sponsored a Code4rena audit for new ENS contracts that were deployed during the term. The discussion regarding this can be found on the forum.
Public Goods
The Public Goods working group spent 380,500 USDC and 42 ETH.
Spending Across Initiatives
For context, see the Q3/Q4 2023 Budget: ENS Public Goods Working Group. This breakdown depicts spending rolled up into meaningful categories to broadly illustrate the use of funding this term.
Grants
Public Goods Grants occurred across four main categories, Large Grants, Small Grants, Discretionary Grants, and a Giveth Sponsorship.
Hackathon
The funds spent in the public goods hackathon budget went to the Funding the Commons Hackathon and notDEVCON sponsorship.
Governance Distribution
Throughout the term, there were three unique governance token distribution events. The Meta-Governance Working Group distributed 1,000 ENS to Metropolis for their support in setting up ENS DAO operations.
The Ecosystem Working Group recognized all rolling grant winners for their contribution to ENS with 11,000 ENS tokens.
Consistent with the codification of ENS governance distribution to stewards, the Meta-Governance Working Group distributed 40,000 ENS to stewards in December.