[EP1] [Social] Proposal: Transfer ENS Treasury and Contract Ownership

I definitely agree the DAO should have ownership of Treasury and Contracts.
However, I am also inclined to agree with @nick.eth. I would rather take things slow and make sure everything runs smoothly than transfer everything at once and run into governance issues. Or any other issues.

I understand @carlosdp POV that either we’re ready to own the contracts or we aren’t, but I don’t see a downside to adding a short cool-down time to each contract ownership transfer. The key thing being “short”.

Just my two cents.

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If the concern is the ability to execute, I’d rather have the DAO issue a no-op transaction now to demonstrate it works end-to-end, and put the transfer proposal through in parallel, not actioning it until the no-op has gone through.

If the concern is the risk of these powers being with the DAO immediately, I think it would make sense for the DAO to ask for the current funds and control of the registrar controller (and thus, future funds), and ask for the rest later.

Personally after simulating a complete proposal from soup to nuts on Tenderly, I have no concerns about technical viability.

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Yea, I mean that’s fine. If we want to do just the funds first for now, totally down for that.

My point is, for the transfer of contract control, doing it one by one seems to not really have much benefit. If we’re worried about the DAO controlling all of them, we should be equally worried about the DAO controlling any one of them. Just compromising one can cause massive damage to ENS.

Given that @nick.eth has tested the actual execution part and verified it works fine, I would be fine backing moving everything over at once. But there’s no rush. Might be worth putting up a straw poll or something to see what people prefer?

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That’s true.

Yeah, that may be the way to go. As long as what each option implies is clearly defined so everyone understands what they’re voting for. I doubt everyone is reading the forum.

I support this if done correctly and carefully.

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I think this is a natural first step forward for the DAO and am in full support.

Powers over the ENS root are not being requested immediately, as they are both powers that can be abused to revoke or reassign non-.ETH ENS names, and as such the risk to name owners is significantly higher than the other powers the DAO will exercise.

I echo the concerns about moving slowly / carefully, and in my view this proposal strikes the right balance considering the note above. Most of the key functions the DAO needs to spin up for now are related to using the treasury to spin up operations, and everything beyond that can be much better supported with more structure in place.

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Tagging @moderators here to move this to ‘Active Proposal’

The proposal contains the line

Powers over the ENS root are not being requested immediately, as they are both powers that can be abused to revoke or reassign non-.eth ENS names, and as such the risk to name owners is significantly higher than the other powers the DAO will exercise. Once the DAO has demonstrated its ability to sucsessfully govern ENS, a future proposal will transfer these powers to the DAO.

What I don’t understand is how you’ve determined that the DAO has demonstrated its ability to successfully govern any of the other responsibilities outlined in the proposal. For example, if ownership of the treasury is transferred to the DAO, then what happens? Who controls it? As in who would actually execute any changes the DAO votes to implement? Would it still be controlled by the current multisig holders? If so, what is the point of transferring ownership? I understand the importance and significance of this proposal to move forward as an effective DAO, but I can’t help but feel like it is really premature at this point. Care to help me understand?

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If the treasury (or any other asset) is transferred to the DAO, the DAO controls it, and the keyholders don’t. The DAO is an onchain compound-style DAO, so votes are conducted onchain via an interface such as Tally or Boardroom or Sybil; changes are executed by passing a proposal with direct onchain votes by delegates.

More details about the governance process in the docs here.

Agree with gradual transfer of power.

Is it feasible/reasonable/meaningful to do a partial treasury transfer or have it done over a schedule so not everything is done at once?

It’s possible to do that, yes. I don’t think it’s worthwhile, personally; if the DAO can be trusted, it can be trusted with the whole treasury in my mind.

It’s also worth noting that as long as the keyholders are still in control of ongoing income, True Names Ltd is the “beneficial owner” of that (eg, it pays taxes in Singapore on the income). We’ll likely have to send a proposal to the DAO requesting reimbursement for the tax expense, and the longer this continues the larger it will be!

Ah, I wasn’t aware there is a mechanism for the DAO’s vote to be executed on-chain without an intermediary.

However, my concern about this part still remains.

Once the DAO has demonstrated its ability to sucsessfully govern ENS, a future proposal will transfer these powers to the DAO.

Particularly, who or what determines that the DAO has demonstrated its ability to successfully govern ENS, and to which degree? Because this is worded as if it is a tiered system of trust. Again with the example of controlling the treasury… If control of those funds is determined directly by the votes of the DAO, what would prevent something like 51% of delegates colluding to use it in ways that only serve their own interests?

The same as this proposal: when the DAO feels it’s ready, it can make a formal request to the keyholders for transfer of those powers. The keyholders get to decide if they’re comfortable transferring those powers to the DAO or not.

Nothing; hence the importance of setting governance norms with the constitution and our own precedent around legitimate use of power.

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Honestly, and I hate to say this… Too much too soon.

The eagerness to obtain control of treasury screams Sybil - especially without enough time to have passed for governance forum participants to hear which options exist, develop thought-thorough proposals of their own or vet the vocal minority’s intentions.

I do not support total transfer of control of the business or treasury, but will eventually support that.

There is too much at stake for what is now essentially a pillar of the ETH landscape - to allow the fastest gun in the west to swoop in and sabotage it.

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These things are two entirely different mechanisms of control, leaving only social pressure and “moral responsibility” to ensure that the keyholders will actually carry out the will of the DAO. I’m an optimistic and trustworthy person, but this seems like a potential point-of-failure.

Well that is absolutely not reassuring and kind of trivializes voting, if 51% of voters with bad or self-serving intentions can determine what the entire DAO will do with the assets and powers in question.

Especially with the low quorum, if people end up not voting all the time, it’s even easier for bad actors to rally up votes last minute to serve their intentions

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My second response.

Please point me to the creative scam factory that wrote that.

How is it that the only four voting options are all shit, and a quorum is only 1%?

Someone at ENS better plug this leak, this voting system is fatally flawed.

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It is also not possible to vote against all options.

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I voted in favor of the proposal. Thanks to those who worked to get the proposal together!

We (true names) worked with Fire Eyes to develop this proposal. It’s something we communicated the intention to propose as the first proposal in the DAO announcement post. If the DAO decides it’s too early, that’s fine with me - but it’s a legitimate proposal from a team we’ve worked closely with.

Right, that’s why we’re decentralising by moving powers from the keyholders to the DAO. I personally believe the DAO should demonstrate its trustworthiness and effectiveness before requesting the powers that are most prone to abuse.

I don’t understand how this trivialises voting? The fact everything depends on voting would seem to do the exact opposite, to me.

This was a worry of mine too, and something I brought up with openzeppelin; it’s actually a risk regardless of the quorum. They’re working on this pr as a result, and I hope the DAO will upgrade the governor to incorporate it once it’s available.

This is approval voting; you should vote for all the options you want to pass; they’re not alternatives to choose between.

This is a bug in the snapshot UI, and I’ve reached out to them to fix it ASAP.

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