+1 on continuing that work - it’s imperative to have a good educational framework and perhaps establish some best practices when it comes to better flows for the ecosystem. ENS could lead the way here…
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This is amazing Khori!
Thanks for the modifications, I love the roadmap section, I think it’s super important. Great job!
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I fully support the this proposal to fund TNL. These funds are much needed to continue the development of the ENS ecosystem and help ensure the long-term viability of the protocol.
Any of my questions have been covered by the other posters. I look forward to the quarterly reports and communications with the DAO.
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I am in support of this proposal. Thank you TNL for all your contributions to ENS.
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Funding TNL is crucial, probably now more than ever. In favor of this. 
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🫡🫡🫡
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So, playing devils advocate here. $4.5 million is quite a lot of cash. There is some visibility on what is being paid for in terms of historical work as well as future work but I am curious as to why there is not complete transparency?
Who does TrueNames employ, and how much do they get paid? I appreciate that people might not want their salaries being posted publicly but 5 devs on $500k is vastly different to 25 devs on $100k. Who the devs are also makes a huge difference - same as in a traditional organisation, you’d happily pay money for top talent.
Marketing. The ENS code is really good (I’ve spent a LOT of time reading and tinkering), but I’m unclear of the development direction going forward. Subdomains (that everyone seems to be going mad for) are cool, but not (imo) game changing. The ‘web2’ domain name system is conceptually fairly simple (although under the hood horrendously complex). I am curious as to why marketing isn’t being pushed more at this point?
Not in a team-Twitter ‘shill my bags’ kind of way, but rather in a ‘get more people using ENS to see if there is actually demand for it, and what its actually being used for kind of way’. I think ENS is great, and own quite a few. My friends and family think it’s stupid. Its new technology. In 5 years they may (I hope) look back and think ‘huh, I was wrong’ but that requires them to find out about it from someone that isn’t me.
There seems to be a distinct lack of marketing or desire to market from True Names and I am curious if it is for similar reasons to those that I encounter in my own dev work… namely, that I am a developer I love tinkering/building/learning and have no clue how to market a product. If so, surely more of a ‘plan’ needs to be thought through before just building features that arguably no-one wants?
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Hey @clowes.eth,
Welcome to the community! Thanks for chiming in. All thoughts and opinions are valid.
In this thread we’re trying to refine this funding proposal for TNL, so we’re really looking for very specific feedback around items that should be changed/omitted/included in the specific proposal at the top of the post.
For instance, it sounds like you’d like TNL to include the names and salaries of the developers in the proposal.
That could be a valid and specific request to make, although I don’t know how much support that request would get. The DAO hasn’t traditionally managed the TNL personnel on a granular level like that. TNL is in a much better position to make those decisions than the DAO members, and the DAO has typically given TNL the benefit of the doubt since, as you pointed out, TNL has been doing a fantastic job to date.
Your ideas on marketing spend are also valid thoughts, but unless there is a specific ask relating to increasing, decreasing, or itemization in this proposal, it might be better to a start a separate thread around marketing ideas that allows for a more open ended discussion. You might even find some active conversation threads on the forum that are specific to marketing concepts that you can chime in on. There are also other threads focused on upcoming ENS features that you might want to search through and comment on.
Thanks for joining in the conversation. The DAO absolutely needs multiple perspectives, but help us to keep these proposal threads as narrowly focused as possible. 
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I am in support of the proposal and happy to support all initiatives for bringing more public education, marketing and communications around TNL! (Please share any links to these efforts)
I would respectfully request that the contingency be reduced from 10% to 1% prior to approval.
Here’s why
Assuming that ENS continues to approve their budget for 5+ years at this fixed rate, ENS DAO would have allocated ~$2M for “contingency.” It may be distasteful that each year 10% of funds are unallocated, which is close to half $1M per year 
As a courtesy, 10% contingency shows the love due to TNL, however, we may want to be mindful of the implications of a $1M contingency (~25% of the full budget) in just two years.
I would be happy to also consider a reduction in contingency per year
i.e. 10% - 2022, 8% - 2023, 6% - 2024
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I’m in support of giving TNL literally whatever they ask for at this point in time. Funding development of the protocol should be the DAO’s #1 priority, and TNL is by far the most effective and efficient way to do that.
This ask is actually reasonably small for the size of their team and operations.
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This is now up for voting on Tally.
I know it’s highly irregular to skip snapshot and go straight to Tally, and I did so entirely by accident - I’m travelling and was not paying close enough attention, and relied on memory instead of the checklist I wrote as part of the DAO docs. I sincerely apologise for doing this, and it wasn’t out of any desire to accelerate or bypass the process. Unfortunately there is no way for me (or anyone) to cancel a vote once it’s live, only to vote it down or abstain.
Since the reason for putting executable proposals to a Snapshot vote first is to avoid wasting delegates’ gas, I’d like to offer to instead personally reimburse all voters for the gas they spend on voting after the vote concludes, regardless of how they vote or what the eventual outcome of the vote is.
I think this also shows the strong need for automating our voting processes - something I want to put forward an RFP for as part of the Meta-Gov WG this term.
If there’s a strong sense that this should instead be abstained on or voted down followed by a new vote on Snapshot, I am happy to follow the will of the DAO on this.
I will be abstaining from voting due to my position at TNL.
Thank you for everyone’s support of TNL, and sorry for the confusion and inconvenience.
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I fully support the funding for TNL and the ongoing work because it’s critical for the long-term of ENS.
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This is obviously an honest mistake but the second within six EPs; EP9 was also deployed on-chain with an error initially which was much more serious. Something has to change about this process since Nick has unknowingly become a human risk vector due to TNL/DAO’s over-reliance on him. You also owe gas refund to EP9 abstainers, Nick 
A lot of public companies post salaries above XXX amount. Moreover, not sure it needs to go there, but maybe average and median salary could be a start.
In addition, I think the real check is on how to decide on the progress and benchmarks of that money spent and if its achieving the targets.
So much potential, would love a focus to grow the network effect as much as possible (ie Uber, linkedin, etc.). This is key to make everything else down the road easier. Spend $ to grow sticky users.
Very excited about potential for ENS over next 10 years
This is a weird situation for the DAO and also TNL. Legally, TNL is a third-party private contractor to the DAO and they are not obligated to disclose their use of funds. Their proposal should be treated as a whole and they reserve the right to disclose their use of funds or otherwise. Ethically, since TNL has the DAO and ENS under its control in pretty much all aspects, they should disclose their use of funds – ethically. If they do decide to disclose it, I wouldn’t mind asking a bit more about the $225,000 for travel and lodging.
2.5 million for compensation and quarter mil for lodging. Ask and you shall receive. Who cares when it’s not our money, right? Why even ask - Is it just a formality at this point? Just give everyone with enough votes to matter a cut and you’re good. Next proposal should just be to bypass the whole voting charade all together, I’d actually be for that.
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Fully support for increasing proposal automation as a goal for Meta Gov WG.
That said, I do not think Nick owes anyone a personal refund. Human error is inevitable. It is up to us to work together to design and implement robust processes and not pin process gaps on individuals.
I would rather see a blanket refund from the DAO itself for all on-chain proposal vote gas fees, if/when we pursue that.
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Agreed. This and other errors have increased the importance and urgency of proposal automation for me.
A good portion of this will likely be spent on DevCon - travel, tickets, and lodging for a team of ~10. In addition, some team members such as Makoto, Luc, and myself, tend to travel to conferences to speak about ENS; while speakers don’t have to pay for tickets they do have to pay for accommodation and flights.
I’d still like to do it, as it was my mistake that caused this.
I think this would be an excellent idea.
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From my 10+ years of traveling as an academic to 50+ conferences around the world, a typical conference travel of one week duration costs at most $5,000 and on average $3500-$4000. This includes flights, travel, accommodation and meal expenses. So far in term 1, Alisha traveled to Amsterdam, Denver, NYC; Makoto to Barcelona, Prague; Yourself, Luc to Barcelona; Validator to NYC. This adds to 8 although I am sure I am missing some so let’s make it 10. With $225,000, one can fund roughly 50 trips. Is TNL planning on a four-fold increase in their travel plans for term 2? If not, this expense is well over what it should be and it should be half of what is asked.
PS. I also liked your idea (a lot) of delegating the job of compensating independent DAO contributors to the DAO and not from TNL budget. In term 1, Alisha took the initiative of compensating many such contributors through TNL, rather very quietly in my opinion. Such hush-hush compensations should be avoided since they create unnecessary favouritism. If the DAO funds these contributors, it looks good on the DAO as well since it will be doing its job as intended.
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I support this proposal as also discussed in person and don’t mind the snapshot skipping since it was an honest mistake.
Few questions:
- Contingency budget. Does it carry over to next year if not used up?
- IT costs are devops, hosting etc.? Not salaries?
- What is the “Talent” budget for?
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