Voting Report: Nick Johnson
Votes
I intend to vote yes on the following 9 proposals:
- namesys.eth
- Namehash Labs
- Unruggable
- Namespace
- Blockful
- Wildcard Labs
- eth.limo
- resolverworks.eth
- 1w3.eth
Taken together, their requested budgets add up to $3.6 million USDC per annum.
Key Criteria
I took into account three main key criteria when deciding how to vote:
- Scope: Is the project in-scope? To be in scope, the project needs to contribute directly to the ENS ecosystem. It’s not enough that a project uses ENS, it needs to enhance ENS to qualify. Likewise, projects that improve the ENS DAO are out of scope; the purpose of provider streams is to improve ENS itself. These projects may qualify for other grant programs from ENS, but not for provider streams.
- Track Record: Does the team have a track record of delivering useful, polished products?
- Impact: The fuzziest criteria; do I believe the project, if executed successfully, would have an impact that justifies its cost?
There are a lot of projects that propose to improve subdomain issuance as a way to onboard new users to ENS. Given ENS’s recent focus, with the name wrapper and CCIP read providing L2 support, this isn’t entirely surprising. I have given several of them my support below. Although it may seem like a waste of resources to fund multiple teams building similar things, I believe we have the best odds of building something viable if we have a diversity of approaches. I expect that we will see consolidation in coming years.
I strongly encourage teams working on this to collaborate on shared standards and APIs; I would like to see them dedicating real manpower and financial resources to collaboratively building common protocols they can all use, to avoid fragmentation. When it comes time to review the streams in a year, I will heavily favor teams that have done this.
Detailed Reasoning
namesys.eth
Yes. Namesys have a track record of doing excellent work, and their ask is reasonable.
handle.eth
No. Other teams with proven track records are working on subdomain issuance, and I believe this project would be better served by working with one of them.
Namehash Labs
Yes. Namehash Labs have a track record of building useful infrastructure, and furthermore of giving careful thought to what needs are not being served well by existing solutions. $600k p.a. is at the larger end of requests, but they can put it to good use.
Unruggable
Yes. Premm is a long-term contributor and current ENS Fellow, with a track record of positive contributions. They intend to work on areas that are not well served by other proposals.
generalmagic.eth & pairwise.eth
No. Supporting grantees is a valuable role, but $200k is almost the entire annual small grants budget; it’s difficult to believe it would do more good than doubling the small grants program. Improving the grants site is a worthwhile goal, but out of scope for the provider streams program.
Further, I was not impressed with General Magic’s performance for the merch store: after selection in July '22 on fairly generous terms ($1k/mo + profits!), it took them 4 months to launch a store with a single hat in it, and another 4 months to add more items. Since launch they have given no status updates on the forum, and I don’t see any noted in Ecosystem WG minutes either. We still have no idea of sales figures, and I don’t think the DAO has received any revenues from the store.
No. Although the budget ask is at the low end, $100k is still a substantial amount of money, and I don’t believe a dApp directory advances ENS enough to justify the fee.
Alphawallet
No. Alphawallet is a valued supporter of ENS, but as described in Key Criteria, supporting projects that build on ENS - rather than build ENS - is out of scope for the service provider stream program.
ENS Like Protocol
No. A difficult choice, but I believe this is too niche for a funding stream.
Namespace
Yes. $200k is a reasonable ask, and the team has a track record of delivering.
Gnosis Guild
No. I value Gnosis Guild’s work, and believe they are deserving of public goods funding, but as described above, tooling for the DAO is out of scope for the stream provider program. $600k is a large ask, too.
GravityDAO
No. DAO tooling and services are out of scope, and I’m skeptical of the value of this proposal anyway.
ENS Vision Forge
No. Improved developer experience is important, but I believe other teams can do a better job delivering it. I have concerns about the ENS Vision team’s alignment with ENS’s public-goods driven mission.
Blockful
Yes. Blockful have made some valuable contributions. Combined with the endorsement from Alex and others, I think they’re well worth funding.
No. This proposal has no concrete deliverables.
dAppling
No. The existing product is cool, but what the team has proposed to work on doesn’t justify the $400k price tag.
ESF Tools
No. There are many other teams focusing on subdomain issuance, and the proposed work streams are too vague and without concrete deliverables.
StableLab
No. I would love to see a great DAO procurement platform, but building DAO tooling is out-of-scope for provider streams.
The Interceptor
No. This looks like a great UX improvement, but it’s only tangentially related to ENS and thus is out-of-scope.
Tally
No. I hugely value Tally and the work they do, but DAO tooling is out-of-scope for provider streams.
ENS Anti-Abuse Tools
No. It’s not clear to me what the end goal is here; a reporting tool for malicious domains with no associated action seems of limited use.
Wildcard Labs
Yes. I want to see more teams building on EVM Gateway and CCIP-Read, and Wildcard Labs have already demonstrated their ability to deliver. $200k is a reasonable ask.
eth.limo
Yes. $500k is a large ask, but eth.limo deliver a huge amount of value to the community.
wayback-machine.eth
No. This is a valuable project, but I believe the $200k can be better spent elsewhere.
Referrals powered by generalmagic.eth
No. Other providers have referral system proposals that I believe are superior, and I have my reservations about General Magic’s performance.
unicorn.eth
No. I like this proposal, and the budget is reasonable, but a lot of other projects are working on similar ideas, and I have concerns about the team’s performance.
Ethereum Follow Protocol
No. I think EFP could evolve to become a valuable component of the distributed web, but it’s out-of-scope for provider streams.
resolverworks.eth
Yes. Slobo is a long-term DAO contributor who has already demonstrated his ability to deliver by launching Namestone. The focus on onboarding newcomers to the space is valuable and will help drive adoption. The requested budget is high, but I believe Slobo has the capability to build a team that will put the resources to good use.
1w3.eth
Yes. 1w3 are making building a decentralised website as easy as building a traditional one, and I want to see them continuing to do that.
Edit: Changed my votes on ENS Vision Forge and Blockful.
