I think it’s a good idea to share my reasoning too, so I will also do it.
On Voting Strategy
The voting system is an approval voting. The reason we did not pick something like Range, Star or Ranked Choice voting is mostly because these are not yet supported on Snapshot (Snapshot does allow Ranked choice, but then you must rank ALL candidates, which doesn’t really work with such large amounts of candidates). That does mean that as a voter with a lot of weight I need to think more strategically. On approval voting, approving all candidates simply pushes the baseline up and results in the same as not having voted at all, and it means that if you “approve” on candidates that are already ahead it might hurt other candidates you prefer but that haven’t made the cut.
So I will put my vote in separate sections of support which are a way to express my uncertainty regarding which of those I will actually put on the ballot.
Strong Support:
Blockful
I’ve met Alex Netto on a workshop at EthBrazil 2022 when he was still a student. We then started collaborating on ideas on how we could improve the ENS base contracts to save gas and improve the user experience by doing single-transaction registrations. He surprised me in all aspects. I’ve seen him drop out of university to create a small dev shop dedicated full time to blockchain development and I’ve seen it grow to a 9 people team, doing mostly ENS related work. While Blockful never had a “product” release, they have been involved in developing smart contract work for Namehash and many other clients. I have 100% confidence that they will deliver a great value for their $300k.
Namehash
I have been following Namehash development closely for over a year and was lucky enough to have a demo of their ENS registration website last year and I was blown away. They are also doing the smart decision to make most of their innovations for their website into modular libraries that others can use, like NameKit and NameGuard, meaning that great experience can be integrated into many other apps. Whenever I pick a project, I ask myself if that team could push ENS forward on their own, if a meteor struck all other teams: I have no doubt that Namehash could.
Resolverworks
Slobo.eth has been an incredible steward for ENS and I have been following his work since Nftychat, an attempt at making ENS the core of a social messaging platform. While his proposal is the most expensive of all the asks, I think it’s worthwhile.
Support
This is a section for projects that I support, but for which my vote might depend on external factors, like which projects are more likely to win.
ETH.limo
While we always talk on how ENS was created to replace 0x134… address types into more readable names, hashes for content, like IPFS or Swarm (for which we had integrated early versions way back in the Mist days) were as important as the names. While the vision for a fully decentralized web – where devices access content not by going through a central server, but by downloading it in a P2P fashion from other devices – seems to be less fashionable, I still believe in that vision and hope to keep supporting the pieces that will make it possible. And Eth.limo is such important piece. One criticism I would make on their proposal is that it seems much more focused on supporting the current eth.limo infrastructure rather than building news tools that will increase the adoption and support of decentralized websites.
Unrugabble
Premm.eth is a great member of our community and creating support for L2 names and Account abstraction is very important.
Wildcard Labs
Stevegachau is a long time ENS contributor. They have a good track record, and they have a very decent ask for the value provided.
ENS.Vision
ENS Vision is the second largest ENS domain registrar so it makes sense to support them. Their proposal is however about Forge, a single product which is interesting but of limited use for the ask price. And after their very softball interview with the CEO of Unstoppable Domains, I would love if they clarified their position on UD collaboration.
Projects I support but don’t think fit Service Providers
There are some great projects that are Service Providers Candidates. However I don’t think they fit what I believe is the goal of the Stream selection, which is to pick great teams that can improve the ENS system. Instead, they are great projects on their own that either support or promote ENS in many ways.
The following projects are ones I would strongly encourage the new Ecosystem stewards to add as candidates for grants (not necessarily in the requested amount) but for which I don’t think are good fits for service providers.
- Tally
- Ethereum Follow Protocol
- Gnosis Guild
- The Interceptor
- Wayback Machine
- Unicorn
- Alphawallet
Unsure
Namesys, 1w3, ESF and Handle are projects that on the surface seems interesting although much of the proposed work intersects a lot with what other teams are also proposing. As mentioned, in an approval voting system, giving away too many votes dilutes your own voting impact and can decrease the chances that a project you prefer will be selected. I will commit to make deeper look on their proposals to make a decision.
Remaining
I would prefer not to criticize projects in this post. The remaining projects are some who vary from "looks like a good but there are other better teams building similar stuff" to “I don’t get that at all”.