Funds the metagovernance working group with 374k USDC and 150k ENS
Abstract
Meta-Governance is seeking funding to support DAO-wide operations, including Working Groups, treasury management, and governance initiatives. This request aligns with Rule 10.1.1 of the Working Group Rules and amendments introduced in EP 4.8. This proposal will execute the funding specification according to EP 5.9, as amended by EP 5.8.
The Meta-Governance Working Group requests funding of 374,000 USDC and 150,000 ENS from the ENS DAO treasury (wallet.ensdao.eth).
This funding will be used to support the governance processes of the ENS DAO and to manage and build infrastructure that supports the ENS DAO, its treasury, and its Working Groups.
As I contacted you and Nick in TG the currently ongoing Tally vote is pointing to the wrong post. The one from back in October. In fact the Tally executable proposal was opened without any corresponding forum discussion.
In the October discussion both myself and others had raised concerns about the transparency on payments for stewards and how the money is spent.
Note that this is not about not paying stewards, or not paying people. God forbid.
This is about:
Having a big forum thread where a lot of issues on transparency were brought up and not addressed back in October of last year regarding MG compensation and spending.
Then now we open an onchain executable proposal that moves ~$3.9m worth of tokens into the meta governance address without any discussion in the forum.
The onchain vote is missing a thread where the DAO delegates can discuss, raise concerns and ask questions and is pointing to an old thread! This one only got opened now because I raised the issue.
This is not getting better at the communication and transparency problems that were pointed out but worse. Sad to see.
What’s worse I am surprised almost every delegate with the exception of @SpikeWatanabe.eth has voted for this. Don’t you guys read the proposal, visit the linked threads and see something is off?
Due to this confusion, the lack of following required submission process and no improvement since the last discussion where the transparency concerns were raised I am going to vote NO here.
Hey Lefteris, want to specifically address your comments around spending.
As the acting secretary for the working groups, I personally compiled the spending reports for both Term 4 and Term 5 Q1. As a CPA licensed in the State of New York, I adhere to the highest standards of transparency and ethics in my work. These principles are not just professional obligations, but personal values I hold.
In an effort to allow people to provide feedback, these threads are open for anyone to comment on, have been discussed in the Working Group calls, included in the ENS Newsletter, and publicized on X and Farcaster. Changes like the addition of the Sankey diagrams have come from community feedback.
If you have suggestions on how to improve communication and transparency I’d be happy to hear from you.
We could start by linking those data in the vote. As delegates are really busy, when you see a vote, you read it and try to follow the links to find the information. Something that was impossible this time.
What’s more for transparency, the same thing that was mentioned in the October thread. Specify how much people are paid for each position.
It has been linked in both the Term 4 and Term 5 spending reports, the Term 5 MG Budget request, the Term 4 and both Term 5 MG social proposal funding requests, and the steward vesting proposal.
I think Lefteris’s point is that this information needs to be discoverable from the vote. If you don’t already know where to look, the vote itself leaves you none the wiser.
Whereby 5kENS was distributed to Stewards with exception of Nick. In my book Steward + Secretary compensation was clearly labeled as compensation for Steward work, whereas Governance category was meant to be distributed to third parties. I was really surprised to find out that Stewards distributed it to themselves.
To be honest even I am lost in those rules and calculation by now. Either way compensation denominated in ENS token grew substantially. Then there was this long debate whether compensation should be vested or no.
In my mind it doesn’t matter if it vested or not, it’s still money, especially given that most of the Stewards sold their allocation of 5kENS immediately after receiving them.
Stewards decided not to hire a professional legal firm, which is costly of course and went in favor of 20kUSD some agency to draft such an important document as bylaws and yet the compensation for Stewards is ballooning.
I voted NO during Snapshot vote for this, and voted NO during Tally vote as well.
In my book Steward compensation became way too large, rules around it are very unclear and opaque. Tons of posts, people pointing to meta gov calls where it was presumably discussed etc etc.
Taken all those factors in consideration, it’s a clear vote NO for me.
So it’s not just the technicality that there are no clear links from the Tally vote, it’s the overall approach towards making this decision.
