I am casting my vote ‘For’ on EP6.1 removing Brantly as a Director of the Foundation.
This is for several reasons:
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Both those who reached out to me and those I reached out to who had delegated votes to me expressed their preference almost entirely for the ‘For’ outcome. Since I represent them I defer to them.
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The ENS DAO indicated it has the authority to remove and elect Directors of the ENS Foundation (its legal entity), so this action is within its initial scope. The role of Director symbolizes leadership, with the actual responsibilities and liabilities that entails, without pay currently. This is not a vote to rescind current income or remove the ability to contribute to ENS DAO.
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I don’t believe the views of leaders need to reflect their organization, but they should not have explicit bias against their members’ actions in their personal lives. This could lead to outcomes such as grants, positions, or other structural rewards not being given to certain members, in addition to interpersonal issues (although it’s important to say I don’t know of any cases of this involving Brantly to date; if I did I would be less equivocal). To be clear, I do not share Brantly’s views against homosexuality, transpersons, and abortion, and I don’t think they should represent ENS DAO.
However, I have personally had misgivings about the overall process related to this issue. I often quote the tweet by TBSocialist: “We should be building organizing platforms owned by users and workers where it doesn’t matter that someone tweets something that you might disagree with but whether or not they are helping us reach concrete political objectives.”
I still believe this to be true. Hateful speech is not “disagreement”, but I don’t want extreme cases like this one to set precedents that will overshadow disagreements that arise in the future.
My personal thoughts can be summarized:
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Twitter is a terrible primary medium for governance discussions that involve any form of judicial, reparative process. We need dedicated, specialized facilitators to navigate these types of issues as soon as they arise, because they will continue to recur.
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I have the sense that True Names LTD acted too quickly in letting Brantly go, mostly in relation to (however rightful) public pressure. I worry this sets a poor precedent for DAOs, entities more loosely related to them, and overall acceptability of the process. (Although I do commend everyone who dedicated their thoughtful time to this public issue, having to deal with it as it was and holding space.)
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Outside of the specific statements on which this issue centered, I was disappointed that the process drove a divide in the larger community, between those who asked True Names LTD to act immediately and those in favor of different processes for ‘heretics’. What was missing here was understanding: why I’m interested in web3 is actually people with different values, processes, and viewpoints in the community talking to each other; again, I mean this outside of the specific statements on which this issue centered. The poor mediums we have for dealing with such an issue lead to a significant loss: now I know many good people who should be talking to each other, but aren’t, due to superficial takes on “cancel culture”. I hope parts of the space can mature beyond such superficial dismissals.
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Brantly remains the largest delegate in ENS DAO despite the narrative.
For this reason, if I weren’t delegated to, I would consider voting ‘Abstain’.
In light of these process issues, I’ve decided to diminish my role as a delegate after the initial 6 months term to which I publicly committed. This means there is two months’ notice for those who delegated to me to choose another delegate or decide to participate themselves (if you feel frustrated with my statement here and you delegated to me, I strongly recommend the latter option of trying out directly participating). I will reach out to everyone I know that has delegated to me. More delegates should hop in. I seek to continue to vote in a diminished personal capacity and support initiatives in the Public Goods and Meta-Governance working groups of ENS DAO, regardless.
As someone who has worked at one organization in the space for over four years, I know the importance of commitment, but I also know the importance of being able to transparently step back when a role doesn’t fit and the governance situation perhaps has been misjudged. I was well aware of some of the flaws of current web3 delegation systems, such as the high cost of delegation, lack of specific delegation time periods, and self-nomination as the only means of becoming a delegate rather than other forms of participation. However, this particular issue has made it clear for me that for the time being, I would rather contribute through building and participating personally rather than acting as a direct representative in a system still in need of maturing. I look forward to such systems evolving! The good news is that they can.