[EP6.2] [Social] Election of a new Director of the ENS Foundation

DAO-Wide General Discussion
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Status: Active, Please vote on Snapshot

Summary

This proposal is for the election of a new Director of the ENS Foundation.

Adapted from the original [EP6] Proposal.

Abstract

This social proposal puts forth a vote for the election of a new Director of the ENS foundation.

This is a contingent proposal that will only be ratified if [EP6.1] [Social] Removal of Brantly Millegan as Director of The ENS Foundation determines that Brantly Millegan shall be removed from the directorship of the Foundation Company.

Contingency: If majority “No” is voted on [EP6.1] [Social] Removal of Brantly Millegan as Director of The ENS Foundation, this proposal shall be null and void.

Motivation

By a vote of the council, Brantly Millegan was removed as a director of the Foundation Company., the DAO shall decide whether Brantly Millegan is deemed capable, or otherwise, of continuing his role as the Director of the Ethereum Foundation, and to appoint a suitable replacement if he is deems incapable.

A timeline of events that led to this proposal has been posted by Community WG Stewards in another post here and quoted below:

In May 2016, Brantly Millegan tweeted that, “Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn’t exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is a perversion. So is masturbation and porn.”

On February 5th, 2022, brantly.eth, well-known as a prominent representative of the ENS protocol, defended these views in a publicly held Twitter space.

Irrespective of one’s personal beliefs, we, as ENS DAO Community Stewards, must set the example for inclusivity and must not divide our community.

Propagating rhetoric that is viewed as hateful and discriminatory is not conduct conducive to the role as a Community Steward. This conduct will not be tolerated despite one’s contributions to the protocol.

Specification

The appointment of the incoming Director will be held by a ranked choice Snapshot vote from a list of pre-determined nominees. Additionally, there shall be an option for voters to select “None of the above” or abstain from this vote.

Draft Ranked Choice Snapshot Vote

Who should be elected as the new Director of the ENS Foundation?
Choice 1: avsa.eth
Choice 2: daylon.eth
Choice 3: healingvisions.eth
Choice 4: None of the above.
Choice 5: Abstain.

Note: *This list was randomized by @berrios.eth.

The nomination process for this appointment can be found here, and a summary of Director’s roles, responsibilities, compensation and liabilities can be found here.

Notice to The ENS Foundation

In line with this proposal, a formal notice is served to the ENS Foundation as follows:

"Pursuant to Article 15 of the Articles of Association, the council, hereby, gives notice to the Foundation Company of the appointment of a director of the Foundation Company, to serve pursuant to the terms of its Articles.

Whereas, the council undertook a vote, via Snapshot, to remove Brantly Millegan,

Whereas, the majority of votes cast was to remove Brantly MIllegan and formal Notice given to the Foundation Company of such result,

Whereas, the council undertook a second vote, via Snapshot, from among nominees of the council, to appoint a new director of the Foundation Company;

Wherefore, the person, if any, with the highest number of votes cast is hereby appointed a director of the Foundation Company.

The results to be formally noted in the council records and the name of such person, if there be one, shall be promptly communicated to the Foundation Company without further process."

You may view each candidates delegate application here and comments in on nominees for directorship here.

Next Steps

Finalize the list of nominees for the vote to elect a new Director of the ENS Foundation and initiate the Snapshot ranked-choice vote (RCV) with a quorum of 1,000,000 $ENS.

Current nominees for election of a new Director of the ENS Foundation

  1. avsa.eth (refer to the nomination post here by @AvsA)
  2. daylon.eth (refer to the nomination post here by @daylon.eth)
  3. healingvisions.eth (refer to the nomination post here by @HealingVisions)
  4. None of the Above
  5. Abstain

List Updated: Sunday, Feb 27 2021 17:35 PST

When the above nominees are finalized, submit this proposal for a Snapshot vote beginning on 02/28/2022 for a period of 5 days in accordance with established ENS DAO Governance Process.

Note: This is a Social Proposal; there is no on-chain voting. A Snapshot vote link will be added to this proposal when it becomes available.

Note: Please consider redelegating your votes, if you believe someone more informed than you on this topic would best represent your interests. Here is a link detailing members’ ENS activity, it is just a tool that might assist you: delegates leaderboard .

Recommendation: In a separate, future social proposal the DAO should define a length of director term and possible compensation. Currently, term lengths for directorship are indefinite pending conditions defined in articles 15 & 16 of the Articles of Association. I am not aware of any compensation for directors being explicitly approved or denied by the Articles of Association.

In accordance with provisions provided by article 78, the DAO (the Council) may make alterations to the Articles of Association by notice to the Foundation Company. In alignment with our governance process a social proposal would serve as a notice.

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This is a good split. Just one question: how long is the incoming director “serving” for?

@drhus Since the proposal is now being restructured, this is the time to get the issue of terms and compensation sorted out, as you have already iterated many times.

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@inplco I didn’t see anything readily available in the Articles of Association. The term currently appears to be indefinite outside of conditions outlined in articles 15 & 16.

The DAO (the Council) can make an alteration to the Articles of Association to define term lengths in accordance with provisions provided in article 78. This could happen after the election.

Thank you for being constructive. Let me know if you have other changes to recommend.

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Probably useful to preemptively add a line about an upcoming future vote deciding upon the terms & compensations of directors. At least a few people will wonder this, as some of us already did. I wanted to have this in the initial draft but never got around to it.

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I added a recommendation under next steps.

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Found typos: delete “in” and replace “cost” with “cast”

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@Coltron.eth

I suggested that we replace the above (and also put it in [EP6.1], to read in its entirety:

Note: Nominees need not vote. Their votes will be cast for themselves as a redundancy measure unless they affirmatively choose to cast their votes for another nominee.

Please consider redelegating your votes, if you believe someone more informed than you on this topic would best represent your interests. Here is a link detailing members’ ENS activity, it is just a tool that might assist you: delegates leaderboard (Thanks to @mmurthy for putting this together).

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Replaced instances of “cost” with “cast.” I could not find a clear instance of a typographical error regarding “in.”

Inserted the revised Note, excluding nominee voting recommendation and the reference to Karma pending clarification that we want to provide this third party resource in our official proposal. No offense to @mmurthy, but considering the weight of this proposal, I want to ensure impartiality. Lmk.

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We cannot actually implement this. Nominees should vote for themselves.

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@Coltron.eth

Then this language should be removed.

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I’d also suggest this be titled “Election of a new Director of the ENS Foundation”.

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Changed wording in both proposals.

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mmurthy addressed all our issues and pulled data from our system. At no time did he express a preference as to what data to include or object to our suggested changes, which he, in fact, adopted.

From the final version, it appears to accurately portray those members whose activity would be expected to be high.

I would also add that in the initial version I was ranked third, which was too high, and through our discussion in a separate thread, we (community) deleted some factors and adjusted the weight of other factors to better represent member contributions.

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@berrios.eth I added the link to the delegation leaderboard on both proposals.

@nick.eth considering the unused Ether set aside for covering re-redelegation fees, I suggest extending the reimbursement period to the duration of the forthcoming proposals as long is it is practical to do so. (Disregard this suggestion. Thank you for the clarification, I momentarily forgot about the Snapshot window.)

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Snapshots are taken at the beginning of a vote, so any redelegations after that will have no effect.

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Should we delay the vote by a day or two to give an opportunity to redelegate? I could draft a short post to get attention to the community about redelegation for this important vote.

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People have already had weeks to redelegate - I don’t think there’s any reason to add a couple of days now.

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Understandable! A little apathetic I would say.

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I feel like if people weren’t bothered to redelegate even when told it was free, they probably aren’t interested.

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I sincerely want to vote Against removing @brantly.eth as justified prior Removing brantly.eth as a Community Steward - #13 by drhus but seeing him using his 363K ENS Delegated votes (which was delegated to him in completely different context) to vote Against the removal (and not Abstain) and to his own personal benefit, put me off my balance! to me that is the explicit abuse of power.

remember “…you were airdropped responsibility”!

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