Right, it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what actions an individual or entity can take to positively influence the strength of the ENS token. It’s less difficult, however, to identify which developments strengthen and enhance the overall adoptability of the ENS protocol, such as the proposed specification in ENSIP-24.
Instances such as this, and other contributions like NameHash Labs’ ENSnode, NameSpace’s APIs, and ENScribe’s smart contract naming app (to name a few examples), should clearly be rewarded with voting power. Doing so would increase the delegated market cap and lower the probability of a treasury attack, a primary concern for DAO security.
It’s also more likely that these builders will continue actively participating in governance. We can now track how distributed ENS tokens are used over time thanks to @danch.quixote’s ENS Distribution Monitor, which helps with accountability.
We want builders who continue building on ENS for the long term AND who vote on and submit proposals themselves.
Exactly.
I am wary that applying incentives based solely on outcomes, while ignoring meaningful contributions to the ENS protocol that can be quantitatively assessed (such as those listed above), will attract passive holders who view the ENS token merely as another yield opportunity.
I believe the existing Service Provider Program ENS allocations have proven over time to be a solid foundation for decentralizing the ENS protocol, distributing work to competent teams, and increasing delegated token cap. There’s work to be done on improving the process, however (more on this later).
Another opportunity for small experiments in rewarding aligned builders can be found here: [RFC] Aligning Governance and Developer Incentives on Namechain - #5 by estmcmxci