Meta-Governance Working Group Steward Nominations Term 7 (2026)

[netto.eth]

Nominations for the 7th ENS DAO Steward Term (Term 7) are now open.

Following the outcome of Path forward on Working Groups for Term 7,
the Meta-Governance Working Group is the sole Working Group for Term 7, so steward
elections will be run only for Meta-Governance.

If you would like to nominate yourself as an ENS Meta-Governance Working Group Steward
for Term 7, please complete the steps outlined below.

Key Dates

• Nomination window: June 2, 2026 → June 22, 2026, 9:00 UTC
• Election (Snapshot): June 25, 2026, 9:00 UTC → June 30, 2026, 9:00 UTC (120 hours)
• Term 7: July 1, 2026, 9:00 UTC → June 30, 2027 (one-year term)

Three Stewards will be elected for the Meta-Governance Working Group (WG Rule 3.1).

Nomination Steps

Step 1: Forum

Reply to this post with the following information:

• Link to Snapshot: (fill this in after Step 2)
• Preferred Name and/or ENS name:
• Forum username:
• Twitter / X profile link (optional):
• Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?
• Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements)

Step 2: Snapshot

Create a Snapshot vote in the ENS WG Steward Nomination space HERE.
Select “New Proposal” and use the following template:

Template
Title: [Meta-Governance] Nominate [your preferred name or ENS name]

• Example: [Meta-Governance] Nominate yourname.eth

Body: Copy and paste your forum reply from Step 1 (name/ENS, forum username, X link,
why you want to be a steward, and any conflicts/engagements).

Vote Timing

• Start: on or after June 3, 2026 (when you create your proposal)
• End: June 22, 2026, 9:00 UTC

Snapshot uses your local timezone when setting times, please convert 9:00 UTC accordingly.
For reference: 9:00 UTC = 5am ET / 2am PT / 10am BST / 11am CEST.

All votes supporting a nomination must be cast during the nomination window.

Step 3: Threshold

After nominating yourself, you require 10,000 signed votes in support of your nomination
on Snapshot during the nomination window (WG Rule 4.4). Any nominee reaching 10,000
supporting votes will be included on the ballot for the Meta-Governance Steward election.

Steward Elections

Anyone who completes the steps above will be included on the election ballot.

• Election begins: June 25, 2026, 9:00 UTC
• Election ends: June 30, 2026, 9:00 UTC (120 hours, WG Rule 5.1)
• Voting method: ranked choice voting (copeland)

Steward Compensation (Term 7)

• Lead Steward: $5.5k/month + ENS*
• Steward: $4k/month + ENS*

* 2-year vested ENS, calculated using the 6-month TWAP and distributed in the middle of the term, matching the USD value of the salaries.

Questions

If you have questions about the nomination or election process, or need help setting up
your Snapshot vote, comment below or DM @alextnetto on Telegram.

[estmcmxci]

• Link to Snapshot: Snapshot
• Preferred Name and/or ENS name: estmcmxci.eth
• Forum username: estmcmxci
• X profile link: x.com/estmcmxci
• Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

ENS DAO is at an inflection point, and I feel a responsibility to step up. After serving as a Meta-Governance Steward throughout 2024, I have a strong understanding of the group’s historical role, its operational failure modes, and the DAO’s current structural needs.

With the DAO consolidating into a single working group, I believe Meta-Governance now needs to function as a lean coordination core: one that creates clearer process ownership, defines roles and responsibilities, establishes explicit guardrails and mandate, and helps move proposals and priorities forward without unnecessary drift or ambiguity.

I believe the Working Group should operate with visible public accountability mechanisms — including clear scopes, timelines, and reporting — so execution remains legible to delegates and the broader community, whether through a publicly accessible dashboard, a shared GitHub repository, or similar tools.

Finally, I want to help ensure that consolidation does not come at the expense of ecosystem support. That means rebuilding a practical path for supporting ENS developers, maintaining space for coordination with Labs and the ENS foundation, continuing engagement around hackathons like ETHGlobal, and expanding cross-ecosystem collaboration in ways that strengthen ENS over time.

I’m running because I believe I can help turn this transition from a structural change on paper into a clearer and more functional operating model in practice.

Lastly, I want to be a known and trusted presence in the ecosystem, and to make myself available as needed to support this transition so that delegates and the broader community can have greater confidence in the DAO’s integrity.

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements):

• I write the ENS DAO Newsletter
• I manage the ENS DAO socials
• I’m part of a team who has applied to SPP3

[jkm.eth]

• Link to snapshot: Snapshot
• Your preferred name/ENS name: James (jkm.eth)
• Forum username: jkm.eth
• Twitter profile link: @jkm__eth

Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

ENS DAO has been going through a lot of systemic changes recently, requiring the community to find alignment. At the same time, we continue to see people show up with a desire to collaborate and help build the ENS community. I believe ENS stewards should take charge in helping the DAO navigate these changes and should also enable contributors to participate in the ENS community and feel appreciated. My experience equips me to fulfill these duties, which is why I would like to serve as steward for the upcoming term.

I have been focused on crypto every day for the last 14 years. I got my start in 2012 as a co-organizer of the Tokyo Bitcoin Meetup, where I soon found myself representing the crypto industry in front of TV news cameras in the wake of the collapse of Mt. Gox. A year later, I moved to San Francisco and was an early employee at both Coinbase and Kraken. I then became Chief Product Officer at Breadwallet, where we grew from 4 employees to 45 before being acquired. All of these roles required me to be aware of shifting community narratives and to adapt to the challenges and opportunities they brought: I experienced the birth of Ethereum, the Bitcoin block size debate, the fork of Ethereum Classic, scaling strategy disputes, and all the other successes, failures, rises, and falls.

Outside of crypto, I have real world experience facilitating governance for IRL organizations that have a lot of similarities to how ENS DAO operates today. As one example, I served 4 years on the board of directors for British Mensa, a non-hierarchical society which is owned by its members and has a centralized legal entity that is authorized by the membership to work on their behalf. The board of directors is elected by the members and tasked with overseeing the office, which is led by a CEO. This is similar to how ENS DAO is collectively owned by the token holders, who empower ENS Labs to undertake vital work that keeps the whole system running smoothly. As director, I had to find ways to capitalize on the many contributions of volunteers, while also ensuring those contributions didn’t conflict with the vital work being done by the CEO and her team.

I am also involved in two separate community organizations that operate through formal consensus. I was trained as a consensus facilitator, and have since seen firsthand how these organizations are able to make decisions and resolve disagreements through compromise, without voting. Although voting is still required in ENS DAO, proposals can always be negotiated and improved to make them less contentious before moving to the voting stage.

When it comes to ENS specifically, I have authored an ENSIP, participated regularly in community calls, and submitted an application to this year’s SPP3 program. I know what it is like to be a community contributor, most often volunteering my time for free, and have seen firsthand all the friction, frustration, and satisfaction that can bring.

Ever since I first got into crypto, I have been looking for non-financial use cases that can benefit the real world. Social coordination and digital identity are the most exciting use case I’ve seen, which is why I’ve donated my time to ENS. I believe ENS can foster a vibrant developer community by allowing contributors to make an impact, and ENS DAO can continue to lead by example with community decision-making done right. This is what I will bring if elected.

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements)

I am part of a team who has applied for SPP3. No other conflicts.

[Sov]

Link to Snapshot: https://snapshot.org/#/s:wg.ensnominations.eth/proposal/0x9d0fb11c9aae0283caa83185493f408219be2da6e695890717227f1205b2ea64

Preferred Name and/or ENS name: sovereignsignal.eth

Forum username: Sov

Twitter / X profile link: https://x.com/sovereignsignal

Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

I bring deep experience in grants, operations, and governance that would benefit the consolidated Meta-Governance Working Group.

I’ve served as an ENS Public Goods steward and as a steward and grants council member at other major DAOs. Today, I run grant operations for one of the largest grant programs in the space. My background is in enterprise sales, and as a senior manager, I ran operations at scale, the same work this group takes on as it absorbs the other working groups’ mandates.

My experience spans multiple sectors:

• ENS Public Goods steward

• Run grant operations for the Uniswap Foundation, one of the largest grant programs in the space today.

• Gitcoin’s partnerships and grant operations have distributed $10M+ across multiple Gitcoin Grants rounds and have run partnerships for several years.

• Ran a profitable systems integrator for a decade before coming into crypto

• Managed local, state, and federal grants with a recognized 501c3 (a regional food bank. You can read more about this journey here)

• Built grants discovery tools, including LlamaoGrants (with DefiLlama) and Blockworks Grantfarm

• Track grants and publish regular updates through Crypto Grants Wire (4K+ subscribers) and my blog Sovereign Signal, both running since 2022

What I’d focus on next term:

• Define with the other stewards the group’s mandate, scope, and what each steward owns, so delegates can hold us to measurable delivery

• Run it in the open: published priorities, timelines, and regular reporting that delegates can check through a dashboard or public repo

• Bring financial discipline to the DAO’s budget and steward operations, with spending that is transparent and tied to outcomes

• Keep a practical path to fund builders and public goods through the consolidation, with continued coordination with ENS Labs and the Foundation

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g., potential conflicts or existing engagements):

Current roles and engagements:

• Full-time role with Uniswap Foundation

• Council Member, COW Grants

• Currently serving as part of the SPP3 Committee

• Independent advisory work in the grants space, plus the grants research I publish through Crypto Grants Wire and Sovereign Signal

I commit to full transparency about these roles and will recuse where any conflict arises with my responsibilities to this Working Group.

[vegayp]

Link to Snapshot

Preferred Name and/or ENS name: vegayp.eth

Forum username: vegayp

Twitter / X profile link.

Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

Let me tell you a bit of a story: ENS changed my life. That airdrop was an economic lifeline on October 31st, 2021. Because of that, I joined the first Community WG calls with the sole intention of finding a way to give back. I had no idea at that moment that I would eventually become an “evangelist” for what most people simply saw as “the protocol that does the .eth/domain thing.”

I remember joining that first call and navigating the Discord server, feeling confused about why an organization with the guts to pull off an airdrop like that still felt so chaotic. It lacked an onboarding process, was highly uncertain about the practical (rather than philosophical) function of the DAO, and treated concepts like accountability, transparency, and coordination as merely aspirational. Yet, I stayed.

With some help, I went on to manage the onboarding calls for the DAO for the first six months of its existence.

Then came Public Goods. At the time, I wasn’t technical enough for MetaGov or Ecosystem, which already had great candidates anyway. Public Goods felt like the sad apple that no one wanted to bite into or put effort toward.

And oh boy, I took that seriously (perhaps too much so). I spoke about ENS at more conferences than I could count. I still vividly remember being the only Spanish speaking member at DevCon Bogotá, printing NFC cards for hours until we completely ran out.

ENS has been a blessing. Just as I felt when I first joined that Discord, I feel a strong need to contribute again for the sake of doing things right. I have never been a fan of absentee stewardship, a lack of initiative, or the rigid concept that a Steward is only responsible for the specific working group they were elected to. I have always engaged in other WG calls, contributing and participating because this is an organization that shouldn’t be treated as a set of silos, but as a cohesive ecosystem striving for a better ENS protocol.

I won’t list all of my contributions here, but I want to highlight two specific ones. First, the Builder Grant, the latest iteration of the grant program created alongside Coltron, which funded more than $2 million in Public Goods. I knocked on countless doors to raise awareness for that program, onboarding long standing contributors who are now pillars of our ecosystem, including MetaGov, EthRome/Urbe, Octant, Giveth, and Revoke.Cash. And second is my commitment to the neutrality and evangelism of this protocol.

So to answer the question of why I want to be the steward of this WG: it is because I have more than 10 years of experience in DAO governance. I understand governance not just as a technical specification for a Snapshot vote or an assessment of how the endowment is performing, but as the active facilitation of a community of token holders. Governance is not just a list of bylaws and a constitution; it is a social commitment to our token holders to do everything in our power to support and improve the protocol. This is not a side gig or a one hour weekly call I am forced to join. It is a space where my independence, legacy knowledge, and professional experience can be truly useful.

Things I would like to focus on for the next term?

• A participative governance, and reclaim delegates participation.
  Improve coordination with Labs, and all the other bodies that are part of the organisation: SPP3, AI group, developers groups and ENS enthusiasts so everyone can feel heard.

• Push for improving governance reports and transparency of spending and budget. No backdoor distribution of money, regardless of the amount.

• Make sure that the WG transition happens without leaving loose ends.

• Keeping the DAO as an active body within the ENS and large Ethereum ecosystem, not just a funding layer that only signs transactions.

• Integrate, within the range of possibility, the recommendations outlined by the already paid MetaGov organisational analysis.

P.S. I have also worked as a Business Manager for more than 15 years, collaborating with international NGOs like Techo para mi país, and I helped draft Panama’s crypto law. Additionally, I hold an MBA and a Master’s in Branding (just to provide some professional background context).

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements):

Currently applying for SPP3.

Good luck to the other nominees!

[raging.eth]

Link to Snapshot: Snapshot**
Your preferred name/ENS name**: Jonathan / raging
Forum username: raging.eth
Twitter profile link: [https://x.com/ragingbitcoin)

ENS Domains is one of the most notable products built on Ethereum.

Names are a foundational form of identity and intellectual property. They are necessary for any person seeking ownership over their pursuits in life, their expression, and any business or creative purpose they choose to pursue. For that reason, bittrees.eth, raging.eth, and hineline.eth were among the first NFTs I minted when I discovered Ethereum and began to understand its broader purpose: extending the utility of blockchain technology so that any person can engage in permissionless contractual agreements, where transparency, ownership, and identity are essential to participation.

To this extent, I am formally submitting my intention to serve as a Meta-Gov Steward.

DAOs are complicated, but they do not have to be. One of the highest qualities of these types of organizations is the possibility of transparency in both governance and the allocation of financial resources. When ENS DAO first launched, I was hopeful. However, I have been continuously disappointed by the actions of shadow stakeholders: delegation emerging from the deep, limited transparency, and very little accountability. I thought we were better than this.

If we carry forward the mistakes politicians have made in the past and import them into the DAO space, then how are we better than those who came before us? If we continue the same toxic political games that has made participation something people avoid, then we are failing the very ideals we claim to represent.

We can fix things! I appreciate the most recent temperature check post, in part because it advocates for the disclosure of conflicts of interest. However, I do not believe it goes far enough. The DAO, ENS Labs, and the ENS Foundation should be three separate entities, and they should be governed separately. No person should hold a position of power in more than one of these entities; in the same way that members of the us executive branch cannot also serve in the legislative or judicial branches. There must be a separation of powers between each primary controlling unit within the ENS power structure. If you view Ethereum as a sovereign and decentralized entity, then you must also recognize that ENS, as the naming system, carries a similar level of importance.

The purpose of any DAO is the continuation and protection of the protocol:

1. We must have transparency: Directors and core members of the ENS system should disclose all of their token holdings. Mysterious, last-minute delegation of token holdings damages the confidence of delegates and their constituents. It is no wonder good actors are exhausted and political toxicity continues to persist.

2. We must have balance: I propose a 3-in-1 solution, where the DAO is composed of three subDAOs, each with clearly defined goals and mandates. These subDAOs should work together toward one shared objective: Name the World.

3. We must have accountability: DAOs are not flat structures, and decision-makers should not only be held responsible for their decisions, but also should lead by example. A good leader is not only someone who takes accountability for their own mistakes and shortcomings, but also has the humility and wisdom to ask for help, and bring a diverse group of people together.

I believe in CROPs and in Ethereum. The lifeblood of Ethereum is not built upon decisive action, but in the continuation of credible neutrality, transparent stewardship, and the shared responsibility to protect the systems we depend on.

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements)

founding member of https://bittrees.org – ens holder: https://app.ens.domains/0xE5350D96FC3161BF5c385843ec5ee24E8B465B2f

[netto.eth]

Link to Snapshot: Nomination
Preferred Name and/or ENS name: netto.eth / Alex Netto
Forum username: @netto.eth
Twitter / X profile link (optional): @alextnetto

Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

Term 6 was a rollercoaster, but even with the challenges, we had meaningful deliveries that I feel proud of. I’m also happy to see strong candidates nominating, people I’d be glad to collaborate with on improving ENS governance. That makes me more comfortable nominating again.

I think ENS is in a very important moment. Morale is lower than it should be, inevitably because our industry is very sensitive to price action, but we have something very unique: active, motivated, and passionate contributors. Many communities and products wish they had this kind of engagement. ENS should remain open, easy to participate in, and easy to contribute to. Retaining and attracting talent, and making the DAO and community a growth engine, feels especially important now.

I’ve been contributing to ENS for the last 4 years and have context across the protocol, governance contracts, treasury, and social layer.

Relevant experience/context:

• I have Software engineering/CS background with a deep technical understanding of the ENS protocol and governance contracts, which helps with proposal building and technical decisions.
• I spearheaded the creation of the Security Council, after a high-risk governance attack was identified through research, writing the smart contract and helping the community understand and approve the proposal.
• I’ve consistently attended and contributed to Meta-Gov and Ecosystem working group calls (~90%), even when OOO, sick, or in difficult timezones.
• As founder and CEO of blockful, I also bring experience from working with DAOs like Uniswap, Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Shutter, and others, especially around security, research, protocol development, governance tooling, and coordination.

My main goals are:

• Implement the roadmap from the recent retro, especially clearer procedures around CoI and accountability.
• Experiment with mechanisms to increase engagement and retention during this period, with the goal of the DAO/community serve as leverage for growth.
• Improve participation and turnout, so governance is more secure and resilient.
• Support delegates with better processes, tools, and information (like the third-party research hired for the last IPS review).
• Encourage more sustainability and long-term thinking across the DAO.

I care a lot about ENS, and I think my contributions over the last years show that through actions. I’m excited to nominate again and hopefully continue serving the DAO with the context, technical skills, and coordination experience that I believe are a good fit for this working group.

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements):

I’m the founder of blockful, which is also a service provider for the ENS DAO. In situations where a conflict of interest arises from being both a steward and a service provider, I’ll abstain from the decision.

[SpikeWatanabe.eth]

Link to Snapshot: Snapshot
Preferred Name and/or ENS name: SpikeWatanabe.eth
Forum username: @SpikeWatanabe.eth
Twitter / X profile link (optional): SpikeWatanabe.eth (@spikewatanabe) / X

Hey everyone. I’m stepping up to run for the Meta-Governance Steward position for Term 7.

I’ve ran for steward before and came very close. I’ve invested a ton of time building my reputation here as an honest, hard-working delegate, and I take this responsibility very seriously. The DAO is at a turning point right now, and we need to cut the politics and actually get to work.

I’ll skip the usual water and get straight to my agenda. If elected, here is exactly what I plan to execute:

1. Fix the fragmented reporting right now, our financial reporting is very difficult to make sense of. We are throwing numbers at people from Karpatkey, Steakhouse, ENS Ledger, SafeNotes, and various independent dashboards. Even with my professional finance background, it’s impossible to reconcile. I will make it my mission to consolidate all of this into a single, clean portal where any reasonably educated user can easily read and make sense of our financial and operation position.

2. Public company standards for the DAO. In the past, we’ve had too many instances of money being distributed without real accountability. There are no laws regulating DAOs, but there is absolutely nothing stopping us from operating like a transparent, audited public company. I want to implement strict self-regulating guidelines that will force accountability and set the operational standard for the rest of the industry.

3. Real onramps for newcomers. It is currently way too difficult for new talent to join our working streams. I am going to make the process of joining the DAO transparent and easy to understand, with clear and appropriate compensation attached. We need a massive inflow of new contributors, and we won’t get them with closed doors.

4. Unhide ENS and drive real revenue - ENS is widely adopted, but it’s often hidden under the hood of other protocols. These protocols aren’t paying revenue directly to the ENS treasury, and as a result, our .eth registrations and revenue are stagnating. I want to use my business consulting background to make .eth visible on the radar across the board, push mass adoption, and directly raise our revenue.

My Credentials (Why me?)

Corporate Finance: My core professional background is in traditional finance. I’ve originated and executed complex M&A deals with a combined value of over $1bn, meaning I know exactly how to handle proper budgeting, valuation, and financial auditing.

Cross-DAO Governance: I used to work as a DAO Governance Manager for Stablelab and previously Avantgarde Finance, where I managed voting power and designed constitutional proposals across major protocols like Arbitrum, Uniswap, and Compound. I know what works and what doesn’t.

ENS Veteran: I am one of the top delegates here with over 1,100 users trusting me with their voting power. I was the runner-up in previous steward elections.

Technical Roots: I’ve been hands-on in this space since 2016 with early Ethereum mining, and I completed the mandatory C coding curriculum at School 42, so I understand the technical reality behind the DAO’s development processes.

I believe that board of stewards would benefit immensely from my business oriented background.

[abdullahumar.eth]

Link to Snapshot: Snapshot

Preferred Name / ENS name: Abdullah / abdullahumar.eth

Forum username: @abdullahumar.eth

Twitter / X profile link: https://x.com/abdullahbumar

Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?

Having been involved recently with my role on the SPP3 committee, I’ve attained more intimate exposure to the ecosystem’s stakeholders, and by assessing many of the problems outlined in the recent Retro, I believe my experience across various DAOs will prove useful for ENS’ coming chapter.

For context, I lead a governance and consulting firm called Arana Digital, serving DAOs including Uniswap, Compound, Aave, Arbitrum, Morpho, Scroll, Rootstock, 1inch, and Velora—managing $40M+ in voting power at peak. We have conducted DAO operations and research by engaging delegates, foundations, and service providers; voted on 1000+ proposals in sum; authored public governance recommendations and parameter changes to uphold protocol efficiency, etc.

Below I outline the areas where my experience is deepest and most directly applicable to ENS:

Treasury management and professionalization.

• I led the Uniswap Treasury Working Group, producing a comprehensive report and set of recommendations for the DAO and currently serve on Compound’s Treasury Management Committee, where we are allocating ~$38M to a cohort of professional asset managers. I’ve also helped generate new treasury revenue rather than just managing existing assets, for example, adopting Chainlink SVR for Oracle Extractable Value to produce >$2M in annualized revenue. And in areas where capital efficiency is subpar, our team passed proposals for allocating latent funds like recently at 1inch.

• I also bring direct capital allocation and risk-management experience from the investment side. I helped run a liquid small-cap token fund for 4 years, handling portfolio construction, position sizing, and rebalancing alongside the execution, custody, and settlement risk that comes with operating in illiquid markets.

• The Retro names treasury governance as underdeveloped and calls for its professionalization under better oversight. I’d help bring financial discipline within DAO-approved constraints, tied to transparent reporting and spend-to-outcome review.

Program oversight and DAO operations.

• As an elected member of the Uniswap Accountability Committee (UAC), I helped run Safe operations and onchain accounting for a $5M+ budget, oversaw $6M+ in incentive programs across 35+ chains, and managed grantee relationships with engineering teams including Tally, Merkl, Oku, Protofire, and Forse, overseeing program compensation to delivered milestones throughout the course of 3 years. Last year, we also used Limes’ safenotes tooling to provide better spending transparency, joining ENS as the other supported DAO.

• I have had intimate exposure to ENS ops through its utilization on behalf of the Uniswap ecosystem. For instance, we helped establish a formalized process for subdomain-based Uni v4 licensing and deployment tracking. Through the UAC, we have been responsible for tracking Uni v3 instances across 40+ chains, transparently, consistently updating subdomain metadata on behalf of the DAO.

• I currently serve on the grant committee for 1inch’s Aqua incubator, allocating funds to teams using 1inch Labs’ new Aqua/SwapVM infrastructure, opening doors for revenue-sharing agreements with builders.

• With MetaGov now absorbing further mandates, this above oversight and operations experience is directly relevant. It’s important to have structured ways of coordinating between various builders, all the while not losing sight of ecosystem ROI from these relationships.

Community management, discussions, and experimentation.

• I run biweekly ecosystem calls for Compound and have for Uniswap in the past. I’ve also worked directly on voter participation itself, designing delegate races and delegation-and-compensation programs to enhance voting systems and defend governance against capture. Driving professionalized relationships between community members has also been one of my priorities. Supplementally, I have experience helping bridge communication gaps between Uniswap Foundation and delegates, ensuring mandates don’t go unevaluated.

• The Retro flags a self-reinforcing exclusion loop where low participation concentrates power. I’d like to address this via well-documented community engagement and experiments in participation that make governance easier to follow and contribute to.

ENS is critical infrastructure for Eth, and this moment of consolidation is a chance to put its operations on a more professional, accountable footing. I’d be glad to bring what I’ve learned across other DAOs to help, building alongside ENS’s existing contributors.

Any other information you wish to share with Delegates (e.g. potential conflicts or existing engagements)

• Currently serving as part of the SPP3 Committee.

[netto.eth]

Nominations closed earlier today. Snapshot will be submitted on the 25th.

[jkm.eth]

Are there any plans to have a call where delegates can ask questions of the candidates and get a better feel for who they are?

[estmcmxci]

Hi @jkm.eth — we’ll be hosting a Space on the ENS DAO account, tentatively on June 25 at 2:00 PM Eastern. I’m currently reaching out to nominees to confirm.

[estmcmxci]

After further reflection, I’ve decided not to run for Meta-Gov Steward this term. At this stage, the role no longer feels aligned with where I can add the most value.

I believe that my time and energy are better directed toward building and contributing to ENS in more concrete ways.

I truly appreciate the delegates who nominated me.

Tagging @netto.eth for visibility.

[netto.eth]

Results

Thanks for everyone who nominated and voted!!

Turnout was 1,444,708 ENS across 60 voters, reaching the 1M (1% of supply) quorum. Votes were counted with Copeland ranked-choice and Shutter shielded voting.

If you open the Snapshot result, the third seat appears to go to SpikeWatanabe.eth. That is not quite right, and the reason is a part of the counting method that Snapshot never implemented.

What the UI is showing

Copeland ranks candidates by how many head-to-head matchups they win. Abdullah and Spike each won 3 of their 6 matchups, so they finish with an identical Copeland score (Snapshot shows both at 206,386.88). They are tied on victories.

The tiebreaker for exactly this case was defined when we commissioned this voting type. From the RFP: improving Ranked Choice Voting support in Snapshot:

The Average Support for each candidate will also be calculated (…) Average Support is used as a tiebreaker.

Average Support is the voting power a candidate gathered across all of their matchups. On that measure Abdullah leads Spike, 57.5% to 50.0%, so the third seat is Abdullah’s.

Snapshot’s deployed Copeland code does not compute tiebreaks. When candidates tie on victories it leaves their scores identical, and the UI then orders them by the position they were listed in on the ballot. Spike was listed above Abdullah, so the UI shows Spike third. That ordering comes from ballot order, not from the votes.

The fix

I opened a PR on Snapshot’s own repository to add the Average Support tiebreaker to the Copeland implementation: snapshot.js#1210. It resolves ties by Average Support exactly as the RFP specified, and by design, it cannot change any result that is not a genuine tie. I’m in contact with their team to get this merged.

The result

With the tiebreaker applied, the three elected Meta-Governance stewards for Term 7 are:

1. Alex Netto / netto.eth
2. Sov / sovereignsignal.eth
3. Abdullah / abdullahumar.eth

Here is a copeland visualizer for those curious to understand more the votes and result.

Feedback about the vote

This was a pilot using shielded voting. Feedback was positive on the last Metagov call. Please share your thoughts on this thread, about how should we continue to use this primitive.

[vegayp]

Congrats to the new cohort!

Looking forward to the next term! <3

[SpikeWatanabe.eth]

Thank you for the detailed breakdown of the Snapshot UI limitations and for locating the original RFP documentation regarding the ‘Average Support’ tie-breaker. I also appreciate the initiative to open PR to improve the tooling for future elections.

RFP outlines the intended design for this system, however resolving a live election by retroactively applying off-chain, manual calculations raises critical procedural concerns.

I request the working group clarify the following points regarding election integrity:

1. Retroactive Application of Un-merged Code The ENS DAO voted using a specific, deployed version of the Snapshot protocol. As noted, that deployed version did not compute tie-breakers, resulting in a technical mathematical deadlock. While an RFP outlines a developer wish-list, it is not deployed code. Resolving a steward election by applying an un-merged PR after the voting period has closed sets a highly irregular precedent. In strict governance environments, if the deployed tooling fails to resolve a tie, we cannot retroactively change the counting mechanism to force a resolution.

2. The Direct Pairwise Reality While the RFP suggests ‘Average Support’ against the broader field as a tie-breaker, the ballot data already contains the community’s explicit, direct preference between the tied candidates.

When isolating the ballots to compare strictly my results vs. Abdullah, the token preference is decisive:

• Total VP preferring Spike over Abdullah: 928,382 VP

• Total VP preferring Abdullah over Spike: 516,324 VP

The ENS token holders preferred my nomination in a direct matchup by a margin of over 412,000 VP (approx. 64% to 36%).

Proposed Resolution: To protect the procedural integrity of the DAO, we cannot rely on un-merged code applied selectively. I respectfully request that the stewards acknowledge the tooling limitation and defer to the community’s overwhelming 64% direct pairwise preference (928k to 516k) already recorded on the ledger to break the deadlock for the third seat.

[AvsA]

@SpikeWatanabe.eth As the person who introduced Copeland to the DAO process I would like to clarify some things.

It’s unfortunate that this proposal doesn’t clarify it on the proposal text, and that snapshot hasn’t implemented proper tiebreaks, but it’s clear from snapshot UI that you were both tied under Copeland rules – the fact you ranked higher in the UI is just because you were first on the options, which is not relevant. Due to the lack of clarity, I think it’s reasonable to assume using the same tiebreaker we have used previously on other Copeland votes.

Regarding your proposal tiebreaker rule: to see the individual match. While that is an interesting argument for a future election, using individual matches can still generate a tie and would still require the tiebreaker rule. We can see the example in the votes themselves: suppose James was not in the running. That would mean Vegayp would tie up in third place and we would not be able to resolve it with your proposed method as there’s a classic Condorcet cycle: Spike wins over Abdulah, which wins over Vega who wins over Spike.

In short, while you make a sound argument on why the DAO votes show you are preferred over Abdulah, this was never the way the algorithm worked in the past and can’t be it works in the future for the reasons mentioned, and adopting it now would be to make a personal decision over a vote that has already happened. No voting method is perfect and we are trying to stick to previous rules to get a fair result in turbulent times.