Creating oracles that can verify social media accounts on-chain is possible.
Twitter example:
Any account that wishes to be tracked by the twitter oracle can publish a proof of ownership of a .eth name on their twitter. Oracles can now attest to this proof and allow the owner of alice.eth to register ownership any twitter account they control onto an ENS record. So now you can prove that the controller of an ENS name also controls a twitter account at a point in time. The oracle can also provide the blockchain with dynamic information about these accounts such as number of followers.
Use case 1:
We can create an on-boarding incentive for twitter accounts with over 1 million followers, allowing them to claim ENS from the treasury if they register a .eth name with an Ethereum account and set the primary name of that account to their name.
This allows anybody with 1 million followers on Twitter to register their web3 name on ENS without bearing the high cost of gas.
Repeat for Instagram, Twitch, Youtube, TikTok, etc.
Use case 2:
ENS can now provide cross platform name to ID verification. Instead of depending on twitter to allow you to have a blue check mark on your profile, you can mint your own by linking your account to your .eth name and your .eth name to any other proof of ID.
I think someone has already made a snapshot of twitter accounts which had their username set to .eth before the Oct31 snapshot. https://twitter.com/skyzz20211/status/1460877257254207488?s=20
Not sure it will gain traction, but that could be a strong signaler for early users - as strong as setting primary address. I dont think it will go anywhere, however.
Aside from that, I dont think the purpose of the DAO is to buy users. Those are not the users we wish to attract. ENS already has a proper solution to a proper problem in web3, and users who wish to solve that problem will do so, we dont need to “pay” them to do so by paying out in airdrops.
Personally I wouldnt vote for any scheme of encouraging users via ENS airdrop/payouts. Seems a bit sketchy to me.
As far as gas fees go, the core team is working to offload some of the costs by leveraging L2s. Not sure the timeline there but stay tuned!
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I understand that “buying users” sounds awful ideologically, and is not aligned with the wording of the constitution.
But pragmatically, isn’t on boarding influential name holders in the more popular namespaces a viable strategy for procuring a strong network effect?
It seems to me like a very efficient use of capital to pay like 3 or 4 ENS to get an account with 1 million followers to come over to the space and try to make something social with web3.
What about the second use case: providing cross platform service for minting a verified user badge?