Nominations for ENS Foundation Director to replace Brantly.eth

💬 General Discussion
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Use this thread for nominations for the position of ENS Foundation director. Please direct commentary and questions for nominees to this thread.

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[I am withdrawing my nomination in light of @AvsA’s nomination]

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In response to what Nick.eth wrote here: Role & responsibilities of ENS Foundation Director

I would like to nominate myself to be considered as the ENS Foundation Director. I would be happy to answer questions here about my background and qualified skills and experience. I would be particularly interested in speaking with not only the DAO directly, but the working group that is there now. The reason is I do feel it is important for those currently at the helm of the ship to feel very good about any potential addition to the team. Particularly interested in speaking with @nick.eth, @alisha.eth, Kevin and other stewards and others that are crucial to the success of ENS and the future of ENS.

Below are excerpts from Bradley and my responses to them.

The ENS Foundation is a Cayman Islands foundation that exists to serve as a legal entity representing the DAO. More detail on why it exists and what it’s for can be found in the governance docs.

The Foundation currently has three directors; Myself, Kevin Gaspar, and Brantly Millegan. Directors are responsible for the day-to-day running of the Foundation. In practice, this is very little, at least so far; the Foundation has to make annual filings with the Cayman Islands, which are handled by its lawyers and accountants. It has assorted business expenses; as the Foundation does not have a bank account these are currently paid for by True Names Limited (the nonprofit I direct that funds and organizes most ENS development), and requested for reimbursement by the DAO after the fact.

As a founding member of the UltraDAO and on the Core team of Woodies I was responsible for setting up and organizing our legal business formations to protect our civil and tax liabilities. I oversaw the formation of the LLC and I am overseeing decentralized governance including overseeing the creation of a memorandum of law in regards to sufficient decentralization.

In my day job, I am a Vice President of Operations for a Global real estate firm overseeing a multibillion-dollar portfolio. I have been advising City DAO on how large multifamily operations and ownership to the blockchain. I am passionate about decentralization and DAO’s and I also recently established one of the first 100% web3 nonprofit, The Queens of the Metaverse Foundation.

In principle the Foundation’s responsibilities could extend beyond this in time. If the DAO decided it needed, say, a subscription to Google Workplace to give DAO members email addresses etc, the DAO could instruct the Foundation directors to organize and instate this. Likewise, if the DAO wanted to acquire real estate, they would instruct the Directors to carry this out. Foundation directors are free to delegate any of these responsibilities, but it’s their job to make sure it gets done.

I have extensive experience in the real estate world and I could be a huge help from a financial and operations perspective. Under the umbrella of my day job, I supervise over 1,000 employees all hailing from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. My umbrella of responsibility includes HR, Legal, Compliance, IT (I regularly work with owa and networks and systems for efficient working processes as well as various programs and CRMs including set up and training), Sales, Operations and People Leadership.

I am also investigating obtaining Directors and Officers Insurance for the Foundation to further protect directors from personal liability. Personally, I view this risk as small, but difficult to quantify.

I could help in this regard if you would like assistance.

Presently there is no fixed compensation for the role of Director. I’d suggest that the DAO should set some reasonable level of compensation in any proposal that’s put forward to replace or appoint a new director.

I would like to ask that we start with transparency on the compensation package that Brantly and potentially others enjoy to make this process fair and transparent as well as take into account a fair market comparison of compensation for review and approval of the DAO. I understand it is not fixed but is there a precedent?

The Foundation is only required to have one Director under Cayman Islands law. However, I do not think it’s advisable to have only a single director. Three directors provide for redundancy in the event that one cannot serve, and make tiebreaking on votes easier.

I do think this is wise and the more decentralized governance can be the better for the future of the organization.

My recommendation here would be to decide on a reasonable level of remuneration for directors, hold a process to accept nominations for the post of director, and hold a DAO-wide Snapshot vote to appoint one.

I would like to help with this process however I can. Having experience with DAOs this would not be a foreign process for me. As for remuneration what is the standard at ENS now and a fair market evaluation can be completed to give substantive information to the DAO to make good decisions around this.

For the sake of transparency you can find my Twitter and subsequent history here:

https://twitter.com/healingvisions

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I nominate myself. I don’t want the position but I more don’t want it to go to someone that just showed up because of drama. Ask me anything. Edit - but do it in the questions and comments thread please

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I would like to nominate myself and, if elected, I promise not to do anything at all.

Of course, I will perform my duties required as Director, and do the due diligence and paperwork necessary but it is my opinion that the foundation should serve as a shield, not as an action. I don’t think the foundation should own a bank account, real estate or even a google account to give out emails. I would be happier if the ecosystem was comprised of 3 or more different companies providing these. My model is the Ethereum Foundation, in which me and nick worked for many years (for my case, 2014 to roughly 2018). The EF was the first big provider of resources and the only other company was Consensys. But slowly, many other companies were birthed as the foundation slowly got leaner, ENS is actually one of them, and I would like to repeat the model. With the difference that the funds are already controlled by a DAO, something that the Ethereum Foundation always spoke of doing but never really accomplished it.

I am not super keen in having the job, I’m a background kind of guy, but a lot of people asked me to step forward and I had to check with my lawyers and accountants if that would pose any issues for me. As a Brazilian citizen, I think it also adds more resilience for the foundation, since it would mean yet another jurisdiction. I do not intend to receive any compensation in the first year. Of course we might revisit that in the future if there is significant more legal risk/managerial tasks but I feel I have already been compensated by the ENS DAO and I hope to give back more.

  1. Have you served on a Board of Directors or something similar? If yes, short details.
    a. I have founded many companies, in Brazil, Estonia and BVI, where I served as director/board. They weren’t large, but they gave me the experience of having to deal with lawyers from multiple countries.

  2. Communications at the highest level (with whom, general topic, and how often)
    a. In my previous jobs (Ethereum Foundation, Unilogin, Balancer) communication was often my top priority. I’ve had to present my ideas to investors in San Francisco, Paris and of course, (after Covid) Zoom. I’ve sat in meetings and talked about blockchain technology to politicians, heads of NGOs, and owners of banks and Stock Exchanges. I’ve also had often to do the opposite: to present findings of how simple users perceived the complexity of our products to the CFO and VPs who were too technical to see it in simpler terms.

  3. Evidence of high-level decision-making, using your independent judgment and discretion:
    I’ve been in multiple moments in my career entrusted with large amounts of other’s people money and responsibilities and I believe I have done my best to do the right thing. During the DAO hack I was entrusted with a private key of the White Hat attacker that eventually held millions, which I kept safe (the recovered funds eventually were transferred to JBaylina who safe kept them until the recovery contract was deployed - by Nick!). When I was a manager at the Ethereum Foundation I eventually ended up having to manage a fund worth a few million dollars (initially collected from donations to the community). I was also entrusted with the mission to attain the name ethereum.eth for the foundation– no names were reserved and we had to bid like anyone else. Both the name and the tip jar funds were kept by me for years–after I had left the foundation– until we were properly able to set up a structure to receive them.

  4. Ability to comprehend and speak on legal matters (you don’t have to be a lawyer).
    a. Have you ever had to explain to a Swiss auditor the difference between purchasing and staking ether when they had questions on why a million dollars from the foundation were apparently going to your care in exchange for a domain name you had invented? Have you ever had to explain to the cybercrime police of your country how exactly were you connected to the heist of a hundred million dollars from a decentralized autonomous organization? Or had to explain to an accountant what exactly is an airdrop and why you received one? I’ve done them. Turns out, they’re not as hard as that, accountants and lawyers are not that different from the rest of humans in planer earth.

  5. Ability to comprehend and speak on accounting matters (you don’t have to be an accountant)
    a. See above. I’ve had to explain cryptocurrency to my accountant so I could declare it on my income years before the tax authorities in Brazil ever heard about it.

  6. Activity that required the handling of confidential or sensitive information
    a. Yes.

b. ENS activity (link to your profile summary): Profile - Avsa - ENS DAO Governance Forum

  1. Activities of significance for ENS (e.g., stewards): Founder, delegate, Public Good stewards.
  2. ENS Trust Level: ?
  3. Other links of significance:
  4. Web3 expertise: 8 years.
  5. Other relevant matter to add: None
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Nomination withdrawn.