Brantly, thanks for kicking off a discussion about SPP3. I look forward to the discussion on how funding for independent teams building ENS can be improved and ENS strengthened as a whole.
From my perspective, the strength of the ENS DAO currently lies in the delegates. From my personal experience, I have seen that the delegates are committed to the mission of ENS, providing a neutral and decentralized protocol for onchain naming and identity for the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond. They are committed to the constitution of ENS, and the policies and initiatives they have supported have gone toward strengthening the credible neutrality and decentralization of ENS, including the creation of the SPP itself.
While the problem of delegate fatigue and delegates lacking context are real problems, I believe that existing initiatives and other incremental changes to existing processes can go a long way toward solving these issues, including the Delegate Incentives Program and setting and keeping clear schedules for funding applications and voting.
The problem with the SPP committee idea, in my view, is that lobbying will only increase, now directed to a small number of committee members, and I believe that the DAO is not currently ready for this degree of administrative stress testing. Over time, I hope and expect that the ENS DAO will gain organizational strength by adopting best practices from successful, similarly sized organizations with similar missions from which we can learn.
Compared to the committee model, I believe the system we have now, with direct delegate voting, makes politicking actually less intense because many delegates do not accept inbound communications, and proposals need to be directed to a more general audience. With a committee, the target is even smaller, and the potential for abuse is higher because of the small number of people deciding how large amounts of funding are allocated.
My proposal for incremental change to the existing SPP is to change the single SPP program into two programs: one for new projects ($100–$300k/year) for new teams that are given a year of funding to see if they can deliver for the ENS DAO, and another program ($300k+/year) for teams that are already established and are seeking continued funding. The goal should be to make the programs as straightforward as possible and keep the ultimate funding decisions in the hands of the delegates.
I believe that making incremental changes to the SPP by simplifying it into this two-tier model and simplifying the voting and application process is the way to go this year, while we further develop the strength and robustness of the ENS DAO.
Also, for full disclosure, the company I co-founded, Unruggable, is currently an SPP recipient, and we are thankful for the support we have received thus far to help build and strengthen ENS, together with all the other independent teams helping to grow and build ENS!