Proposal: Committee Model for SPP3 Funding Allocation

[Raphael_Anode]

Really appreciate this thread, and especially the range of perspectives here. A few thoughts:

@cap and @Arnold both touched on something I think deserves more attention: the evaluation framework. Whether SPP3 runs through a committee or delegates, the underlying challenge is the same. Someone has to read dozens of applications, compare teams working on wildly different verticals (protocol work vs. growth vs. infra vs. governance tooling), and make funding decisions with incomplete context.

The committee vs. delegate debate is important, but it’s really a question about who evaluates. There’s an equally important question about what they’re evaluating and how well the pipeline is structured before it reaches them.

A few things I’ve seen work well in other grant programs:

1. Pre-qualification layers that score teams on traction, technical readiness, and ecosystem fit before they enter the review queue. This reduces ops burden and lets reviewers (whether delegates or committee members) focus on strategic fit.

2. Standardized application packages with clear milestones, KPIs, and success criteria baked in. Defining what success looks like and how it’s measured from the start.

3. Ongoing lifecycle tracking post-funding. @lightwalker.eth and @Premm.eth both flagged the importance of accountability. The 40-60% milestone failure rate across Web3 grants programs is somewhat well-documented, and most of that stems from weak scoping upfront.

@Premm.eth’s two-tier idea (new teams at $100-300k, established teams at $300k+) is smart and maps well to how traditional grant programs separate early-stage discovery from continuation funding. Each tier benefits from different evaluation criteria.

Shill alert: For what it’s worth, this is exactly the kind of grants infrastructure work we do at Anode. We’re building deal flow and pre-qualification pipelines.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

[katherine.eth]

Broadly speaking, I would be supportive of a Committee Model as well. It may feel easier to deputize an existing working group but in reality the work that is needed to go into making and stewarding this program well would require a level of “above and beyond” and time consuming enough that it makes sense to have a dedicated team for this.

[estmcmxci]

The committee model can work, but it needs a shared framework for what counts as worth funding. Without it, the committee’s discretionary power lacks a legible evaluation logic tied to constitutional priorities.

The group’s revealed preference is to form a committee to handle SPP. I argue that before we put that to a vote, we should first formalize a common evaluation framework that the committee is bound by.

[Coltron.eth]

@brantlymillegan

Specific Questions for Feedback

1. I support the committee model. That said, I want to see a defined budget and allocation objectives approved by the DAO before the submission and evaluation of applications begins.
2. No deputization of existing working group.
3. Committee composition should be able to evaluate technical proposals, but not every member needs to be an engineer.

[Premm.eth]

From the perspective of a grantee and applicant, one of the most difficult aspects of the SPP program, both in the past and looking ahead, has been the unpredictability of the timeline. While there may still be time to make changes to the program, significant changes at this point could be disruptive. In my view, they would likely add to the overall lack of clarity and predictability around the SPP process.

Last year the discussions began in November 2024. Many people felt that the way the process unfolded created a fair amount of confusion for both grant applicants and delegates. I would like to avoid repeating that situation this year if possible.

A Brain Dump on Service Provider Program Season 2

Over the past few days, I spoke with seven of the nine service providers to gather feedback on the program’s effectiveness and potential improvements. Below is a summary of ideas and conclusions. Nothing is finalized—this is a brain dump of interesting solutions that I’d like broader input on. 1. Positive Feedback from Service Providers The Service Provider Program, approved by the DAO last November, held elections in December, with funding streams starting in late February. Providers consiste…

For that reason, I continue to propose a straightforward approach for running SPP3 this year. We announce the funding opportunity, publish a clear timeline for applicants, and then stick to the deadlines that are set. My suggestion is that we focus on incremental improvements to the program rather than making major structural changes. Larger changes, by their nature, would likely increase uncertainty and make the funding round harder for applicants and delegates to navigate.

In a previous post I suggested simplifying the program this year so that it looks more similar to the first year of SPP, including allowing smaller grants in the $100k to $300k range. I think this funding level serves two clear purposes. First, it allows the DAO to support new teams that may not yet be well known in the ENS community, giving them a year to demonstrate whether they can become meaningful contributors. Second, it provides a way to fund services to the DAO that are more administrative or governance related. DAO tooling is one example. Another idea I have proposed is funding a small team to organize events for the DAO, which could move that responsibility out of the Ecosystem Working Group.

As a current grantee, I want to emphasize that I deeply appreciate the support that the ENS DAO has provided to independent teams like ours. I look forward to continuing to work with everyone in the community to make the SPP3 program a success!

[simona_pop]

Great to see this discussion here and I think another all delegate call discussion when some clear options emerge (a, b or c etc) for a more focused conversation would be beneficial before moving this to a full fledged proposal. The current process does put a lot of burden on delegates and encourages lobbying, but a single committee controlling allocations also introduces understandable concerns around centralisation, who is on the committee (are there conflicts of interest), what is the budget to run the committee etc…

One possible middle ground could be a hybrid layered review model that separates evaluation, coordination, and final decision-making.

Thoughts:

The DAO sets the high-level budget and categories (??)

At the start of the funding cycle, delegates approve an overall SPP budget and broad categories (e.g. Infrastructure, Ecosystem Growth, Developer Tooling, Governance for example). This keeps strategic priorities and funding limits clearly under DAO control. I do think @Premm.eth´s idea re smaller + higher grants would be interesting here. With the PG grants, we have them structured into small, higher ticket, and strategic grants and again, this has proven a straight fwd model for us to evaluate work at all stages of the build funnel as well as relevance to our specific mission.

• Category reviewers screen proposals

Each category could have one or two expert domain reviewers who evaluate proposals in that area. Their role would be to review submissions in depth, organise calls with the teams as suggested and filter proposals into:

• Recommended
• Revise and resubmit
• Declined

Again, within the PG group we have seen this working great when submissions for Builder Grants come in and need tweaks both on scope and funding. The pattern of inviting teams to the PG calls to go into detail about their ask and deliverables + more indepth conversations between the stewards and the teams has typically proven very beneficial not only for transparency but also a better allocation of funding in line with deliverables and on a milestone focused basis for accountability.

From here, only the recommended proposals would move forward. This would remove a lot of noise and reduce the number of proposals delegates ultimately need to consider.

• The same cross-category committee would assemble the funding pool per category

This would:

• ensure allocations fit within the approved budget
• avoid duplication across projects
• negotiate funding levels where appropriate

This also helps address a common issue in DAO grants where decisions become binary (yes/no) instead of allowing budgets to be adjusted. We had a starter for it in SPP2 with the different funding options per project, this would take that into a higher level of due diligence and efficient resource deployment.

• Delegates would retain final authority

Delegates would still vote on the final pool and could approve it, veto individual allocations, or send it back for revision. (tbd here on how much lift this would bring in)

This would mean:

• category experts handle deep proposal evaluation
• the committee coordinates budgets and tradeoffs
• delegates retain final approval and oversight

With appropriate guardrails (expert reviewer terms would need to be set - is it 12 months? do members change etc, conflict of interest rules, standardised and transparent evaluation criteria etc), something like this might help improve decision quality while still preserving decentralised legitimacy…

The options to be discussed could be: keep as is, committee only, hybrid…

[bcvfinance.eth]

One structural issue highlighted both in the retrospective and across many DAOs is the overlap between funding recipients and governance actors. I mentioned this earlier in a forum post and also discussed it in a related article on X.

If funding recipients also dominate the governance structures that allocate or oversee funding, accountability mechanisms become difficult to implement in practice. Creating committees composed primarily of actors drawn from the same group of funding recipients may therefore risk reproducing the same structural problem rather than resolving it. However, the issue does not necessarily disappear simply by appointing different individuals. If the committee is selected and overseen by governance actors who are themselves also funding recipients, the same incentive misalignment can persist. In such cases, the structure may still struggle to provide independent oversight over funding allocation.

A healthier governance structure would aim to maintain a clear separation between execution roles (service providers receiving funding) and oversight roles (delegates responsible for governance and accountability). Programs such as the Delegation Incentives Program can play an important role in enabling this separation by encouraging broader tokenholder delegation and allowing more independent delegates to emerge. Without strengthening this kind of governance structure, the DAO risks reproducing the same structural tensions between funding recipients and oversight actors.

[conor]

I wanted to pitch in with something that I think is missing from the conversation so far. Should SPP3 explicitly encourage or reward service providers that are building toward self-sustainability?

I say this from my own experience with Web3j — it’s being downloaded millions of times a month but still depends on grants because open-source infrastructure is hard to sustain.

I appreciate this is a different way of thinking about service provider funding for ENS, but it’s quite topical given how the public goods landscape is evolving.

The Ethereum Foundation recently published Project Odin, which wants to address this problem. Their thesis is that sustainability should be treated as a design problem from the start, not something teams scramble to figure out when the funding runs out. They’re embedding strategic advisors with grantee teams to help them build credible paths to funding diversification, including hybrid models where commercial revenue coexists with public goods funding.

I think there’s a lesson here for SPP3. The current programme doesn’t distinguish between teams that will need the same grant renewed indefinitely and teams that have a credible plan to reduce their dependency on the DAO treasury over time via means such as commercial services and products.

What if SPP3 created criteria for service providers that want commit to a sustainable model? Not as a replacement for public goods grants, but as a complementary track. A team that says “fund us for a year and we’ll show you real revenue traction and a credible trajectory to independence” is a fundamentally different proposition from a team that will be back asking for the same amount next year. Both may be worth funding, but the DAO should probably think about them differently.

@Premm.eth‘s suggestion of splitting the programme into tracks for new vs. established teams is a good start. I’d add a third dimension: grant-dependent vs. sustainability-oriented. Funds spent on a team that is on a path to sustainability is worth more to the DAO treasury than funds spent on a team that can’t.

In terms of mechanics, this doesn’t require anything significant. Service providers on a sustainability track could share service or product revenue figures alongside their existing traction metrics, giving the DAO clear visibility into whether teams are making real progress toward independence.

This could bring a level of accountability that benefits everyone. The DAO gets evidence-based decision-making, and teams that are delivering get a stronger case for continued support.

[estmcmxci]

The callout to Project Odin is helpful! I’m not sure we have the human capital to pair each Service Provider with a dedicated strategic advisor, but we could anchor the approach in a sustainability-first framing. In fact, I’ve already outlined how we could do this in ENS/ACC, which outlines a governance framework for strategic allocation.

@conor

The current programme doesn’t distinguish between teams that will need the same grant renewed indefinitely and teams that have a credible plan to reduce their dependency on the DAO treasury over time via means such as commercial services and products.

This is exactly the lynchpin of the ENS/ACC argument — it positions projects along a public goods-to-market-sustainability spectrum. Some services require indefinite funding because they lack a viable path to commercial sustainability.

Some work is essential because it won’t get funded otherwise:

• Protocol Security
• ENSv2 ready indexing
• DNSSEC Integration
• Cross-chain infrastructure

—

Without first classifying where each initiative sits on that spectrum, the suggested sustainability criteria would penalize teams doing the highest-value, least-replaceable work in the cohort.

The committee needs to answer: “What does ENS need that the market won’t provide?” before it applies any sustainability filter.

[brantlymillegan]

Great comments everyone. Since I’d like to move quickly on this given our limited timeframe, I wanted to give a quick update: I’m working on a more fleshed out version of this proposal with @Coltron.eth, we should be posting something shortly for more public comment.

[Coltron.eth]

With feedback from @brantlymillegan, I’ve been working on what an SPP3 committee model could look like. The short version: two proposals, voted on concurrently.

1. [Social] SPP3: Program Authorization: Are we doing SPP3? What objectives should it fund? How much, tied to protocol revenue?
2. [Social] SPP3: Committee Model: Who evaluates and selects providers, and how?

If Authorization fails then SPP3 does not move forward. If Authorization passes but the Committee Model fails, the program reverts to the existing selection process from SPP2.

The full SPP3: Committee Model is below for feedback. Both Gists linked above. These aren’t final. I expect feedback and revisions. If we can get to an agreeable version of both I am willing to progress the governance process.

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Summary

This proposal specifies the composition, roles, selection process, evaluation
criteria, and conflict of interest rules for an SPP3 Committee. The goal is a
vote-ready spec by the time SPP3 nominations open.

The design is intentionally compatible with the structural governance reform work underway in the Into 2026 thread. The DAO-ratification model, published rubric, and CoI framework are reusable governance patterns. They are not one-off SPP3 mechanics.

This proposal is intended as a companion to a separate SPP3 program proposal
covering ecosystem objectives, eligible service provider types, and total budget. Those parameters are set by the DAO; this committee executes within them. The budget and compensation figures referenced in this document take effect only after the companion program proposal is ratified.

Committee Composition & Roles

Role	Count	Compensation
Chair	1	$40,000 / cycle
Member	4	$25,000 / cycle

Term: Aligned with the SPP3 funding cycle. Renewable once by DAO Snapshot
vote on the same quorum threshold as initial ratification.

Payments: 25% lump sum upon submission of the final allocation recommendation to the DAO. Remaining 75% streamed over 12 months. Post-selection responsibilities covered by the stream include at minimum:

• tracking KPIs of funded service providers;
• monitoring cohort progress against stated milestones;
• reporting to the DAO on a quarterly basis.

Upon dissolution, each committee member receives only the compensation earned to that point. If the final recommendation was submitted, the 75% lump sum is owed. If it was not submitted, no lump sum is owed. No stream payments are issued on dissolution, and any stream already in progress stops immediately.

A replacement member inherits the remaining stream of the member they replace. They do not receive any additional compensation.

Quorum: A minimum of four members must participate for any committee vote to be valid. Decisions require a simple majority of participating members.

Ongoing Disclosure: Committee members must disclose any new potential conflict of interest as it arises throughout the full term, not only at nomination. Failing to reasonably disclose a new conflict of interest after ratification is grounds for removal.

Role Descriptions

The overarching goal of these roles is to qualify, evaluate, and select the funded nominations for SPP3.

Chair: Responsible for overall process: timeline, interview calendar, forum updates, and DAO communication. The Chair posts the final allocation
recommendation on the forum and voting venues.

Member: Score pre-qualification applications, read every qualifying submission in full, participate in structured interviews, vote on allocation decisions, and approve the written rationale before publication.

All five votes carry equal weight. The Chair is the overall administrator of the committee and has no unilateral authority to disqualify applicants.

Removal

A committee member who misses two consecutive scheduled obligations without prior notice is subject to removal by majority vote of remaining members. The Chair may be removed by unanimous vote of the four members with documented cause. Qualifying cause includes: persistent non-performance, material conflict of interest breach, or public conduct that compromises the integrity of the selection process. Upon removal, stream payments to the removed member are discontinued immediately.

Vacancies are filled by the next-ranked nominee from the original ratification
Snapshot result. If the committee falls below three active members, the selection process pauses and the DAO convenes a special Snapshot vote to reconstitute.

Conflict of Interest Rules

A committee member may not:

• Be a current or pending SPP3 applicant
• Be employed by, contracted to, hold stake in, or serve in any advisory
  capacity to any current or pending SPP3 applicant
• Have received direct compensation from any SPP3 applicant in the 6 months
  prior to nomination
• Acquire any of the above interests after ratification

Breach triggers automatic suspension pending a DAO recall vote. Self-disclosure is required at nomination. Failing to reasonably disclose a new conflict of interest after ratification is grounds for removal.

Committee Selection Process

1. Open nominations: two-week window, open to any ENS community member
2. Eligibility: Must not be ineligible under the Conflict of Interest rules above. Nominees must demonstrate familiarity with the ENS ecosystem on a technical and/or non-technical level as justified in their nomination application.
3. Ratification: DAO Snapshot instant-runoff ranked-choice vote on the final slate, separate from steward elections. A minimum of three nominees must be on the slate before ratification proceeds. The nominee with the most votes assumes the Chair role and must accept or decline within 48 hours. If they decline, the role falls to the next-ranked member under the same 48-hour window.

This committee is ratified directly by the DAO and operates independently of the Working Group structure. It is not accountable to or appointed by any Working Group steward.

SPP3 Application Evaluation Process

The committee sets and publishes the full process timeline before the submission window opens. All dates are binding once published.

Week 1–2: Submission and Pre-qualification

1. Submission (14 days): Applications are submitted privately to the
   committee. The committee has discretion over the submission method, provided content remains confidential. Private submissions protect applicants’ competitive information, preserve evaluation integrity by insulating the committee from external pressure, and prevent unsolicited outreach to applicants during the review period.

2. Pre-qualification (concurrent): The committee screens applications against a published eligibility checklist as they arrive. The checklist is written by the committee, posted publicly to the forum before the submission window opens, and locks once applications open. Pre-qualification is a binary pass/fail on structural completeness (required fields, format, scope definition). It is not a subjective quality judgment. Applications that fail pre-qualification receive written feedback on the specific deficiency so the applicant may correct and resubmit before the window closes.

Week 3: Review

3. Review (7 day minimum): The committee reads every qualifying application in full and conducts a structured interview with each team, focusing on the evaluation criteria. Same format for all applicants. The committee may negotiate scope, objectives, or award amounts with any qualifying applicant during this period. All material changes to a submitted application must be documented in writing and included in the committee’s public rationale record prior to submission of the final recommendation.

Week 4–5: Recommendation and DAO Approval

4. Recommendation: The committee formulates a cohort recommendation and
   submits it publicly to the DAO with a written rationale for every funded and unfunded applicant. The recommendation must include selected applicants, justification for each selection, individual award amounts, and total program cost.

5. DAO Approval: The final allocation goes on-chain as an executable. If rejected, the committee revises and resubmits within 14 days. If the committee fails to resubmit in time, or a second on-chain rejection occurs, the DAO shall dissolve the committee and the SPP3 program. If a funded applicant withdraws after ratification, the committee may reallocate remaining funds to the next-ranked unfunded applicant without a new DAO vote, provided the total does not exceed the ratified budget. The committee must post the reallocation and its rationale to the forum within 7 days of the decision.

Suggested Evaluation Criteria for Applicants

The following criteria are defaults. The committee may adopt, modify, or replace them when it publishes the evaluation rubric. The DAO vote on this proposal does not lock these criteria.

• Prior delivery history within ENS: Has the team shipped what it committed to in previous ENS work? Incomplete or abandoned prior grants are weighted negatively. New teams without ENS history must demonstrate comparable delivery track records elsewhere.
• Scope clarity: Is the team’s intended work clearly defined? The committee looks for a coherent problem statement, a credible approach, and a clear articulation of what success looks like. Flexibility in execution is expected and acceptable. The committee evaluates whether the team can credibly deliver meaningful outcomes, not whether they have followed a prescribed format.
• Milestone structure: Are deliverables broken into realistic and verifiable checkpoints with dates? Proposals with lump-sum outputs and no interim milestones score lower.
• Ecosystem fit: Does the work advance ENS’s stated objectives for this cycle? Applicants should map their work explicitly to the objectives ratified in the companion SPP3 program proposal.

Teams below threshold receive written feedback and may reapply in the next cycle.

Budget Authority

The total SPP3 budget, committee compensation, and process timeline are ratified in the companion SPP3 program proposal before the nomination window opens. The committee operates within that envelope with no authority to exceed it. Any unspent funds at the conclusion of the SPP3 cycle return to the DAO treasury. They do not carry over automatically.

The Meta-Governance Working Group is responsible for coordinating the
disbursement mechanics, including the payment stream, in accordance with the
ratified budget.

[estmcmxci]

@Coltron.eth

The Meta-Governance Working Group is responsible

This clause applies only if the current Working Group structure remains unchanged.

Given the recent [Temp Check] Expanding the ENS Foundation Board to Strengthen Operational Accountability for ENS DAO, the ENS Board will assume budget authority in this case.

Are there any additional contingencies the committee model should account for across these two scenarios?

[Coltron.eth]

@estmcmxci

This clause applies only if the current Working Group structure remains unchanged.

I will add broader language to avoid dependencies on specific groups that may change.

@estmcmxci

Are there any additional contingencies the committee model should account for across these two scenarios?

Not that I see. I think that proposal works well under it.

In regard to budget authority, this committee is ratified by an on-chain DAO vote. Its authority derives from the DAO, not from any working group budget or structure. This holds regardless of how internal governance evolves. If a board or any successor body assumes the operational responsibilities currently held by the MGWG, it is expected that disbursement coordination for this committee would transfer with them.

[estmcmxci]

Hello, has sufficient time passed to consider moving forward with [Social] SPP3: Program Authorization?

I think it is in the best interest of existing Service Providers for the DAO to provide clear direction on the program as soon as possible.

—

@Coltron.eth

If a board or any successor body assumes the operational responsibilities currently held by the MGWG, it is expected that disbursement coordination for this committee would transfer with them.

Is it safe to assume that, absent ratification of an alternative body, Term 7’s Meta-Governance Working Group @Meta-Gov_Stewards will own SPP operations?

[brantlymillegan]

@estmcmxci

Hello, has sufficient time passed to consider moving forward with [Social] SPP3: Program Authorization?

Yes and I believe @Coltron.eth will be posting an update shortly. Thanks to everyone for your public and private feedback.