The stream provider rules explicitly start with:
“Objective: To support service providers contributing to the advancement and sustainability of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS).”
It is clearly NOT meant to be a general grant for Ethereum projects, but rather specifically about advancing ENS.
But now of course, that is open to interpretation. What does it mean to “improve ENS”? Does having a better usability on Ethereum wallets benefit ENS? Does having a decentralized social media benefit? Does that answer change if we are talking about supporting an upcoming project or something established that already serves millions of users in different integrations in many social media apps?
I have my own answers. The way I will be judging them will be mostly “If a meteor strikes the next ENS Labs team retreat, will these projects be able to keep the ball rolling?”. But of course that is my take and not a hard rule written anywhere. I have the opinion that we should allow delegates to judge if these projects help “improve the ENS system” (and make that question clear on the snapshot vote). And it should fall on these projects to prove to the delegates that they are not only good projects that deserve funding, but that doing so will “contribute to the advancement and sustainability of ENS”.
In this sense, I think it would be better if Meta-gov’s used its curation power to remove only projects that are most likely not be functional. Projects that nobody ever heard of the team, that have no working website, that never had any relationship with the ENS community, that are just promises, etc.