In my view, from a business perspective, our focus should be on developing ENS infrastructure that drives adoption and usage. Specifically, we should concentrate on attracting a new audience interested in owning second-level .eth domains and, more importantly, on developing infrastructure that helps retain these newly captured domain owners. This segment is crucial because it underpins the revenue generation powering the service provider program.
We should avoid prioritizing subdomains on other ecosystems. These subdomains, often minted for free or through third parties without revenue sharing with the ENS DAO and don’t contribute to the adoption of second-level .eth domains at all. In many cases, they are used primarily for airdrop hunting rather than for delivering long-term value.
Funding for subdomain and gateway projects should come from ecosystem-specific grants rather than from the DAO itself. For example, Optimism once provided such grants. I received one for building Opti.domains, where we developed the first OP Dispute Game Gateway, a generalized gateway for the superchain, and a UI for migrating ENS domains to Optimism. Despite these efforts, our team—and other grantees—haven’t received sufficient support from Optimism, largely because their vision is that governance should thrive independently of foundation support. Unfortunately, this approach makes it challenging to drive adoption within the Superchain under current market realities.
$1.2M/year might not be enough for the long term, especially as more chains are launched every year. There are now more than 20 chains in the Superchain. However, the revenue gain from this is less than 1% of the grant paid. Why don’t we collect money from these chains if they want the DAO to develop and maintain the gateway for them?
Ultimately, the most impactful areas for increasing the adoption of second-level .eth domains lie in decentralized web (dWeb) initiatives—such as eth.limo, DNS services for .eth domains, website builders, and services like Vercel for ENS. However, only one project (eth.limo) was selected in the first service provider program, while many of the other selected projects focus on subdomains and L2 gateways. These latter efforts neither increase second-level domain adoption nor contribute to revenue growth for the ENS DAO.
It’s best to have two teams competing on the same topic. This setup creates an environment where both teams are driven to deliver the best product as quickly as possible. Adding more than two teams, however, tends to yield diminishing returns, with no significant improvement in speed or quality.
This contradicts your perspective on DAO infrastructure in the first service provider program.
In my view, the current DAO infrastructures are now sufficient, with most having already raised fund.
Rather than channeling additional funds directly from the DAO, these infrastructures should be supported by ENS Labs through traditional outsourcing contracts.
RFP is the best option, but the topic should be set by someone with deep understanding and strong business skills—someone who knows what ENS really needs and how much it should cost to boost adoption of .eth 2LD domains. The DAO itself doesn’t have this level of business expertise.
Also, having two funding pools is better than one. If five existing established teams each ask for $800K to $1.2M, there won’t be room for new, promising teams, which kill innovation. If the Solana accelerator saw this, they might laugh.
We should look at how Optimism’s governance grant has evolved for RFP and learn from how Solana accelerators fund new, high-potential teams.
$2k - $50k grants distributed by Ecosystem Working Group stewards. (Ref: ENS Ecosystem Working Group Grants 2025)
For those who say new team should apply to Ecosystems grant, don’t you see a huge gap between $50k and $300k? (Note: Maximum to Minimum comparison)