Service Provider Strategy Forum

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ENS Service Provider Strategy Forum

Note: This forum and its links are independently organized and maintained by estmcmxci.eth

About the Forum

The Service Provider Strategy Forum is a curated discussion designed for prospective service providers and interested delegates. Nick Johnson, ENS’s lead developer, joins the call to provide insights and answer questions about ENS and its infrastructure needs, ensuring an informed and meaningful conversation.

Purpose

The strategy call facilitates conversations among service providers in the ENS ecosystem, serving as a sense-making session to explore needs and opportunities.

Nick.eth will not be providing suggestions on what to focus on; applications should come from those who identify a need and have the capability to address it.

This is an opportunity for proactive participants to articulate the specific problem they have identified and how their service will solve it.

Post-Call Summary

Notes and key insights from the discussion will be shared on the ENS forum in the same thread as this announcement, including details on each prospective service provider’s proposed solution and feedback offered.

This ensures that valuable takeaways from the conversation are accessible to the broader ENS community, including those who could not attend.

Participants are encouraged to continue the discussion in the forum, building on ideas from the call and exploring potential collaborations.

How to Join

Prospective service providers must answer the following question when requesting access:

What specific problem within the ENS ecosystem do you see, and how is your proposed service uniquely positioned to address it?

Delegates who wish to attend can select the “Delegate” checkbox in the questionnaire and enter “n/a” for the required question.

If service providers prefer not to share their contact information, message estmcmxci.eth on the ENS forum to receive event access details.

Agenda

The discussion will follow:

  1. Overview of Nick.eth’s post: Service Provider Program – Scope & Deliverables
  2. Service providers present their proposed solutions and receive feedback
  3. Open Q&A: Exploring key challenges and opportunities for new service providers
    • ENS core infrastructure
    • DAO infrastructure
    • Partnerships and integrations

The call will be scheduled for 90 minutes but may end early if discussion naturally concludes.

For full details and to request access, visit the event page.

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Thanks for taking the initiative to set this up. I am looking forward to participating if I can align calendars on my side!

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Appreciative of the effort that has gone into organising this @estmcmxci but as outlined on the Metagov call I do have some concerns that I that I would like to follow up on.

Context

@nick.eth is in a unique position - he built the protocol/leads ENS Labs, but is also a large delegate.

Over the past weeks I have made two requests:

  1. For ‘the DAO’ to clarify what they would like to see from potential Service Provider Program applicants. As ‘the DAO’ is represented by its delegates the path that seems to have emerged for this is delegates sharing their opinions. @nick has done this, and I would implore other delegates to do so as they see fit:
  1. For a representative of ENS Labs to provide clarity on their work on protocol development.

I think there is incredibly important nuance here. I queried this because of my desire to avoid wasted energy and duplication of effort whilst ensuring efficient resource allocation. See:

ENS Labs have historically worked on protocol level development, and are funded independently of the SPP. The new ‘Service Provider Applications’ sub tag will allow potential applicants to see what their competitors are intending to work on.

In addition to this, it would be useful for a representative of Labs to create a similar post documenting their positioning so potential applicants can work with complete information when discerning what to work on over the coming year(s).

To be abundantly clear, Labs absolutely have no obligation to do this, I personally just think that it would be useful.

If they were open to providing this information perhaps (noting that @nick.eth wears many hats) another representative of Labs could provide this insight so as to avoid confusion.

Commentary

Noting the above context I am concerned that this proposed ‘Strategy Forum’ is unclear in its intent.

I would like insight from delegates on what they would like to see from the Service Provider Program. My proposal for a sub tag to house these opinions would serve this purpose. I am not averse to a supplementary open call for all delegates (that want to) to discuss their opinions directly with potential applicants.

The initial Temp-Check: Strategy & Discussion Call (Office Hours) seems to differ in its intent to what is outlined in this post.

The original post essentially concerned working group call overflow - the topics that warrant more in depth discussion with active participation from significant ecosystem players including ENS Labs. I am massively in favour of such a call.

TL;DR - This post (and the proposed call) pertains to the Service Provider Program. This differs from the original temperature check and is, in my opinion, not appropriately open or inclusive.

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FWIW, The first metagov call of every month will be a delegate forum with an agenda of updates and Q&A that is tailored specifically to their needs.

The first one of these will take place on April 1st, which falls in between the closing of the SPP application window and the beginning of the SPP voting window.

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I won’t speak for Nick, but I believe they have signaled their intent to clarify this during the Strategy Forum. The aim is also to identify where Service Providers may overlap with each other and ENS Labs’ efforts. I understand that Unruggable Labs ran into this issue last year, and the forum would provide a channel to discuss how to avoid redundancy in efforts at large.

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That’s the intention! Glad to hear you’re in favor of a corresponding call where we can dive deep into strategy together, such as handling the ENSIP process. As noted, the existing process may need renovation, and I’d be happy to set up a follow-up call on this, with input from ENS Labs, of course.

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This Strategy Forum would be the first in a series of calls, if the community is interested. Given the upcoming Service Provider Program voting period, the first call will focus on identifying overlaps between ENS Labs and Service Providers to minimize redundancy.

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To reiterate: the call is open to all prospective Service Providers who follow the registration process. Delegates are welcome to participate as well.

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I don’t think this is a good description of the situation. The DAO is soliciting proposals to build ENS and ENS DAO infrastructure; the infrastructure shouldn’t be secret - in fact, it’s crucial that it’s public and well known. Nothing a streaming provider builds should be a surprise to anyone.

I feel like the scope of what Labs builds is reasonably clear, but I’m happy to answer questions about it both here and elsewhere.

My intention on this call is purely to answer questions from prospective service providers and delegates about ENS and its infrastructure needs, from my perspective as an ENS veteran. Hopefully that will help people get some perspective on their plans and enable them to better put forward proposals that benefit ENS. I’m not attempting to assume any exclusive or gatekeeping role here.

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I agree. I am advocating for transparency on what people are planning on building. The applications in themselves will provide insight, as will open conversation amongst potential applicants and delegates.

This is a great initiative, and provides a platform for these conversations. The timing of the first call does mean that it doesn’t give delegates a platform for saying what they want in advance of/during the application process.

This provides clarity. Essentially, in its current form, this is a conversation amongst teams who are/may be funded by the DAO. In this case you are speaking as a representative of ENS Labs and not in your role as a delegate.

Clear.

It seems like this conversation will be a useful platform for this.

It seems like a missed opportunity to not push for delegates to get involved in this conversation too.

I still believe that this should be an open conversation.