Link to Snapshot: Snapshot
Preferred Name and/or ENS name: marcus / estmcmxci.eth
Forum username: @estmcmxci
Twitter profile link (optional): @estmcmxci
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Why do you want to be a Steward of this Working Group?
Over the past 73 weeks, I’ve happily witnessed the ENS Protocol and its governing body achieve incredible feats that few DAOs could, if ever, hope to accomplish — ENS is in a league of its own.
The launch of ENS V3, the Name Wrapper, and the ENS Design System are just a few highlights from this year; of which provide fertile ground for innovation and position ENS as foundational infrastructure for an on-chain identity layer.
The Ecosystem and Public Goods working groups have invigorated ENS’ developer ecosystem via its grants initiatives; ensuring the long-term viability of the protocol. Furthermore, the DAO is proving to be a resilient governing mechanism, with the launch of an endowment thanks in part to the Meta-Governance working group.
All of this ensures that operations continue regardless of market conditions. ENS is truly one of a kind – I’m proud to have played a modest part in its journey.
Today, I’m thrilled to continue that journey as I submit my nomination to serve as a Public Goods steward for the ENS DAO. Generally, I’ve been a long-time enthusiast and advocate of public goods funding.
Among other things, I have:
- Published a bi-weekly digest of DAO-wide updates as part of the founding team of the ENS DAO Newsletter and written about Public Goods in the ENS Ecosystem.
- Ran a week-long initiative highlighting women-led ecosystem projects with a total attendance of ~ 500 people.
- Coordinated with working group stewards to secure an event venue for ENS DAO’s social mixer at Devcon VI in Bogota, Colombia.
- Tended the ENS card printer at Devcon VI (and all I got was a POAP).
- Built a multilingual, multicultural community as part of a modest diversity initiative “ENS DAO Global”.
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So, why do I want to serve the Public Goods working group? As I mentioned earlier, continuous developments in the ENS protocol create fertile ground for innovative applications. This, in turn, will increase Ethereum’s relevance to the mainstream.
However, to remain true to the ethos of building distributed, user-owned networks, it is crucial for the Public Goods working group to directly contribute to breaking down barriers for individuals and communities who are not yet part of our immediate ecosystem.
We should empower more people with the knowledge and skills necessary to establish their own stake within our network. How can we achieve this? Through education. We need to increase awareness about our grants initiatives and make them more widely known.
One way to enhance our working group would be to build rapport among other communities, particularly those led by women or minorities, about the grants offered by the Public Goods working group.
Currently, only a limited group of individuals are aware of these grants. Even many builders within Web3 are unaware that ENS provides public goods grants.
If elected, I plan to kickstart Q3/Q4 with a five-point plan that drives awareness of existing grant initiatives (write-access is enabled and open source contribution is welcome).
The plan will focus on outreach to underserved communities, in alignment with Article III of the ENS DAO Constitution and ENS Labs.
Please consider my nomination as a call to action. Together, we can continue building on the momentum that Public Goods stewards had in Q1/Q2, expand our public goods funding initiatives into a broader domain, and create more heterogeneous learning environments.
Let’s set an example for future generations — for the world!