These kinds of ambiguous accusations are very unhealthy to a community discussion. It leaves observers wondering who you are talking about and if you know something we don’t. This sows distrust throughout the community, preventing conversations from being had in good faith.
If you have any evidence or specific observations to support your thinking, it would be great for us to hear it so everyone can be on the same page. Otherwise, I would respectfully ask that we refrain from making accusations about the intentions of others (or at the very least clearly present it as an unsubstantiated opinion or gut feeling).
Your warning is addressing a different risk than the one this Admin Panel design introduces.
Read:
I’m in favor of lean and well-scoped operational groups that streamline execution while preserving decentralization and community authority.
Regardless, I don’t think halting elections is the right move. We should follow procedure and introduce changes incrementally. Giving delegates the option to either vote on candidates or wind the Working Groups down during the elections, as @nick.eth suggested, feels like the appropriate approach.
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Welcome, Eugene! A great place to start is by reviewing the Working Group Spending Summaries and the ENS Ledger. You can perform an analysis based on the figures presented there — they track back to 2022.
I’d recommend using the existing community-provided data to support your retrospective, should one be provisioned. I’m happy to help guide you toward this.
Personally, I think performing a retro in vitro — in parallel to ongoing operations — is better than pausing the WGs. That said, winding them down entirely also seems to be on the table. In either case, the retrospective shouldn’t interfere with the election process.
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Indeed! A great resource is the DAO Newsletter — now on its 100th edition. It’s a bi-weekly summary of the latest news and developments from ENS Labs, ENS DAO, and the broader ENS community.
Hope you can make it to an upcoming meta-gov call to breakdown your proposal for the DAO!
I think the reasoning behind the delay is that it wouldn’t make sense to run elections to put people into roles that might be significantly changed or restructured in a couple months.
It would be unfair to the newly elected stewards, as well as the delegates who contemplated the choices and might have chosen differently for the new roles.
The issue here, is all the assumptions that we have to make. We shouldn’t be working with assumptions, or “if” and "then"s.
Introducing election and moving forward with normal activity in the DAO shouldn’t interrupt AT ALL the Retro. In the scope of a new election, the chances of someone elected be completely foreign to the organisation is very low, again, it’s an assumption from my part, same as assuming what kind of changes the Retro would bring.
At some point it feels we are giving too little credit to the potential new stewards, while relaying too much on the current stewards, which of many have been here for years and contribute to the current state (wether that’s good or bad, it doesn’t matter). Also for the first time, the new elected stewards would have a fresh canvas, helped and drawn from the Retrospective, feels like fresh air.
We have precedent of deleting WGs after election and changing everything while on term, and nothing bad happened, so I am having a hard time now trying to understand why out of sudden we are acting so cautious about a process that can and should perfectly run parallel to the normal day-to-day of the DAO. Once again, we don’t have ten of thousands of complex processes in place nor a huge community to manage to think that the people who spend 1 hour in weekly calls are now irreplaceable and a determinant for the Retro to happened, when realistically we have seen that with luck 2/3 of the stewards are present.
Everyone should be familiar with rule 12.1 of the Working Group rules, which states that the rules may be amended at any time by passing a Social Proposal.
The possibility of change is not a blocker to elections, because that possibility is already embedded into the structure of the Working Group rules themselves.
This proposal raises valuable points about the need for a structured, data-driven retrospective on ENS DAO’s activities over the past two years. A review like this could help clarify spending outcomes, improve reporting standards, and support stronger decision-making going forward.
However, a few areas need clearer definition: the exact scope and deliverables, the specific role of external contributors such as MetaGov, and the practical implications of extending steward terms. A brief scoping or alignment step before work begins could help ensure expectations are shared. Overall, the initiative is directionally useful, and with tighter clarity around structure and responsibilities, it could provide long-term value to ENS governance.
I read the entire proposal prior to replying; I did not find a budget breakdown or justification anywhere. The figure of $100k-$150k appears in the proposal without justification or reasoning beyond the fact that we can afford it.
How did you arrive at this figure?
How do you know it won’t be too much, or too little?
What will it actually be spent on?
What organisations were considered for enacting this retrospective, and how was MetaGov settled on?
What is their fee structure, and what are they committing to do?
The expectation that passing a proposal to spend 6 figures of DAO money without any clear budget breakdown should be easy strikes me as emblematic of the very attitude this proposal purports to combat.
Demonstrating that the spend is proportional is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. You also need to demonstrate that the amount requested is adequate and justified to accomplish the stated goal.
Agree with all these points, upon reflection this should have been communicated differently.
My understanding is that this is a temp check and it seems that the breakdown of work needs more clarity.
Maybe a middleground is that this temp-check more clearly outlines and scopes the requirements and deliverables of the DAO retro and there could be a subsequent Open tendering process where professional bodies like Metagov (and others) can submit their proposal with regards to how they will meet the goals of the Retro.
Clarifying this point alone would justify reducing the budget, since a lot of the data is already present and validated.
Fair enough - but even for a temp check we need some indication of how we know the amount will be sufficient for the task, and what would actually be delivered - or else how is any delegate supposed to evaluate the proposal?
Post has just been updated to give more clarity around contributors, timeline, budget and specification.
Another highlighted question from todays MetaGov (working group) call was about @eugene being able to speak to the proposal, Metagov.orgs vision for the Retro and budget considerations. Lets aim to have Eugene on the Metagov WG call next week!
That doesn’t seem very meritocratic to me. Why not invoke a tender process akin to an RFP? If a single contributor is chosen without competition, then what chance are we giving excellence to emerge? Or are we assuming excellence based on reputation alone?
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Now this:
Followed by this:
Is borderline contradictory. If you want to tighten it up, I suggest adding a component to the onchain proposal that follows this social proposal — explicitly stating that the findings from this retrospective should be actioned immediately by a designated or elected representative, and outlining the process for selecting that representative.
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Allow me to propose a framework:
Use the ENS Ledger app and quarterly spending reports as the basis for your quantitative research on treasury allocations.
Combine that with qualitative research (e.g. identifying the DRI responsible for distributing and overseeing those allocations).
Deliver an accountability framework that measures performance against compensation.
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I think the Motivation section has some good research questions. I’m looking forward to learning about how to contribute.
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This claim:
and this claim:
Can someone reconcile this for me? The proposal seems to suggest that a working group could continue with fewer than 3 stewards — but as noted, that would require a WG rule change. Does this mean that @James’s proposal also implicitly provisions a WG rule change?
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This seems like a non sequitur. The WG rules explicitly state that the nomination process for Stewards begins on December 6. @Meta-Gov_Stewards are already ad-hoc-ing a shift to December 8, which I don’t see as necessary.
Obviously, we are not following procedure anymore.
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Let’s make this clear: the proposal should explicitly define who is responsible for managing this budget and accountable for delivery — if it hopes to live up to its own stated standard.
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In short, yes, retrospective is a good idea. I’m on the side of progress and champions of internet native organizations.
Appreciate the solid response @estmcmxci and +100 to being “on the side of progress and champions of internet native organizations.”
This proposal came out of organic discussion at some of the most Ethereum aligned events of the year with some of the most driven humans to maintain & develop DAOs & internet native organisations. Although I actually resonate with the idea of a longer and more structured tendering process - I also think every governance proposal has to be opinionated to some extent and this proposal from myself and FireEyes is a direct accreditation to metagov.org, the work they produce and our willingness to empower and contribute to this retro, regardless of what the contribution is (ie the changes to the proposal to give more independence to metagov.org).
+1 on tightening up that second quote especially - What I’m trying to articulate is that I don’t think we want the retro to produce absolute recommendations. Some elements of the DAO might be much easier to provide a clear suggestion for than others - but the key point of these two quotes is "the DAO can continue to build its processes and decision making mechanisms”. By conducting the retro; we give all DAO contributors, metagov.org included, a better position to develop ENS DAO towards higher industry impact and a broader talent pool.
+100, I think this is a great starting point too, I know @Arnold has already been doing a significant amount of data crunching around different spending buckets, summarising forum activity, etc. CC the quote about Another area for immediate feedback is the methods in which ENS stakeholders can contribute to this project - I definitely think this is actually an incredibly interesting research question in itself - What are the multiple ways the DAO can contribute to this retro: Direct DAO contributors, ENS token holders, the broader .eth holder community, etc, etc.
This is a good call out - and my assumption would be that the proposal just needs to be more explicit about this rule ‘change’ - being that this is only temporary and isn’t an actual change to the ruleset (because the proposal doesn’t imply this should be a permanent rule, just time period where there will be an exception).
That quote was from the v1 of the proposal and could certainly be cleaned up in terms of the broad language it contains, however; given the recent proposal from @Limes that had significant (currently 30%) of votes opting to completely deprecate working groups (that also had strong support from ENS Labs delegates) I would argue it’s reasonable that working group elections could be extended until the end of the retrospective (or at least this proposal).
Procedures in DAOs have emergence baked into them, because of their age and level of innovation - We are experimenting with planetary scale technology, across cultures, timezones and visions, some level of flexibility should be acceptable if it’s generally accepted by the participants of said DAO. I agree the elections were scheduled for Dec 6th, this proposal outlines an extension to the current WG term and this steward election period, because of the impact current stewards can have to the retro.
Definitely agree for the executable proposal and excited to collaborate with @eugene, metagov.org and the DAO over the coming weeks to develop a clear breakdown of budget, management and accountability.
Can you please explain how appointing someone “primary and only contributor” is “in line with wanting this proposal to be as credibly neutral as possible”?
I’m not quite sure what it means for a proposal to be a “direct accreditation”, but you seem to be saying the DAO should select metagov.org based on your say-so. Like @estmcmxci, I think an RFP process would make a lot more sense. At a minimum we need to have an actual budget and deliverables.
I notice that you have updated the specification section to state that this temperature check will be posted to snapshot this week - though you haven’t mentioned this change anywhere in a reply. This proposal is in no way ready to be voted on, for a multitude of reasons:
The current post is a temperature check, not a draft proposal. The format is fine for a temperature check, but falls far short of the standard required for a proposal, as outlined below.
The current text interleaves actions and narrative justification, making it unclear what actual effect passing the proposal would have. For example, it states “If a working group has all three stewards that are unwilling to participate in the term extension, this proposal would initially propose their WG would be ‘paused’” - is this a requirement, or a ‘proposal’? This text is found nowhere in the ‘specifications’ section, presumably meaning that it has no effect on the DAO and making the status of working groups after the original end date of December 31 unclear.
We have clear working group rules; what rules would this amend, and in what way? It’s not enough to say “working group elections would be paused until the following onchain proposal ratifies this proposal” - what happens if an onchain proposal isn’t posted in a reasonable timeframe? What happens if it is posted but fails? The subsequent proposal will also need to state how this will affect future terms - will this next term run a full year, or terminate at the end of next year and the following elections resume at the usual time?
Neither the actual budget, nor the deliverables are concretely laid out. It makes little sense to ask the DAO to vote on a proposal to deliver an unspecified deliverable for an indeterminate amount of money; you may as well leave out budget and deliverables entirely and just ask the abstract question “does the DAO think a retrospective is a good idea”?
We’re wanting to follow as many processes as possible around this proposal, though as was discussed at the delegate all hands metagov call this week, there’s time pressure around this proposal because of the steward election timeline and DAO pressure around working groups generally.
Credibly neutral as possible compared to the previous proposal that outlined Myself, Arnold and Clowes as part of the retro initiative - There was strong feedback from delegates and working group stewards that by having individuals already involved in the DAO there would be some underlying bias within the retro. Thus by making metagov.org the primary contributor to the retro we make a more credibly neutral process (by removing the bias myself and others might have had).
An RFP process would consume significantly more DAO time and coordination than this proposal aims to. Similar to the SPP program and other DAO initiatives, we should continue to refine these ideas in the future (perhaps with a retro v2 in years to come). However for this initial retro, aligning with an organisation as respected as metagov.org is a strong first step. Just like Nethermind was selected as the partner to contribute to Namechain development without a RFP, at times industry leaders can be selected via their expertise and network. Thus why proposing metagov.org as the independent reviewer here was supported by ALL working group leads (that have publicly posted) and was well received at the delegates all hands meetings (both online and IRL, neither of which you have recently attended, delegates and contributors who have attended recent DAO calls have generally signalled positively towards the retro and have been very supportive of metagov.org’s participation).
My initial thought here is that last week’s proposal about abolishing the working groups was in a similar place. That proposal received no such pushback from yourself and ENS Labs delegates. I recognise that as I’m a primary driver of the retro there is inherent bias against this initiative based on our history. Throughout this process I’ve been working alongside stewards, contributors and delegates in order to move the entire industry and ENS DAO forward in good faith.
On point 1.
Last week a proposal went to vote with very short cadence and while still being in ‘temp check’ phase rather than a draft proposal which you voted yes on. Many of these more nuanced forum proposal rules aren’t consistently followed, which makes sense given the emergent nature of DAOs and their bylaws.
As outlined in above replies, DAOs are emergent and given wider timelines (such as the pending steward election) moving this vote to snapshot is the first step in this proposal because of the need for a social proposal to pause the steward nomination period.
On point 2.
The bylaws were written under a broader ruleset which has obviously evolved gradually over the years since DAO launch. Adherence to those bylaws is always encouraged, but certainly many proposals and decisions made in the past have enshrined common sense and trust as the guiding lights over strict adherence to specific bylaws, especially in these emergent situations. The DAO has maintained course throughout and I would argue that the same is true here.
Saying this, adding more detail to the specification section is a good call: The specification section has now been updated to include; 1. Specific meta governance rules that are affected by this proposal 2. Adding ‘pause’ specifications around WG multi-sigs in the edge case that all three stewards are unwilling to continue during this period. The assumption is that the humans (especially those elected by the DAO such as WG stewards) involved with ENS DAO are acting in good faith. The section below has been added to the specification section of the proposal:
Effect on working group rules:
This proposal affects Working Group elections and is utilising Working Group rule 12.1 around Working Group Amendments.
This proposal has an onchain ratifying vote that extends WG terms and pushes the next election window until March after the ENS retrospective.
This snapshot proposal doesn’t pass, triggering a start to the elections whenever viable:
Triggering Working Group rule 6.1, where steward elections will take place “as soon as is practicable after the missed Nomination Window or missed Election Window.” CC the post from Metagov Working group here.
If two or more WG stewards are no longer willing to continue in their positions, funds from that multisig will be returned to the DAO treasury, in line with the bylaws.
If one WG steward is no longer willing to hold their multi-sig position, the Metagovernance working group will decide on multi-sig governance or funds being returned to the DAO.
On point 3.
This proposal is signalling support and structure for an ENS DAO retro, and the outcomes have been discussed at length, both in the replies to this post, during working group meetings, and discussed at delegate all hands meetings. As outlined, this proposal is a timely first step (due to the pending steward elections) in a multi-week process around ratifying the retro, where this proposal gives early clarity around core contributors (metagov.org), budget outlines (without committing capital), paths for wider DAO contribution as well as proposal motivations and timelines.
As mentioned at the top of this reply, the reason for this proposal being pushed to a vote quicker than normal is due to advice from the MetaGov working group and the time pressure of the planned steward elections and their impact on the retro.
i’ll go on record and say that ive had nothing but good interactions with eugene, happy to see him here
Further for abundance of clarity, in this thread I stated:
I do not believe that the passing of that prevents a retro to be done, if the DAO desires one. However, intertwining the retro with steward elections is not something I support.
You take issue with this summary but you quote “are happy to see him here”? I was assuming when I said “supported” that “happy to see him here” was support…
