So this is a tough one.
I spent quite some time mulling this over and thinking what the right approach is. I ended up voting for this. But with some concerns. I will outline my thinking below.
Funding amount
As already discussed and outlined above I think the ask is rather high but not unreasonable if we compare it to the ENS labs one. To that end I would like to see same high quality work from Unruggable as ENS Labs and to have them contribute in multiple ways to DAO.
Accountability
I agree with the accountability issues raised by @estmcmxci. And I find the post by Thomas here: Accountablity: [EP 5.29] Funding request for Unruggable to more than cover at least the concerns I had for accountability and what I would expect Unruggable to do with these funds.
What’s more remember, this is not Unruggable getting the funds and running away. If at any single point we want to stop the stream we can do it as a DAO. To that end, in that post Unruggable even provided the appropriate call data.
Process
I see that as the thing that annoys me with Unruggable’s request. And also from discussions with other delegates and stake holders and from the reason some people voted No above this is the major pain point.
The idea is that we should follow due process. And I get it and I have to agree it annoys me too. But then what’s the process? There seems to be no given process to graduate from the SP program and that program does not seem to guarantee continuity in a stable enough way so that projects can grow and flourish their team while building for ENS.
Various solutions were proposed. I think Unruggable could have and should have taken them. Interim funding until the next SP vote, increase in SP budgets etc.
Frankly I don’t see why Unruggable did not opt for that. That approach would have worked, and the DAO would have a united front FOR it from what I can read. I am annoyed that this did not happen and we now have a quite contentious vote in our hands.
But though I find it annoying they did not accept the interim funding, I can’t find myself to consider this as the reason to not vote for them. They are a good team, been with us for long, what they are building is useful for ENS.
What’s more there is one other company that also does not stick to the SP process. ENS Labs is somehow an exception. And perhaps that’s fine. But then we should allow for more exceptions. This is a DAO after all.
TL; DR
Voting yes.
- Good team, passionate and loyal to ENS
- Proven track record
- Building something that’s needed for ENS v2
- Funding request is quite high. But compared to ENS labs, reasonable
- Annoyed they wanted to push this outside of established processes
- That probably means we should change those processes.