This post is written to all ENS DAO Delegates and offers a case for you to vote for a budget cap of $3.6m in the active Snapshot Voting for New Service Provider Streams.
There’s a general consensus on the merits of Service Provider Streams in this thread.
But why vote for a $3.6m budget cap? Why not less?
Here’s some important rules in the proposed Service Provider Streams framework:
- Projects must obtain a minimum of 1 million ENS in approvals to proceed.
- Eligible projects will be ranked by vote count. A greedy algorithm will then be applied to select the highest-voted projects, provided the cumulative budget does not exceed the preset limit.
We should note how it’s going to require a LOT (!!) of positive signals for any project to attain the minimum floor of 1 million ENS in approvals. For evidence, let’s look at some of the latest DAO votes completed:
- There were only 1.6 million total votes cast for each of the recent [4.4.X] ENS DAO Working Group budget requests.
- The ENS Meta-Goverance Working Group only received 1.3 million votes in approval of their budget request.
When service providers are submitting their projects to the ENS DAO for voting we can expect quite a high quality standard will be required to attain the required 1 million+ ENS in votes.
Every project passing through this demanding quality filter can be expected to be an excellent proposal. They will need to come from strong teams and show a clear plan for creating value for ENS and helping ENS grow.
I’ve been speaking with other dedicated builders in the ENS Ecosystem. Assuming the DAO approves this Service Provider Streams concept the aggregate total of really good proposals is going to sum to several millions.
If a budget cap for the overall Service Providers Streams framework is limited only to $1.2m this puts a high probability that multiple teams with fantastic proposals and a strong consensus of support from the DAO of over 1 million $ENS votes will be left out in the cold. That will really suck for ENS.
Appreciate that a cap of $3.6m is a lot of money. It is ! But if you’ve run teams of talented developers before you’ll be familiar with how shockingly fast developer salaries add up.
No one is making a case for it being good to spend $3.6m. This vote isn’t about spending money. It’s about investing into the continued growth and success of ENS. We have so much potential with ENS and there is so much remaining work to be done. These investments can produce a strong return in the growth of ENS.
Let’s not starve ENS of the resources needed for a more diversified set of builders and visions for how ENS can fulfill its mission. The DAO has these resources available. The endowment is mature, cash flows are positive, the funding for this program is capped at a maximum, any service provider who underperforms can have their funding stream terminated, and Clause III of the ENS Constitution already makes the case for the need and approval of funding improvements to the ENS system.