Here is a brief explanation of why I voted the way I did, and I encourage other delegates to vote similarly.
Note that I reserve the right to adjust my vote before the voting period closes, though I don’t expect to make drastic changes.
Also, I gotta say that while voting is hard enough, ranking projects is especially rough.
Supported
Ethereum Identity Foundation
We shipped a lot in the last year, got tens of thousands of users, dozens of integrations, built more than we said we would, and have tons of important work to do for ENS and the identity stack in the next year. See our application for the full explanation. Note: This is my own team.
EthLimo
The OGs, extremely reliable over many years, they’re the only ones capable of providing their service. We should give them even more money than what they asked for.
Unruggable
I supported their funding request in December that narrowly failed, and I support them here for the same reasons: They are dedicated, competent, and have already produced valuable work for ENS.
I’ll kindly remind everyone that, in regards to their last funding vote, several prominent delegates said they agreed with my assessment above and supported funding Unruggable, but said they wanted it to only be through the SPP. Well, the SPP is here, so let’s see that support.
Namestone
Long time contributors, know how to ship, passionate about ENS, happy to keep them in the family.
Blockful
Great work in the last year, and I’m particularly interested in their work in the coming year on governance. Protecting and improving the ENS DAO is one of the most important tasks for the longterm health of ENS.
Namespace
In the trenches for ENS, have built great things to make ENS easier to use for average people, want to keep seeing what they produce in the next year.
Unicorn.eth
They shipped what they said they would, and they have great plans for the future. Particularly interesting that they want to pay revenue back to the DAO. Great to keep Griff and co building up ENS.
Justaname
Newer to ENS but have already shown their passion and ability to ship. Glad they’re here!
Namehash Labs
ENSNode looks great, as well as their other proposals. Their funding ask is on the high side, but I don’t doubt they have and would continue to produce value for ENS.
Agora
Love seeing innovation in the DAO tools space, keep it up!
ZKEmail
Looks like a highly competent team, would be happy to see them building up ENS.
Webhash
They’ve been serving ENS for years in an area that needs more love, decentralized websites, keep it up please.
Ones I didn’t vote for
I won’t give a description for each one, but most are covered by at least one of the following (these don’t apply to all of them):
(1) they seem redundant,
(2) even if I found what they offered to be valuable, I just found other projects to be more valuable for the money,
(3) it seems like they only suddenly showed up when there was money on offer, and
(4) gotta make tough calls, sorry friends.