Voting Report (thecap.eth)

Service Provider Program Program Discussion and Admin
1

Brief intro

I think I’m lesser known in the DAO compared to other big delegates, so here’s a little about me and what I believe makes my vote and voice credible, considering I lack voting power, which is perceived as the primary measure of influence.

I’ve been in the ENS DAO for nearly 3 years and have been building on the ENS protocol for over 2 years now. In that time, I wore many hats, and today I’m wearing the hat of a Service Provider, Delegate, and most recently, Scribe for the DAO.

My perspective comes from deep, hands-on involvement across the technical, strategic, growth, and community layers of ENS.

With that, I’m sharing my personal thoughts below in the hope they help the DAO make more informed and constructive decisions.

Note

  • Still haven’t voted but will soon after this.
  • Rankings below are not how I will rank candidates in my vote.

Who I Support (and Why)

Namespace

  • I’m the founder of Namespace, so anything I say here naturally comes from a subjective place. But I believe what we’ve built as a small team of 3 to 4 people (plus occasional part-timers for help) is genuinely remarkable, both in scope and impact.
  • We’ve been consistently building, shipping, and delivering more with less, and have great results, a proven track record, with built products and integrations done, and I’m very excited to keep this momentum going.

Before I continue:

NOTE on Subname service providers

  • Fitting the best teams across protocol, innovation, tooling, outreach, and governance into a limited budget is hard. But Subname service providers check a lot of those boxes when it comes to my favourite category to vote for. If I could, I would support all contributors in this space.
  • For now, though, I believe the 2 strongest teams, by a clear margin, are us (Namespace) and JustaName. Namestone’s ask is larger than both of those combined, with a smaller roadmap, fewer deliverables, less detailed application, and even less stuff built and fewer subnames issued to date (compared to Namespace), despite having had more than 3x bigger budget, and resources, makes the hard case for me to support their $800k ask! (source for data).

JustaName

  • JustaName is a very capable team. They’ve been building on ENS for a year without any funding, which reminds me of how we started. Their product suite is very good for offchain subnames, their ideas are sharp, they are building in an inclusive manner, and they’ve proven they can ship fast. They’re a versatile team with great ideas and clearly committed to ENS.
  • As I mentioned earlier, I believe we are the most complete Subname service provider today. But real recognize real, and I would be doing a disservice to the ENS not to support this team. When I spoke to them, I said that I genuinely believe they’ll be our strongest competition in terms of product quality, subnames issued and adopted, and partners brought into the ENS ecosystem. And I welcome that.

ETH Limo

  • Support for the ETH Limo team is obvious. They consistently deliver and are widely recognized as essential infrastructure within the ENS ecosystem.
  • My only issue isn’t about their work, it’s about the structure through which they’re funded. Limo receives unanimous support year after year and has been a core part of the ENS ecosystem for years now, which makes me question whether they belong in the Service Provider Program. It may be more appropriate to treat them like ENS Labs – a core piece of infrastructure funded directly by the DAO through a separate process and held to the same standards.
  • There has been discussion within the DAO about allowing certain teams to “graduate” from the SPP after demonstrating long-term commitment, ecosystem impact, recognition, etc. Limo guys might be an ideal candidate for that. It would free up room to support at least two of the 25 highly talented applicants this round, while also giving Limo more funding certainty.
  • I could be wrong in terms of DAO not wanting to support more teams without structure, as we have with SPP, but this is how I feel about them.

Blockful

  • Another no-brainer. This is a highly capable, young, hungry, smart, and driven team that brings real value to the ENS DAO and the broader Web3 space. They exceeded expectations on their last grant, delivering not only what was promised but even more than what they initially scoped.
  • The Blockful team has proven they can handle technically complex protocol and governance-related work with confidence and expertise. They are also the first Service Provider to have an ENSIP officially accepted and merged. While some of their previous proposal items overlapped with other teams, they still managed to ship their own set of products, adapt effectively, and found ways to contribute meaningfully to the protocol and the DAO.
  • In my view, they’ve found their strength in protocol and governance improvement and optimization, solving the human coordination problem. They quickly became one of the most reliable technical contributors in that space, and their continued involvement is a big win for ENS.

Unicorn

  • If you’ve followed my work (or my rants on X), you know I regularly complain that Web3 puts way too much emphasis on infra and tooling, and not nearly enough on apps.
  • In one of my articles, I outlined that ENS can scale on three levels: 1) infra, 2) tooling, and 3) app level. Infra and tooling are in great shape. Where we fall short is the app layer in web3 in general.
  • Apps are what drive end-user adoption and the reason people use crypto daily. Our industry needs to evolve beyond apps for speculation. That’s why I’ve always been supportive of products that put ENS names into the hands of end users.
  • Unicorn is a sleeping giant and a perfect example of what this looks like. They built a real product, shipped smoothly, and earned respect from some of the smartest minds in the space. Their growth strategy puts ENS at the core, and as the Unicorn scales, so does ENS.
  • They already have great partnerships, great results, and are steadily growing. I’m very excited to support this team because they have the best crypto onboarding experience and best wallet go-to-market strategy that puts ENS front and center. The sky’s the limit here.

EFP / EIK

  • Brantly not only built and delivered strong results with EFP, but also laid the foundation and opened the doors for its natural evolution into what is now Ethereum Identity Kit. EFP was widely adopted, gave amazing usage metrics, was loved by crypto users, and was highlighted by Vitalik himself.
  • It proved to be the perfect go-to-market strategy, establishing a social graph that will remain a core identity primitive alongside ENS. The next phase feels like a clear step forward – more refined, more ambitious, and more aligned with the long-term vision of ENS evolving beyond ‘domains’ and toward ‘identity’, especially with Namechain being seen as the ‘identity’ chain.
  • On a personal note, Brantly is one of the most unique and memorable figures in crypto. He’s a strong leader, very well spoken, and someone who stands firmly by his values and vision. Next to being a great product builder, he also knows how to build a narrative, which is an extremely valuable skill in Web3, and ENS benefits greatly from people like that. I’m excited about the evolution of Ethereum Identity Kit and look forward to contributing there when a collab opportunity presents itself.

Unruggable

  • The Unruggable team has been contributing to ENS for 3-4 years, possibly more, both with and without grants. If you asked anyone to name the top 10 most impactful people in the ENS ecosystem, Premm and Thomas would almost certainly make that list.
  • They delivered on what they promised in last year’s SPP, including researching and building the Unruggable Gateways, which are now referenced as core infrastructure in official ENS documentation.
  • Beyond their technical contributions, they consistently push the DAO forward and raise the standard for all of us.
  • Thomas has been especially active in advancing discussions around public goods and advocating for underrepresented communities, including recent support for African builders.
  • Premm has taken the lead on ENSIP development, and I look forward to seeing more leadership and proactiveness behind that initiative going forward because I believe this unlocks more opportunity for technical contributions.
  • All in all, I believe they both bring a lot of value and ideas and have a lot more to offer. I would love to see them continue to be funded.

Webhash

  • This is an ENS OG team. Earlier, I made the case for supporting ‘app-level’ products while talking about Unicorn, and this is another one in that same category, with just as much potential for mass ENS adoption, but through a different path. Instead of wallets and communities, they focus on decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant websites accessed and operated through ENS domains. In my view, this project absolutely deserves funding.
  • The team has a strong track record of building user-facing products, and they’re targeting a massive space. There are roughly 1B domains registered globally and over 300M active websites today. If we truly believe in blockchain, it’s only logical to expect a shift toward decentralized web infrastructure. ENS should be positioned to lead that transition, and Webhash makes that easier for everyone. I also read their whitepaper for the Namehash protocol, which outlines a three-layer model: hosting, gateway, and application. It’s ambitious, thoughtful, and exactly the kind of long-term vision ENS should support.

ENScribe

  • This is a creative and high-value use case for ENS names and subnames. Our team had considered building something similar, but didn’t have the bandwidth to pursue it, so I’m genuinely glad to see a technically capable team taking it forward.
  • I’m especially excited about the security implications of naming contracts, and I see strong potential for this approach to gain traction.
  • It’s a promising idea with real potential, and I’m excited to see where they take it because I believe they are an extremely technically capable team and perfect to execute this!

Alpha Growth

  • Throughout my analysis, I prioritize those who strengthen the protocol, build meaningful infrastructure, show long-term commitment, and most importantly, work to grow ENS adoption beyond the walls of the DAO – externally scaling ENS into the hands of every end user. We have a lot of amazing builders, and I believe we would collectively benefit from having someone like Alpha Growth to push for adoption.
  • ENS’s biggest advantage, besides a beautifully designed robust protocol, is its potential for ubiquity. Resolution, recognizability, and integration across the Web3 ecosystem are what make ENS powerful and superior to competitors! This is the main reason I want to support this team I think others should support them too!
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