A June 19 proposal argues the DAO’s current setup is creating delegate fatigue and weak accountability, and would shift operations, grants and long-term capital stewardship to the foundation.
ENS DAO has published a June 19 temp check proposal to broaden the ENS Foundation’s role as the organization rethinks how responsibilities are split between token holders and day-to-day management. The proposal, authored by katherine.eth, argues the DAO’s current structure pushes token voters into operational decisions they are not well placed to make and identifies five structural problems, including delegate fatigue, overuse of voting bandwidth on routine matters, weak accountability between the DAO and funded entities, slow coordination across working groups, and the challenge of managing ENS’s sizable treasury, endowment and token reserves through episodic token voting. Under the plan, registration revenue, treasury management, grant distribution and coordination across working groups would move under the foundation. ENS token holders would retain what the proposal describes as non-negotiable powers: control over the ENS protocol itself and the ability to remove foundation directors. The proposal follows an earlier version that sought to add a budget-allocating board, but this iteration argues empowering the foundation directly is a more effective fix. The rethink comes as some crypto projects move away from early DAO structures and consolidate authority. ENS is positioned differently from many peers because ENS Labs is largely self-sustaining and not venture-backed, with funding supported by an initial $1 million Ethereum Foundation grant and ongoing .eth registration revenue. ENS traded at $4.79 as of June 20, down more than 94% from its November 2021 all-time high of $85.69, with a circulating supply of 40.4 million out of a total supply of 100 million, according to CoinMarketCap.