Brantly Millegan to leave ENS and wind down ethid.org
Millegan’s exit and a delegate’s warning over an ENS Foundation proposal highlight a governance overhaul that could shift stewardship of about $143.5 million in treasury assets away from direct DAO operations.
ENS Labs Operations Director Brantly Millegan said he is leaving the Ethereum Name Service ecosystem and shutting down ethid.org, the identity services company that served as a provider to the ENS DAO. The move affects projects tied to ethid.org, including GrailsMarket, ENSMarketBot and Ethereum Follow Protocol. It comes as ENS debates a major governance overhaul centered on a June 19 proposal to move treasury management, grants and long-term capital allocation to the ENS Foundation while leaving tokenholders in charge of protocol upgrades, pricing, constitutional changes and Foundation board appointments. The proposal would place about $86.9 million in endowment assets and $56.6 million in liquid assets, or roughly $143.5 million in total, under Foundation stewardship, and has drawn warnings from at least one ENS delegate that it could shift internal power dynamics and challenge ENS’s decentralized model.
- DAO: A decentralized autonomous organization, typically governed by tokenholders through on-chain or community voting.
- delegated voting power: Voting rights assigned by tokenholders to another participant, allowing that person to vote on their behalf.
- ENS Foundation: The Cayman Islands foundation tied to Ethereum Name Service that, under a June 19 proposal, would take on treasury management, grants and long-term capital allocation while tokenholders retain control over core protocol decisions.