ENS DAO vote nears quorum to install new Security Council by July 20

ENS DAO members are voting on a new proposal to install a Security Council and restore the emergency veto that protects the Ethereum Name Service from malicious governance actions. Voting began the same day Nick Johnson, ENS co-founder, submitted the onchain execution proposal, and the measure had 712,350 ENS votes in favor, zero against and 66,730 abstaining at the time of reporting, for 779,080 votes cast against a quorum threshold of more than 1 million tokens ahead of a vote expected to close around July 20. The proposal would grant the DAO’s TimelockController cancel power to a Security Council contract built by Blockful and controlled by the members elected in EP 6.50. Its role is narrowly defined: the council can cancel timelocked proposals it considers malicious, but it cannot propose, amend or initiate governance actions. The mandate would run until July 16, 2028, extending the framework first created under EP 5.13 unless the DAO later renews it. The filing follows Johnson’s decision roughly two weeks earlier to veto a previous renewal proposal. That earlier episode drew attention to the concentration of ENS governance and to treasury risks as community members debate how to protect DAO assets from a potential governance takeover, sometimes described as an RFV raid. ENS DAO controls roughly $350 million in assets, or about $88 million excluding ENS holdings, while ENS traded around $4.20 on July 14, down 95% from its November 2021 peak of $85.69.