The $ENS DAO is voting to put in a brand new Safety Council, shifting to revive the emergency veto that protects the naming protocol after its co-founder blocked an earlier renewal final month.
Nick Johnson, who goes by nick.eth, filed the executable proposal on Sunday and moved it to an onchain vote the identical day on Tally. As of Monday the measure had 712,320 $ENS votes in favor, zero in opposition to and 66,730 abstaining, clearing the majority-support bar and sitting at 779,050 votes towards the DAO’s 1 million-token quorum. Voting closes round July 20.
The proposal arms the DAO’s solely backstop in opposition to malicious governance to a bunch that can inherit that energy for 2 years, till July 16, 2028. Ethereum Identify Service, the most important onchain naming protocol with a token market capitalization close to $172 million, has spent the previous month locked in a governance battle over who ought to maintain that veto and the way a lot management Johnson wields over the end result.
What the vote does
The executable proposal makes a single name to the DAO’s TimelockController, granting the PROPOSER_ROLE to a Safety Council contract constructed by safety agency Blockful. That contract is managed by a multisig whose signers are the members elected in EP 6.50, the DAO’s council election.
The council’s authority is intentionally slender. It will possibly cancel timelocked proposals it deems malicious, and nothing else. It can’t suggest, amend or provoke any governance motion. The design mirrors the unique council created underneath EP 5.13, a physique first seated as a 4-of-8 multisig.
The successor council raises the edge to cancel a proposal to 5-of-8, up from 4-of-8. Elected members additionally function underneath a binding Appointment Settlement with the $ENS Basis, a public mandate, a elimination mechanism for members who act exterior that mandate, and necessary know-your-customer and background checks earlier than they are often seated.
The proposal additionally units an expiry. After two years, any handle can name renounceTimelockRoleByExpiration() to strip the council’s cancel energy, until the DAO passes a separate proposal to increase it first.
Who gained the seats
The eight signers on the brand new council’s multisig could be learn straight from the contract, which is about to a 5-of-8 threshold. Seven map to public $ENS identities. They’re $ENS co-founder Nick Johnson; $ENS co-founder and longtime Ethereum designer Alex Van de Sande (avsa.eth); Alex Netto (netto.eth), an $ENS delegate since 2022 and founding father of Blockful, the agency that constructed the council’s contract; Griff Inexperienced (griff.eth), co-founder of donation platform Giveth and of the White Hat Group that led restoration efforts after the 2016 DAO hack; Pablo Sabbatella (pablito.eth), founding father of safety agency Opsek and a member of the Safety Alliance who has served on the Arbitrum and Optimism safety councils; and $ENS delegates Colton Liberacki (coltron.eth) and Kevin Gaspar (validator.eth). The eighth signer makes use of a devoted handle with no public title hooked up.
The slate is just not a single bloc. Johnson helped design the DAO and sits on the $ENS Basis board, and Van de Sande is a fellow co-founder. Netto, in contrast, has been among the many sharpest critics of the current push to pay attention energy within the $ENS Basis and Labs. Inexperienced, Sabbatella and the remaining members come out of Ethereum’s unbiased safety world slightly than $ENS Labs.
A time-critical handoff
Johnson framed the pace of the vote as a necessity. The present council’s time period ends July 24, and a spot would go away the DAO with out veto protection.
“It is also time-critical as we have to guarantee it completes earlier than the present safety council expires,” Johnson wrote on the governance discussion board, including that the executable implements what delegates already accepted within the earlier social proposal.
At the least one delegate pushed again on the timeline. “It might have been good to have this proposal up on the discussion board for not less than 12 hours earlier than it was moved to vote,” delegate James Waugh wrote within the thread. Johnson replied that the executable enacts precisely what was voted on and doesn’t introduce new phrases.
To keep away from any lapse, the proposal permits the brand new council as a further veto authority throughout any overlap with the outgoing one.
The battle that preceded it
The vote follows a governance conflict that started in June. An earlier renewal, EP 6.45, handed an off-chain Snapshot vote however failed the binding onchain vote after Johnson voted in opposition to it. Johnson, who’s estimated to manage roughly 3.26 million $ENS tokens, or about half of all $ENS delegated to any handle, mentioned he supported renewal however not with that slate of members.
The failure drew sharp reactions from delegates who mentioned one handle had come to dominate DAO outcomes, and it prompted a neighborhood member to drift dissolving the DAO altogether. Hours after that vote failed, $ENS Labs Chief Working Officer Katherine Wu, generally known as katherine.eth, posted the draft that turned the successor framework now up for a closing onchain vote.
$ENS‘s token drew a muted response. The token rose 3.2% over the previous 24 hours, trailing a 5.3% acquire in ETH however forward of Bitcoin’s 2% rise, in accordance with information from CoinGecko. $ENS is roughly flat over the previous week and down about 14% over the previous 30 days.
Not closing
The vote is on monitor however not closing. The measure closes round July 20 and should clear the DAO’s 1 million-token quorum, and as of Monday it stood beneath that mark at about 779,000 votes forged. The proposal additionally concentrates the identical voting dynamics that critics flagged in June, when Johnson’s holdings alone had been sufficient to swing an onchain end result. Johnson wrote the executable, sits on the ensuing council and controls a big share of the vote seating it, a focus critics have mentioned leaves the DAO successfully steered by one particular person.
The brand new council’s stricter 5-of-8 threshold, authorized agreements and elimination mechanism are designed to reply the focus issues.
If the vote passes and is queued and executed, the brand new council’s contract will maintain the DAO’s cancel energy for 2 years. Elected candidates should signal the Appointment Settlement inside 48 hours of the election’s shut and full KYC and background checks earlier than being seated; any who decline are changed by the next-ranked candidate who cleared the election’s “NONE BELOW” threshold.
