ENS DAO Newsletter #57

Newsletter Roundup (tl;dr)

• ENS Labs Update: Oxford Blockchain Conference, ETHLondon, Integrations

• Community Updates: 3DNS, Namespace Updates

• Meta-Governance: Financial Report, Bylaws Update

• Ecosystem: Service Provider Updates

• Public Goods: Builders Quadratic Funding Round

Welcome to the ENS DAO Newsletter:

•  New editions — published bi-weekly (Tuesday)

•  Previous editions are archived on the ENS DAO Archive.

•  New proposals are broadcasted to Telegram.

•  ENS DAO Dashboard is now available for public review.

•  Submit feedback — tell us what to feature!

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Refer to ENS DAO Calendar for ENS DAO working group calls and other events.

• Calendar: Public Access / Access with Gmail

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The Term 5 Dashboard, managed by the Meta-Governance Working Group, provides updated summaries of DAO governance and initiatives. Regularly check it for the latest developments.

Note: A minimum of 100k $ENS is required to submit executable proposals. Once a proposal gains momentum, the stewards will prioritize it for a vote during the designated voting window. See our Governance Docs for more information. To view the real-time distribution of voting power among delegates, visit votingpower.xyz.

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@James posted a temp-check that describes an amendment requiring vesting for all ENS token distributions to Stewards. This motion would see a 24-month linear vesting schedule, which extends beyond the Stewards’ 12-month terms. The rationale is to prevent any misalignment between the DAO and Stewards and to discourage the premature sale of allocated ENS tokens. The proposal suggests the possibility of using tools like Hedgey for implementation, allowing Stewards to retain full voting power while ensuring the value of the tokens is accessed according to the vesting schedule. James.eth also suggests an additional vesting ‘cliff’ that would come into effect around 2.5 months after a Steward joins, further entrenching the alignment over the full 24-month period. The proposal is open to a vote where the community can approve the addition of vesting, not approve it, or abstain. — 03.18.24 

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The ENS Governance Distribution Program temperature check, proposed by @Avsa, outlines a new strategy to combat voter apathy, enhance decentralization, align third parties with the ENS ecosystem, and combat voting power stagnation. This revised proposal, following feedback from an earlier version, suggests breaking down votes into “skin in the game ENS matching” and “inertial delegated voting power”. The “ENS Matching” part aims for better alignment with entities contributing to the DAO by granting them vested ENS tokens proportional to their monetary support. The “Inertial Delegated votes” section proposes giving past and current stewards continued influence through delegated voting power, which would be effective immediately but would not include access to the underlying tokens. The proposal also includes measures to prevent stewards from voting for their own re-elections, ensuring fair use of this inertial voting power. — 03.19.24 

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In February 2024, the ENS Protocol registered 38.6k new .eth domains, bringing the total to 2.1 million. The protocol generated revenue of $1.78 million during this period, all of which was allocated to the ENS DAO. The number of Ethereum account holders with at least one ENS name increased by 35k.5, totaling 838k. There were 34.1k primary ENS names set, making the overall count 772k. Additionally, 6.2k new avatar records were created, reaching a cumulative total of 156k.

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The Oxford Blockchain Society recently hosted its conference from March 12-13. ENS Labs was among the participants, featuring talks from nick.eth, matoken.eth, esk3nder.eth, urbelis.eth, and marta.eth. Topics ranged from managing a large-scale DAO to building a community with ENS, as well as cybersecurity. — 03.13.24 

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Nick.eth gave a keynote during this years Pragma event scheduled during ETHLondon. Taking place at Christ Church Spitalfields, the discussion addressed fundamental aspects of the ENS Protocol as well as potential use cases in the short to long term. — 03.14.24 

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Luc.eth from Developer Relations at ENS Labs led an ENS Workshop during this year’s ETHLondon event. The session included a discussion on the fundamentals of ENS, resolvers, and more. — 03.15.24 

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Talent Protocol unveiled the second version of their platform, which now integrates support for ENS domains. This enhancement simplifies the process for users to connect their blockchain-based resumes with their ENS names, thereby improving the platform’s utility. — 03.19.24 

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Google has introduced a feature that shows the balances of ENS-enabled wallet addresses in its search results. This service, which initially supported direct searches of public Ethereum addresses for balance information, now extends to ENS domains like “example.eth”. These human-readable domains are linked to Ethereum wallets, making transactions easier. The data is sourced from Etherscan and is displayed as of the last external transaction. — 03.22.24 

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• ENS Radio: XMTP Adoption & Updates — 03.13.24 

• ENS Radio: 3DNS integrated ENS & the future of DNS — 03.20.24 

• ENS Radio: Ethereum Attestation Service — 03.27.24 

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Jefflau.eth highlighted the importance of ENS in a series of posts discussing its role in making the web3 ecosystem more user-friendly. He underscored that ENS was built as a protocol to empower users to name and manage their digital assets and identities. The aim is to deepen integrations within the web3 space, allowing for a seamless naming convention that could include everything from crypto addresses to DAO contracts. — 03.11.24 

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The ENS DAO’s Ecosystem and Public Goods Working Groups were present at this year’s ETHLondon hackathon. The Ecosystem Working Group presented ENS Prizes (up to $9500) at ETHGlobal London to hackers who make the most notable contributions to an open-source library and demonstrate the best use of ENS. Meanwhile, the Public Goods Working Group led an activation in partnership with ETHGlobal to distribute free ENS names to all hackers who participated during the conference. — 03.15.24 

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ETH Bucharest announced that ENS had become a sponsor for the upcoming ETH Bucharest Hackathon, scheduled for March 27-30, offering their expertise and a bounty of $1,000. — 03.15.24

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ENS has now been fully integrated into 3DNS, bringing two major upgrades to the 3DNS domain ecosystem. The integration includes the implementation of Gasless DNSSEC, which is now live, leveraging the CCIP Read or EIP-3668 protocol developed by ENS Labs, allowing Ethereum smart contracts to validate and reconcile data off-chain without incurring gas fees on Ethereum Mainnet L1.

Additionally, the customer resolver, operating on Layer 2 Optimism, has been introduced. This allows for the seamless management of domain data on L1 while being operated on L2, without the previously necessary gas fees, thanks to the work of co-authors @0xpaullio and @nicksdjohnson on EIP-5559. This innovation offers a cost-effective domain management solution, making the update of records like TXT and content hashes more economical. Domains on 3DNS can now function equivalently to an ENS name with lower cost management on L2, signaling a step forward in the evolution of domain management. — 03.18.24 

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Namespace announced a strategic partnership with the Web3 JavaScript library (web3.js) to launch a plugin for ENS on Web3js’s marketplace. This collaboration was aimed at enhancing the ease of use for developers within the ENS ecosystem. Recognizing that Web3.js is one of the premier open-source libraries for Ethereum, Namespace leveraged its capabilities to improve the integration of ENS features. The newly introduced plugin enables developers to incorporate functionalities such as ENS domain registration, text record management, and address and name resolution into their projects dApps. The initiative was part of Namespace’s commitment to ensuring that ENS names are widely accessible and implemented across various platforms. — 03.20.24 

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Variance is a Flutter SDK designed to facilitate the integration of account abstraction in mobile app development, particularly focusing on dApps and smart wallets. It is an open-source initiative aimed at enabling Flutter developers to more easily engage with web3 technologies. A significant feature of Variance is its integration with ENS, providing tools for name registration and resolution for smart accounts. This integration is further enhanced by the development of an ENS normalize implementation in Dart, allowing for direct name resolution and reverse lookup within the SDK. This approach simplifies the process for developers building web3 apps that leverage ENS. All Dart/Flutter SDKs from Variance are licensed under the BSD 3-clause license. The project, led by founders Peter Anyaogu and Godwin Alexander, represents a significant step in making web3 technologies more accessible to mobile developers. The repository for Variance can be found at variance · GitHub. — 03.25.24 

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• Meta-Governance – @5pence.eth

• ENS Ecosystem – @slobo.eth

• Public Goods – @vegayp

• DAO Secretary - @limes

The responsibilities of the Lead Stewards & Secretary are set out in Rule 9.8 and Rule 9.9 of the Working Group Rules.

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• ⚖ Meta-Governance @ 1PM UTC Tuesday — Google Meet

• Ecosystem @ 4pm UTC Thursday — Google Meet

• Public Goods @ 5pm UTC Thursday — Google Meet

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The Meta-Governance Working Group provides governance oversight and support for working group operations through DAO tooling and governance initiatives.

Meeting Minutes:

• Minutes for Weekly Meta-Governance Meeting — March 12th

• Minutes for Weekly Meta-Governance Meeting — March 19th

Meeting Info:

• Tuesdays · 1:00 – 1:45pm UTC

• Meeting link

Term 5 Meta-Governance Stewards:

• 5pence.eth

• avsa.eth

• estmcmxci.eth

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The Meta-Governance Working Group has taken action to address the issue of users mistakenly sending $ENS tokens to the ENS contract. In a specific initiative, they have processed refunds for 13 recipients who collectively received a total of 589 $ENS tokens. This corrective measure was informed by discussions in the Governance Forum, which provided context for the refunds. Additionally, the ENS DAO outlined a policy for future incidents, stating that refunds for $ENS tokens sent in error to the ENS contract will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Users who find themselves in this situation are advised to contact the the Meta-Governance Working Group or to make a submission on the forum to request a refund.

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Highlights from the February 2024 financial report:

Financial Overview:

• Revenue > Cash Burn, Runway: 191 months

• Proactive financial management resulted in a $20M profit in February, with endowment revenues covering 36% of cash burn

• Revenue $2.4M, showing a slight increase from the previous month, Cash Inflow: $1.5M, exceeding cash burn by 2.18 times

• Normalized Cash Burn: $0.7M, with Reserves reaching $131M (ETH: $103M, USDC: $28M)

• Total Endowment: $90.3M, P&L: $20.5M driven significantly by ETH mark-to-market gains

Review the full report prepared by @Steakhouse here

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The Meta-Governance working group recently announced an update on the drafting of ENS DAO Bylaws, indicating that Lemma has completed a GAP analysis as an initial step. This analysis will serve as the foundational phase before they embark on penning the first draft of the Bylaws. They underscored the need for feedback to identify any oversights and to gauge community sentiment. An invitation was extended to Stewards, Delegates, and Contributors to provide input on the Bylaws GAP Analysis through a specific link shared for this purpose. Lemma remains open to questions and encourages responses either in the related discussion thread or directly to them, emphasizing the collaborative effort in refining the governance framework. — 03.12.24 

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Karpatkey presented its Endowment Update with a reported endowment value of $95.3 million, indicating a decrease attributed to a fall in the price of Ethereum. General comments included the creation of the ENS DAO Fund Flow Dashboard, the continuation of work on the RM v2 implementation, and the release of the latest monthly report.

Endowment Overview:

• Portfolio Composition:

  • Ether: 77%

  • Stablecoins: 23%

• Capital Utilization: 100%

• Current APR: 6.2%

• Operational Moves:

  • Swapped 1,000 ETH for stablecoins

  • Claimed rewards and swapped for stablecoins

  • Deposited stablecoins into existing protocols

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The ENS DAO Working Groups advanced their funding request process. These requests focused on the Meta-Governance and Public Goods Working Groups. While the Public Goods proposal has passed, the Meta-Governance proposal failed to meet the minimum 50% approval rate. The Meta-Governance Working Group addressed this development during their weekly meeting and is assessing various resolutions on how to proceed. — 03.19.24 

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The Ecosystem Working Group strengthens the ENS Protocol by facilitating developer relations, identifying and funding high-potential projects that enhance ENS, and bolstering support for ENS-aligned initiatives overall.

Meeting Minutes:

• Minutes for Weekly Ecosystem Meeting — March 14th

• Minutes for Weekly Ecosystem Meeting — March 21st

Meeting Info:

• Thursdays · 4:00 – 5:00pm UTC

• Meeting link

Term 5 Ecosystem Stewards:

• Slobo.eth

• Limes.eth

• 184.eth

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Eth.limo

In the first quarter, eth.limo was engaged in splatform enhancements to boost performance and resilience. The service provider completed a architecture migration two weeks prior, marking a milestone in its broader initiative to modularize and expand its platform. This included the transition to a multi-cloud environment, the implementation of RPC failover using DRPC for a decentralized pool of node operators, and bolstered support from certificate authorities, which also led to an increase in rate limits.

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Namehash

Namehash has recently disclosed an open-source project that serves as a proof-of-concept for executing a .eth referral program using Zero-Knowledge proofs on the Axiom platform. Their mission is to support the growth of ENS and they believe that developing the .eth referral program is one of the most effective methods to foster this expansion. To accomplish this, Namehash is working closely with Axiom.

For further engagement or information, they have made contact details available, which include reaching out to @yisun on FC or following the Axiom Twitter account. Additionally, Namehash has provided a comprehensive deck that contains an abundance of information regarding their updates and it can be accessed on their website.

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Blockful

Blockful recently focused on enhancing the developer experience by improving offchain resolver features. They have concentrated their efforts on researching and developing resolver capabilities with EVM-compatible L2s. Blockful shared their milestones, roadmap, and open-source code, on their GitHub repository. Additionally, Blockful set out to achieve the integration of ENS with other platforms and addressed the challenge of supporting go-ENS.

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Namespace

Kris Kocic from Namespace, has developed a platform aimed at facilitating the management of ENS Subnames, including their sale and gifting, complemented by a developer toolkit to streamline ENS subnames integration. The company’s mission is to democratize access to Web3 identity through ENS, accomplishing this by actively integrating ENS with various dapps and projects, creating innovative solutions for the ENS community, and providing developers with a user-friendly API for straightforward ENS integration and subname management. To give an overview of their achievements and current projects, they referred to a set of slides detailing the company’s progress on the platform, technical documentation, and various integrations and partnerships.

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Unicorn

Unicorn aims to empower non-profits to raise cryptocurrency and foster crypto economies, while also ensuring safety from scams, frauds, and phishing attacks. Acknowledging the ease with which people can make errors in crypto transactions, Unicorn is developing a non-custodial wallet on the market. This wallet, using ENS, will restrict certain actions to prevent errors, such as sending to an incorrect 0x address. Additionally, they are creating a system that allows anyone with an ENS domain to generate their own onboarding portal and are considering a way for subdomains to share in transaction fees. Unicorn’s early product is currently available for mobile users here.

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Tokenization LLC, represented by @ENSPunks, established the company to assist small businesses engaged in the Web3 environment with managing self-custody wallets. To address this, PunksLLC was created as a Series LLC under the laws of Delaware, allowing the formation of separate LLCs for additional legal structures underneath. Each wallet is tied to a Series within the LLC, similar to real-world property owners creating separate legal entities for each property to limit liability to that individual asset.

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The Public Goods Working Group supports the greater Ethereum ecosystem by identfying and funding open-source development.

Meeting Minutes:

• Minutes for Weekly Public Goods Meeting — March 14th

• Minutes for Weekly Public Goods Meeting — March 21st

Meeting Info:

• Thursdays · 5:00 - 5:45pm UTC

• Meeting link

Term 5 Public Goods Stewards:

• Coltron.eth

• Vegayp.eth

• Simona.eth

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Rio Onchain Week hosted approximately 300 hackers at the ETH Samba Hackathon. The ENS workshop was led by Nebula and energized by the collaborative support from Blockful and bambalabs. Attendees delved into ENS, gaining practical knowledge on the significance of ENS in the broader web3 framework and mastering the process to secure a domain. This educational session stood out as a cornerstone of the hackathon, enhancing the participants’ understanding and skills in navigating the decentralized web. — 03.22.24 

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At EthLatam, held in Honduras, a reported strong turnout of over 800 people filled the rooms on the main stage throughout the day. The event was predominantly attended by students. @vegay delivered a presentation on strategies for raising funds through public goods, contributing to the ongoing discussion of financing in the blockchain and public sector space. — 03.13.24 

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Simone Staffa from UrbeCampus has been actively engaging the developer community in Rome through Web3 meetups and hackathons. In February, they hosted a one-week bootcamp powered by Arbitrum, focusing on teaching basic smart contract development and dApp building. The bootcamp included 20 hours of workshops with 60 attendees. Additionally, a hackathon at the event saw the development of 9 projects by 40 hackers. UrbeCampus is keen on scaling their efforts and maintaining follow-up with developers to further contribute to the ENS ecosystem. To connect with their initiatives, interested parties can follow UrbeCampus and ETHRome on X. — 03.21.24 

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Allison Alvarez presented HiWomenBiz and reported updates since its inception in 2022, having hosted 50 onboarding events with 1,500 individuals enrolled. HiWomenBiz is a community founded by women with the goal of empowering other women in emerging technologies such as Web3. They recently launched a bootcamp specifically designed for women, which just commenced last week. The bootcamp was met with high demand, evidenced by the 430 applications, and in response, 200 scholarships were offered, all of which were conducted in Spanish. — 03.21.24 

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The ENS DAO’s Builders Quadratic Funding Round is live on Giveth. This funding round, which will run until April 8th, is aimed to support verified public goods projects with teams of five or fewer members who are striving to make a significant impact. An amount of $20,000 on Optimism is allocated to match donations made to these projects. Giveth encourages donors to participate by highlighting that 100% of their donation will go directly to chosen projects, with the added incentive of earning GIVbacks. Additionally, donors can use GIVpower to boost projects, thereby increasing their visibility on the page.  — 03.25.24 

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ENS DAO offers several resources for understanding and participating in its ecosystem.

• ENS DAO Basics: Details the ENS DAO, including voting and governance.

• Support Docs: Provides guidance on registration, renewals, and development aspects.

• Governance Docs: Offers additional insights into governance structure.

• ENS Agora: Governance hub for proposal review and voting.

• Give Feedback: Feedback platform where users share input to improve ENS.

• ENS Repository: The ENS Protocol’s main Github Repository.

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Thank you very much for reading! Goodbye. 👋🏻