ENS DAO Newsletter #58

Newsletter Roundup (tl;dr)

• ENS Labs Update: ENS Stats, ETHBucharest, BUIDLASIA

• Community Updates: Integrations, Merchandise, Call for Feedback

• Meta-Governance: Active Voting Period

• Ecosystem: ENS Identity Round

• Public Goods: Small Grants 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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 Calendar

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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@AvsA outlined a Governance Distribution Program in an effort to increase the $ENS voting supply. It details a strategy for distributing ENS tokens to DAO members — review the temp-check here. — 03.19.24 

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In March 2024, the ENS Protocol registered 21k new .eth domains, bringing the total to 2.1 million. The protocol generated revenue of $1.3 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 18.3k, totaling 844k. There were 16.7k primary ENS names set, making the overall count 788k. Additionally, 3.9k new avatar records were created, reaching a cumulative total of 159k.

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ENS Labs sponsored and participated in the inaugural ETH Bucharest event and hackathon in Romania, held from March 27 to March 30. Luc.eth, a member of the Developer Relations team at ENS Labs, assumed dual roles as both a speaker and a mentor. — 03.26.24 

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BUIDLASIA is a tech conference highlighting developments and key players in the industry. Matoken.eth, a Core Developer at ENS Labs, delivered a keynote presentation titled ‘ENS Beyond Web3,’ which delved into fundamental ENS concepts, explored use cases beyond the .eth TLD, such as cb.id and Gasless DNSSEC, and discussed the future of ENS, emphasizing their recent collaboration with GoDaddy.

Slides from the presentation can be found here. — 03.27.24 

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ETHSeoul is a 3 day hackathon held in South Korea. Matoken.eth was a featured speaker and judge at the event and hackathon, where they delivered an ENS integration workshop. The workshop covered ENS fundamental concepts, how to integrate ENS into onchain apps, and its Thorin Design System.

Slides from the presenation can be found here. — 03.30.24 

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In an interview conducted by Tereza Bízková via HackerNoon, Khori Whittaker, Executive Director at ENS Labs, shared their views on decentralized identity, onchain social platforms, and the potential impact of ENS in reshaping online identity paradigms. The interview delved into the significance of decentralized social platforms and their potential to engage the next billion users.

Read the interview in full here — 04.02.24 

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• ENS Radio: Ethereum Attestation Service — 03.27.24 

• ENS Radio: Giveth Quadratic Funding Round — 04.03.24 

• ENS Radio: Fluidkey and Onchain Privacy — 04.10.24 

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Participate in improving the ENS Ecosystem! Provide feedback on Canny, where members of ENS Labs and Working Group stewards will work to address your submissions. The ENS community can submit feedback in three main categories: Feature Requests, Integrations, and Bug Reports. You can also participate by upvoting or commenting on existing submissions. We’re listening to the community, send your feedback on Canny now.

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The Public Goods Working Group partnered with Giveth for their Quadratic Funding Round. The round aimed to support public goods, specifically assisting grassroots developers and small projects with a notable impact in their fields, with $20,000 available on Optimism to match donations. Funding public goods strengthens the ecosystem, broadens the adoption of web3, and directly supports builders constructing open-source infrastructure on web3. The Donation Period closed on Monday, April 8th — donations will be distributed to participants soon afterwards. — 03.25.24 

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The Ecosystem Working Group has partnered with Gitcoin for their upcoming Grants Round. The ENS Identity Round offers a $100k matching pool to support projects developing decentralized identity on ENS. This round will support projects actively building on ENS. Any project that is contributing to the growth, enhancement, or support of the decentralized identity system around ENS is eligible. — 03.27.24 

Round Details:

• Submissions: April 2nd - April 16th

• Round Period: April 23rd - May 7th

• Apply here

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Fluidkey announced platform enhancements integrating Privy, Safe, and ENS to improve privacy in blockchain transactions. With the latest update, users can now send and receive onchain assets without revealing their wallet addresses, thanks to the ENS integration, which enables them to utilize fkey.eth subnames and preserve fund privacy. Additionally, the login process has been streamlined, offering authentication via Farcaster, Google, or email powered by Privy for a smoother user experience. — 03.27.24 

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Basescan is a user interface that allows for searching and navigating various transactions, addresses, tokens, prices, and other onchain events on the Base Layer 2 blockchain. The blockchain explorer recently integrated support for ENS, which allows users to look up onchain activity with ENS Names. — 03.27.24 

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The Public Goods Working Group is distributing 7.5 ETH to eligible projects that benefit the Ethereum ecosystem. Projects eligible for the Public Goods small grants rounds have a broader scope that benefits the entire Ethereum or Web3 space. The voting period will conclude on April 11th, and rewards will be distributed soon thereafter. — 03.28.24 

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Blockful, a developer studio with a focus on building open-source infrastructure, recently delivered an ENS Workshop at BambaLabs, a co-working space for builders and creatives to meet and work together in the heart of Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro. — 03.28.24

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General Magic, a Web3 Design & Development Studio, recently announced the ‘ENS Merch Shop,’ a dedicated space for purchasing ENS merchandise. The Merch Shop operates on a print-on-demand basis, offering a diverse selection of items and colors, and allows users to customize their apparel with their ENS name. Items available at the store include hats, mugs, t-shirts, and hoodies, with worldwide shipping options available.

Visit the ‘ENS Merch Shop’ here. — 04.02.24 

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Opepen, a generative art and PFP project founded by NFT artist Jack Butcher, which allows collectors to influence the evolution of the art pieces, now allows users to display their .eth addresses as usernames, enhancing the user experience by facilitating easier identification and interaction within the platform. — 04.06.24 

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Value Domain, a Japanese domain registrar, has integrated ENS name resolution functionality and Gasless DNSSEC for its DNS domains. This feature enables traditional DNS domains hosted on Value Domain to map to Ethereum wallet addresses using CCIP-Read (EIP-3668) for retrieving and verifying DNS records during resolution. — 04.06.24 

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Bankless Academy, an interactive and free-to-access web3 education platform, published a user-friendly guide that assists newcomers in registering their first ENS name. The guide covers concepts such as using ENS as a web3 passport and ENS names as ERC-721 tokens. It also explains how to create an onchain profile by setting text records and includes a step-by-step walkthrough on registering an ENS name.

Read the guide in full here. — 04.08.24 

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Magiziz.eth, a developer from Rainbow, developed a Warpcast frame designed to help ENS name users check their .eth expiration date. It prompts users to enter their ENS domain to check its expiration date. It informs of the remaining time before the domain expires and provides a direct link for renewal. — 04.08.24 

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thecap.eth of Namespace created a Warpcast frame that allows users to mint a free ENS Subname from GotFramed.eth. It provides a dual functionality: firstly, it sets up the user’s address record automatically; secondly, it integrates the user’s Farcaster profile picture into a specially designed frame. — 04.08.24 

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Limes.eth introduced “ENS Roundup”, a comprehensive bi-weekly digest that aggregates the latest developments within the ENS ecosystem. The roundup is a concerted effort to keep the community informed and engaged with developments across various facets of the ecosystem, including governance decisions, grant initiatives, and integrations. — 04.08.24 

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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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Working Group	Time	Schedule	Location
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 26th

• Minutes for Weekly Meta-Governance Meeting — April 2nd

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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In accordance with Rule 10.1 of the Working Group Rules, the Pubic Goods Working Group have put forth an executable proposal detailing a funding request. If successful, a transfer of 450.3k USDC and 21.5 ETH will be initiated from wallet.ensdao.eth to the Public Goods working group.

Cast your vote on Tally.

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Regular and routine management of the Endowment is necessary to continue operations. This executable proposal details a measure to finance the Endowment, as well as a reimbursement for interim funding provided from the Meta-Governance Multi-sig to settle Endowment fees during the months of January and February. The payload will be executed by wallet.ensdao.eth to create the aforementioned allowance and reimbursement.

Cast your vote on Tally.

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Aseem Sood demonstrated a fully onchain Paymaster System designed for subsidized voting. This system allows wallets to have their gas costs to be subsidized, effectively addressing the cost prohibitive onchain transactions that often serve as a barrier to voting. The solution employs account abstraction in conjunction with smart wallets, eliminating the need for centralized services. The only requirement for maintenance is the periodic refilling of the Paymaster. The system is designed to cover costs only for specific function calls and includes a feature to limit expenses by only paying for gas when it falls below a certain threshold.

View the Repository here.

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Tally introduced gasless voting for ENS Delegates, allowing them to vote on proposals without incurring gas fees and making participation in the ENS DAO less cost-prohibitive. The update specifies that delegates need to set their primary name and have at least 100 ENS in delegated voting power to be eligible for the feature.

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@karpatkey recently presented an update on its Endowment, reporting a current value of $96.7 million. This marks an increase from the $95.3 million reported on March 19th. The update included details on operational changes, particularly noting the withdrawal of Ethereum in preparation for a forthcoming project or operation.

Endowment Overview:

• Portfolio Composition:

  • Ether: 77.1%

  • Stablecoins: 22.9%

• Capital Utilization: 99.8%

• Current APR: 4.97%

• Operational Moves:

  • Withdrew ETH for upcoming executable

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The March Endowment report is now available on Karpatkey’s Website. This report provides a detailed overview of the endowment’s finances and allocations. A high-level overview is made available below for reader’s convenience:

Balance Overview:

• Total funds in the endowment: $104,202,838

• Capital utilization: 99.8%

• Monthly DeFi results: $443,017

• Annual Percentage Yield (APY): 5.27%

Review the full report prepared by prepared by Karpatkey here.

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Financial Overview:

• Revenue > Cash Burn, Runway: 211 months

• Revenues: $3.2M (up from $2.4M last month, and $3.1M last year)

• Cash inflow: $1.3M (down from $1.5M last month, and from $1.7M last year), exceeding cash burn by 1.97 times

• Normalized Cash Burn: $0.7M, with Reserves now at $140M (ETH: $108M, USDC: $32M)

• Total Endowment: $95.8M, with P&L of $6.2M, primarily from ETH mark-to-market gains

Review the full report prepared by @Steakhouse here.

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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 28th

• Minutes for Weekly Ecosystem Meeting — April 4th

Meeting Info:

• Thursdays · 4:00 – 5:00pm UTC

• Meeting link

Term 5 Ecosystem Stewards:

• Slobo.eth

• Limes.eth

• 184.eth

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Greg Skril, from Developer Relations at ENS Labs, provided an update on a series of current and upcoming initiatives.

At the ETHLondon Hackathon, 24 teams developed projects on ENS, and 5 teams were awarded prizes. Infrastructure has been established to provide ENS subnames to participants during ETHGlobal, in collaboration with the Public Goods Working Group.

ENS Labs hosted an offsite event and has sent members to BUIDL Asia and ETH Bucharest to mentor developers and deliver keynote presentations.

Technological developments include coordinated efforts to improve library support for gasless DNSSEC and offchain names using Go-ENS. A significant update to app.ens.domains now offers instant loading of subnames. Google is supporting ENS name searches, and Basescan, an L2 block explorer, has incorporated ENS lookups. Additionally, ENS Labs has been addressing various other areas, including ongoing bug fixes for their Manager App, layer 2 research, and the development of next-generation extended DNS resolvers to simplify text record integration for ENS names.

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Mattis, introduced ENS-Auth, a system designed for identity and access management needs. Their approach involves minting and wrapping a subdomain named ‘groups’ under an ENS domain, then integrating it with the ensauth contract. This allows for efficient onboarding to a group management system, making it ideal for use within any onchain organization. Their onchain app allows for the creation, assignment, and management of groups and users. Further technical details, go to their GitHub repository. A video demonstration is available here. For any questions, reach out to Mattis J. Deisen directly via LinkedIn.

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Arr00 presented WNS.vote, a novel voting platform with a focus on sybil-resistant quadratic voting mechanisms. It features an onchain registry that allows each individual to validate one ENS through WorldCoin’s unique identity verification process, which scans the user’s eyeball. This method ensures that each vote is cast by a distinct human being, thereby improving the integrity of the voting process. For more, visit the ETHGlobal site for a demonstration.

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GovScore is an onchain scoring system developed by Onchain Clarity Co. to encourage a culture of accountability. The system awards points based on specific criteria, including setting ENS records. By incentivizing delegates to set their records through its scoring mechanism — accounting for 2 out of a total possible 10 points — GovScore promotes a transparent ecosystem where delegates are identifiable, and their actions are easily referenced. Transparency improves the health of the DAO ecosystem and serves as a basis for accountability. Additionally, GovScore takes into account voting history and the distribution of voting power to foster consistent and diverse representation in the decision-making process.

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Presented by @clowes.eth, ETH Tools offers a suite of resources to enhance the developer experience on Ethereum. Their website, provides a range of tools designed to optimize blockchain interactions for developers. Features include the ability to sign messages, generate ENS hashes, resolve text, and a comprehensive ENS Whois service.

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Brantly.eth presented updates on the Ethereum Follow Protocol (EFP), an onchain social graph protocol for Ethereum. Despite recent challenges, including team departures, EFP is progressing with assistance from Scope Lift. A Delaware non-profit corporation has been formed with a board of directors, and both the protocol’s architecture and manager app have been designed. Smart contracts are in place, and the MVP features for launch are set. EFP has secured 55 launch partners and is now preparing for its testnet release. EFP are actively hiring. Details available here.

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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 28th

• Minutes for Weekly Public Goods Meeting — April 4th

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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Eduardo, a Term 5 Public Goods steward, recently delivered a presentation at ETHGuatemala, which is a recipient of the ENS Public Goods Grant. He provided an introduction to ENS in Spanish to an audience of 200 viewers.

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The Token Engineering Academy (TEA), a Public Goods grantee, provided updates on its education initiative, engaging over 3700 students with more than 1000 exams passed. They are currently inviting learners to join their upcoming cohort from April 25 to July 2024, focusing on building skill sets in token engineering. Additionally, TEA offers a $10k fellowship grant, awarded through a voting mechanism, to support dedicated students. More information about their TE Track at EthCC 2024, taking place on July 10, can be found in Kaidlyne Neukam’s Medium post.

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Simone Staffa from ETHRome, organized the first Web3 Hackathon in Italy last October. Building on this success, another event is slated for this year. The event is scheduled for October 4-6, 2024, in Rome, Italy, and will focus on tracks related to Privacy and Account Abstraction. To view quantitative results from last year’s event, Simone prepared slides for review. Potential sponsors interested in participating in the event can view more information about the event here.

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Corina @snowdot presented Dhive, a governance data hub that is focused on indexing the Ethereum ecosystem and providing seeds to index across various chains and organizations, aiming to offer a holistic view of onchain governance.

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The Public Goods Working Group launched a Perpetual Bounty program to inspire open-source development of infrastructure, tools, and resources that improve the adoption of Ethereum and web3 overall. A grant pool of $5,000 USDC is available to developers who are working on notable projects. The Working Group suggested builder dieas such as developing Warpcast Frames that highlight public goods projects, decentralized identity verification, and decentralized web hosting services.

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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.