DAOrayaki | ensDAO a governance DAO for ENS protocol.

10 min readMar 25, 2022

DAOrayaki DAO Research Grant

Fund Address: DAOrayaki.eth

Voting Result：DAO Committee Yes

Grant Amount：120 USDC.

Category: Ethereum Name Service (ENS) protocol, ENS DAO, governance, .eth domain name, delegation, ICANN, ENS Constitution, Brantly Millegan.

Contributor：REDKAZ@Daorayaki

Brief Overview About ENS protocol

Ethereum wallet addresses are complex and human unreadable. This makes it difficult for users to work with them. For instance, if you send funds to an Ethereum wallet, the long random address needs to be typed incorrectly and checked multiple times to establish that it’s the right one. It’s easier to make mistakes there. Ethereum Name Service or ENS fixes that problem by using smart contracts, linking the complex human unreadable Ethereum addresses to a simple .eth (amongst other variants) domain.

For instance, you can bind the address 0xb4b3351918a9bedc7d386c6a685c42e69920b34d to something.eth. Now, it’s easy to interact and work with.

Overall look

What is an Ethereum name?

When you register a .com domain, you use a domain registrar, which updates the database of ICANN, the international organization that coordinates internet resources, such as top-level domains (TLDs). When you go to some address in your web browser, the domain name service (DNS) translates the name into an IP address that points to a server storing the website data.

ENS is partly the same: decentralized websites can be served from blockchain-based decentralized storage service IPFS and accessed via an ENS name, with a browser that supports it. You’ve likely seen them on Twitter profiles — especially those of Ethereum’s proponents, like Vitalik Buterin (Vitalik.eth). As the owner of an .eth domain, you have an NFT on the Ethereum mainnet that is recognized by dApps, much as your Google or Facebook account is across Web2 apps today. With ENS, a name can stand in for a clunky wallet address, allowing owners to receive a variety of digital assets, such as BTC and ETH, directly via the domain name.

ensDAO

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) announced on Nov 02,2022 that it’s now transitioning into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), facilitated by the launch of an ENS token and now seeking DAO delegates. The launch tweet notes that despite most of the things running automatically and nobody being able to tamper with anyone’s registration, there are still things requiring human intervention.

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) current administration wants “ENS root multisig pass over control of the existing ENS treasury, its future funds, and control of the .ETH registrar contract that is in charge of the pricing and registration mechanism for .ETH names. The first order of business for the ENS DAO will be to formally request these from the ENS root multisig key holders” The current multi signature trusted model is being retired in favor of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governing via community voted delegates.

Initial governance

The point of a DAO governance token is to enable a community of people to own the underlying project that they themselves use. The first order of business for the ENS DAO is to vote on a Constitution. This simple set of five Articles, which was drafted by ENS founder and lead developer Nick Johnson, outlines the basic principles that the founders hope the community will hew to. A supermajority vote of token holders over the coming days is required for passage.

“This is just the initial ENS Constitution,” explained Millegan. “There is an amendment provision, and we expect it to be changed and improved by the DAO going forward.”

Design model

The ENS DAO is designed with a delegate model as its base. A delegate model DAO allows voters to elect their representatives as delegates for their constituency. This allows individuals to present their changes to other users, and other users delegate their tokens to support them. The ENS said that most of the functions of the ENS DAO are operated without supervision from humans, but there are still some problems that need to be addressed by humans — such as the multi-signature contract that controls the DAO’s treasury, future funds, and the registrar contract.

To establish a DAO, users of the ENS domain all received a portion (25 percent) of the governance tokens ($ENS) according to various factors. The airdrop for the $ENS tokens went live November 8, 2021 and are available to claim until May 4, 2022. Another 25 percent of the tokens were distributed to the core ENS team, while the remaining 50 percent was sent to the ENS DAO treasury.

Token distribution

The token allocation is distributed into three main divisions,

1. The holders of the .ETH domains will be allocated 25% of the tokens, which will be divided and transferred to the 137,000 active accounts.

2. The second quarter is saved for the protocol contributors, such as 450 active ENS Discord users and 100 individuals and groups.

3. The last portion will be used toward the ENS DAO Community Treasury.

Tokens for core contributors and launch advisors will have a four year lock-up and vesting schedule. There are no tokens allocated for investors, since there are none. A portion of the contributors allocation has also been set aside for >450 active participants in the ENS Discord. However, only 10% of the tokens were available for DAO at the launch, and the organization will unlock the remaining 40% over four years.

Governance Process

According to the ENS protocol documentations the governance process goes as follows:

Venues

Discuss.ens.domains a Discourse forum for governance-related discussion. Community members must register for an account before sharing or liking posts. Registering for the forum allows community members to post in the general forum;

There are four workstream categories: Meta-Governance, Community, ENS Ecosystem, and Public Goods

Snapshot

Snapshot is a simple voting interface that allows users to signal sentiment off-chain. Votes on snapshot are weighted by the number of ENS delegated to the address used to vote.

Governance portals

Tally is a governance portal that allows token holders to delegate their votes, and allows delegates to create and vote on binding proposals.

Process

Types of proposal

There are three main types of governance proposal members can make:

1. Executable Proposal: This is a proposal for a series of smart contract operations to be executed by accounts the DAO controls. These can include transfers of tokens as well as arbitrary smart contract calls. Examples of this include allocating funding to a workstream multisig wallet, or upgrading an ENS core contract. Executable proposals have a quorum requirement of 1% and require a minimum approval of 50% to pass.

2. Social Proposal: This is a proposal that asks for the agreement of the DAO on something that cannot be enforced on-chain. Examples of this include a proposal to change the royalty percentage for the ENS secondary market on OpenSea, or a petition to the root keyholders. Socials proposals have a quorum requirement of 1% and require a minimum approval of 50% to pass.

3. Constitutional Amendment: This is a social proposal that asks the DAO to amend the constitution. Your draft proposal should include a diff showing the exact changes you propose to make to the constitution. Rules for amending the constitution are set in the constitution itself, and currently require a quorum of 1% and a minimum approval of two thirds to pass.

Phase 1: Temperature Check

The purpose of the Temperature Check is to determine if there is sufficient will to make changes to the status quo.

1. To create a Temperature Check, ask a general, non-biased question to the community on discuss.ens.domains about a potential change (example: “Should ENS decrease registration costs for 3-letter domains?”). Forum posts should be in the “Temperature Check” subcategory of the appropriate workstream.

Phase 2: Draft proposal

The purpose of the Draft Proposal is to establish formal discussion around a potential proposal.

1. To create a Draft Proposal, create a new topic in the Draft Proposals subcategory of the appropriate workstream, using the template pinned to the top of the category. Link the temperature check (already created) thread in the proposal draft;

2. Reach out to the network to build support for the proposal. Discuss the proposal and solicit delegates to provide feedback on it. Be willing to respond to questions on the Consensus Check topic. Share the view points, although try to remain as impartial as possible.

3. If the proposal is an executable proposal, the proposer will need to write the code for his proposal while it is in draft stage. He may wish to wait until the proposal is stable before doing this.

4. If the proposal is a constitutional amendment, the proposer will need to produce a diff showing the exact changes he is proposing to make.

Phase 3: Active proposal

Request that moderators advance your proposal to a vote, they will:

1. Move the proposal from Draft Proposals to Active Proposals.

2. Assign the proposal a proposal number in the form EP###.

3. Create a snapshot vote for the proposal with a duration of 5 days, and link to it from the proposer post.

- If the proposal is a Social Proposal or a Constitutional Amendment, that’s it! If the snapshot vote passes, the proposal is passed.

- If the proposal is an Executable Proposal, proposer will now need to submit it to the governor contract for voting on-chain.

To enact an Executable Proposal:

1. Ensure at least 100k ENS is delegated to your address in order to submit a proposal, or find a delegate who has enough delegated ENS to meet the proposal threshold to propose on your behalf.

2. Call the propose() function of the ENS governor (at governor.ensdao.eth) to deploy your proposal.

Once the propose() function has been called, a seven day voting period is started. Ongoing discussion can take place on the proposal post. If the proposal passes successfully, a two day timelock will follow before the proposed code is executed.

Governance glossary

- ENS: An ERC-20 token that designates the weight of a user’s voting rights. The more ENS a user has in their wallet, the more weight their delegation or vote on a proposal holds.

- Delegation: ENS holders cannot vote or create proposals until they delegate their voting rights to an address. Delegation can be given to one address at a time, including the holder’s own address. Note that delegation does not lock tokens; it simply adds votes to the chosen delegation address.

- Executable Proposal: An executable proposal is a type of proposal that is executed by the governance contract through timelock. It can replace the governance contract, transfer tokens from the community treasury, or perform an almost infinite range of other on-chain actions. In order to create a proposal, an address must have at least 0.1% (100k ENS) of all ENS delegated to their address. Proposals are stored in the “proposals” mapping of the Governor smart contract. All proposals are subject to a 7-day voting period.

- Quorum: In order for a vote to pass, a certain percentage of ENS tokens must vote in the affirmative. The current quorum requirements are:

● Executable Proposals: 1%

● Social Proposals: 1%

● Constitutional Amendments: 1%

- Voting on Executable Proposals: Users can vote for or against single proposals once they have voting rights delegated to their address. Votes can be cast while a proposal is in the “Active” state. Votes can be submitted immediately using “castVote” or submitted later with “castVoteBySig” (For more info on castVoteBySig and offline signatures, see EIP-712). If the majority of votes (and a 1% quorum of ENS) vote for a proposal, the proposal may be queued in the Timelock.

- Voting Period: Proposals on Snapshot have a 5 day voting period. Once an executable proposal has been put forward, ENS community members will have a seven day period (the Voting Period) to cast their votes.

- Timelock: All governance actions are delayed for a minimum of 2 days by the timelock contract before they can be executed.