ENS Labs scaled back a controversial proposal to transfer control of the DAO treasury after facing significant pushback from delegates. The new draft keeps the DAO's operational wallet and most of its tokens under tokenholder authority, limiting the Foundation’s initial token grant to just 1 million ENS tokens meant for employee compensation.
Key Adjustments to the Proposal
Katherine Wu, COO of ENS Labs, shared an executable draft presenting the updated governance arrangement. The DAO will maintain control over its roughly 54.6 million ENS tokens and an operational wallet holding about $16 million in ETH and stablecoins. The Foundation Board is instead granted administrative oversight of the $65 million Endowment Safe, but all transactions require a timelock and can be vetoed by a Security Council.
This fresh draft is a direct response to a June 19 temp check where a broader transfer of authority was initially proposed. ENS co-founder Nick Johnson acknowledged on X that the changes were made after reflecting on community feedback and difficult questions surrounding governance centralization. Tokenholders will keep authority over core protocol decisions, the DAO’s tokens, operational wallet, and director appointments.
Community Reaction and Market Impact
The revision comes after the initial plan was criticized as a potential "governance attack," which would have ceded too much control to the new Foundation. ENS traded at $4.34, marking a 4.2% increase in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. The protocol also posted $216,369 in fees over the past month as per DefiLlama statistics.
By narrowing the scope and maintaining DAO control over the operational wallet at wallet.ensdao.eth, the new draft avoids the wider delegation of the DAO’s assets and governance previously contested. Funding flows and token mechanisms remain intact, aside from the defined 1 million ENS reserved for Foundation-related compensation schedules.
