ENS Token Holders Approve Proposal for ENS Foundation to Operate Independently
ENS token holders have approved the "ENS DAO New Era" proposal, and the related execution plan has been completed on-chain, officially making the ENS Foundation an independent operating entity.
The foundation will establish a full-time executive director, dedicated staff, and a 5-member board of directors, responsible for representing ENS in organizations and standards bodies such as ICANN, IETF, and W3C, promoting matters related to the ".ens" top-level domain, and conducting policy communication, intellectual property protection, personnel recruitment, ecological funding, and other offline operational work.
According to the new governance structure, ENS DAO, ENS Foundation, and ENS Labs form a clearly defined tripartite system. The Endowment fund assets, supported by .eth domain registration fee income, remain unchanged, with transactions requiring a 9-day time lock, and the ENS Security Committee can cancel operations beyond the foundation's authorization scope.
ENS DAO holds 54.6% of the total token supply, still controlled by the DAO and token holders, with one exception: a one-time transfer of 1 million ENS to the foundation for employee salaries according to a public compensation framework. The foundation and ENS Labs are independent legal and operational entities; the foundation does not own ENS Labs, and ENS Labs does not have governance rights over the foundation, allowing token holders to appoint or dismiss foundation directors.
The inaugural 5-member board includes Executive Director Alexander Urbelis, ENS founder and ENS Labs CEO Nick Johnson, and three independent directors: Kartik Talwar, Brett Sun, and Anthony Leutenegger.
In terms of market mechanisms, the governance structure shifts from DAO-led to a specialized foundation undertaking offline functions, concentrating funds and decision-making authority under DAO supervision, while ENS Labs focuses more on core development, with discussions on the maturity of event-driven decentralized organizations heating up.
Existing custodians and funding commitments will continue to be fulfilled, with the foundation gradually taking over related affairs.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
ENS has gradually evolved from an early DAO-driven model to establishing an independent foundation to handle policy, standards, and offline operations. The execution of this proposal marks a shift in governance from purely on-chain to institutionalized division of labor.
The capital path is reflected in retaining DAO control over the protocol and the majority of tokens, while transferring a limited amount of ENS to the foundation for salaries, granting it management rights over the Endowment (subject to time locks and the security committee), with the motivation to allow a professional team to handle matters with traditional internet organizations like ICANN, while maintaining ultimate oversight by token holders.
Similar to other protocols that have established foundations to take on compliance and ecological operations to reduce the decision-making burden on DAOs, ENS is currently in the stage of establishing a dedicated institution for long-term standard setting and policy communication.
This essentially represents a restructuring of governance, with the mechanism being that when a protocol needs to continuously interact with traditional standards organizations, purely on-chain voting is insufficiently efficient, making a dedicated foundation a necessary complement.
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