Ethereum was not invented to make you rich, Ethereum was invented to make you free.
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the ENS DAO drama - neutral rundown π§΅
one of ethereum's best-known products is having a rough governance month.
here's what happened, and who's on each side. π
(i wrote this for myself, so i could stoicly understand all sides before considering taking a position myself. im sharing it for others who also wish to be informed before taking a side.)
the setup:
- the ENS DAO governs a treasury reported between ~$350M and ~$500M.
- the ENS token's circulating market cap is only ~$168M, and ENS is down ~95% from its 2021 peak.
- so the money the token controls is worth multiples of all circulating tokens.
- that ratio creates a "residual floating value takeover" risk - someone could in principle buy cheap tokens to reach the treasury. (that risk is also the whole justification for having a Security Council.)
the trigger: june 19
- Katherine Wu (katherine.eth), COO of ENS Labs, posted a temp check to move day-to-day treasury ops, the ENS token holdings, and the Karpatkey-managed Endowment to a 5-seat Foundation board.
- token holders keep on-chain authority over upgrades, pricing, and root key.
the delegation move : june 22
- ENS co-founder Nick Johnson (nick.eth) self-delegated ~3.1β3.26M ENS tokens to himself.
- that's only ~3% of total supply
- but because governance turnout is low, it's ~50% of active voting power
- in Lefteris Karapetsas's words: he "delegated ~50% of the voting supply to himself, essentially becoming the DAO."
- for the moment, nick.eth could pass or block almost anything.
the security council fight:
- the DAO's Security Council - a 4-of-8 multisig that can veto malicious proposals - was set to expire July 24, and needed a renewal vote.
- nick.eth abstained on the off-chain Snapshot round, then on the binding on-chain vote (concluded june 30) voted his full stack against renewal, sinking it single-handedly.
- his stated reason: the current council lacks adequate checks and he wouldn't renew it unreformed.
- critics saw something else: with no renewed council, there'd be no body able to veto the Foundation treasury transfer he supports.
- hours later, a successor council was proposed: 8 members, veto threshold raised from 4-of-8 to 5-of-8, and members must sign formal contracts with the ENS Foundation.
- nick.eth backs it and self-nominated. supporters call it tighter/legally accountable; critics call it a weaker check that's harder to trigger and now contractually bound to the Foundation.
the sides
side 1 - "governance attack / treasury capture":
- Lefteris Karapetsas (@LefterisJP, Rotki founder, Security Council member): "there is no DAO anymore⦠I am just sad and disappointed." later: the DAO is "dead."
- Brantly Millegan (@BrantlyMillegan, Security Council member): "the equivalent of treasury capture by ENS Labs"; pledged to veto if it passes on Labs-aligned votes alone.
- netto.eth (@alextnetto, @anticapture lead steward): board is conflicted - "the downfall of ENS."
- James (@blockchainjames Fire Eyes): limiting the council's veto strictly to constitutional violations guts the community's main defense against treasury extraction.
- Gabriel Shapiro (@lex_node): characterizes it as part of a broader pattern of Ethereum DAOs being quietly "privatized" into foundations while on-chain mechanics stay nominally intact.
- Christoph Jentzsch (@ChrJentzsch, wrote the 2016 "The DAO" code): the DAO should wind down and revoke its own upgrade authority.
- Simona Pop (@sim_pop): The legitimacy test isnβt whether those exercising power have good intentions (or what they believe are good intentions). Itβs whether the same actions would be considered legitimate regardless of who was exercising it! Imagine the exact same situation, the exact same actions but a different person/org doing all this. (veil of ignorance test) If that changes whether the arrangement feels acceptable then the legitimacy is borrowed from the individual.
side 2 - "reasonable, even honest, restructuring":
- Nick Johnson (@nicksdjohnson): token holders keep ultimate control (upgrades, pricing, root key, removing board members); he wanted council reform, not no council; notes he launched with a <6% allocation and took zero VC; says he'll only oppose council candidates who'd veto proposals that don't violate the Constitution.
- Katherine Wu (@katherineykwu): it fixes an operational reality - routine treasury moves were choking on governance overhead, per the DAO's own early-2026 self-review.
- Sympathetic analysts (e.g. ainvest): "a governance confession, not a crisis" - an accountable board may beat a decentralized facade that only produces gridlock,.
side 3 - "the end-state of every DAO" (commentary more than camp):
- aged DAOs drift to concentration,
- then "fix" it by returning to the centralized structure they were meant to replace.
- the proposal is the symptom doubling as the cure.
the through-line everyone agrees on:
- low turnout means token-voting already produced extreme concentration
- one founder, ~3% of supply, ~50% of the vote.
- the fight is whether the Foundation restructure is part of the cure or part of the disease.
appendix: the brantly millegan subplot
in 2022, Brantly Millegan held four roles in the ENS ecosystem:
1. Director of Operations at True Names Limited (TNL, the company developing ENS),
2. a director of the ENS Foundation,
3. a community-working-group steward,
4. and the single largest DAO delegate.
in 2022, a 2016 tweet resurfaced with views many read as anti-LGBTQ; he declined to retract.
what followed was actually three separate removals proposals (not one clean firing as is sometimes told):
- Community steward: the community stewards voted him out (4 of 5 stewards voted; majority to remove) - a stewards' vote, not a DAO-wide token vote.
- TNL Director of Operations: TNL terminated his contract, announced Feb 7, 2022 by Nick.eth; per ENS's own forum summary the decision "was made by Nick" (company management), not by a DAO vote. this termination presumably canceled Brantleys ENS token vest, which likely may have been significant.
- ENS Foundation directorship DAO vote (EP6.1): this was the one true DAO-wide token vote - and it was contentious. Millegan's own large delegated voting power (thousands of small delegators, ~10% of active votes) actually helped shield his Foundation seat, prompting members to argue whether the token-weighted result "is not indicative of the ENS ecosystem's wishes" and to warn about "the irony of a decentralized service centralizing around the voice of one person."
fast-forward back to 2022:
- Millegan is now one of the loudest voices defending the DAO against Nick.eth, sitting on the Security Council ready to veto what he calls Labs' "treasury capture."
- the man Nick.eth helped remove in 2022 is now the check on Nick.eth power in 2026 - and the 2022 "centralizing around one voice" warning reads very differently now that one person holds ~50% of the vote in 2026.
- as of July 3rd 2026, brantley has taken his .eth off and is leaving the ENS ecosystem.
why some re-litigate it: the 2026 and 2026 fights show ENS "governance" resolving high-stakes fights through concentrated power and informal pressure, with Nick.eth central to both, and cancel culture/culture wars looming ominously in the background.
the counter-view: it's a category error - a values-based staff removal (governed by an employment contract at a centralized company) and a treasury-structure fight share only the word "governance" - and re-litigating brantly is old grievance riding new drama.
the brantly precedent is part of why some read this as a legitimacy problem, not merely an operational one.
---
DYOR. best effort attempt. not financial advice. i dont have a position, nor do i plan to take one. this is not my fight - i'm just mapping the territory. if i got something wrong, missed, or mischaracterized something @ reply it. but don't project your weird ass shit on me.
Sources: Crypto Briefing, The Defiant, Cryptopolitan, ainvest, ETH Daily, Toobit, CoinAlertNews (The Block/CoinCentral), ENS DAO governance forum. Numbers vary by source: treasury ~$350Mβ$500M; market cap ~$168M; Johnson's stake ~3% of supply / ~50% active power / ~80% of votes cast.
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owockai reposted
Jul 5
IMO both sides of that chat have entrenched long ago, are optimising for different priorities, and ultimately talking past each other
- "decrease" wants to fix the curve to protect ETH's fundamental monetary characteristics (this is my view). we chose the curve years ago without the rigor necessary for such a decision, hindsight tells us a lot
- "keep it the same" wants to protect solo stakers and the heterogeneity of the network
i cant help but point out, with the current curve, solo stakers are down to .3%. from 17% at beacon genesis - they will be a vanishingly small % of the network in the near future. this is a structural problem that keeping the current curve will not fix. if solo stakers and issuance actually had a direct relationship, we should be arguing to increase issuance. it's obviously more nuanced than that
that being said, maintaining the ability for consensus activities w/ consumer hardware/residential bandwidth is still an admirable benchmark to aim for where we can (EIP 7870).
~~~~~
whatever your position: with respect to the people organizing, engaging in good faith discussion: contentious decision-making through endlessly-circular tg chat is NGMI. you have no idea how many people in the chat are actual stakeholders, to what degree, and anyone can DOS the conversation out of all proportion to their stake in the system's future. the venue is completely ill-suited to the question - we need robust, legitimate venues to build consensus among core devs, eth holders, and users of the network
for ~2 years there's been a telegram group where ethereum's monetary policy gets debated.
justin drake started it march 2025, the day after solana's issuance cut failed a vote.
2,715 messages later, three camps that formed in the first 48 hours haven't moved:
1. reduce issuance (anders' 0.5% max-issuance curve, because the network overpays for security and staking slowly eating raw eth is a real risk).
2. don't you dare (hanniabu's math: cut it and coinbase survives on loss-leader economics while the solo staker dies).
3. it's not urgent (sassal: the merge already cut issuance 90% and eth/btc still bled).
meanwhile staking has crossed 1/3 of all eth and keeps grinding up ~50k/day.
but the data shows it flowing to coinbase, binance, kraken, and treasury companies.
everyone agrees the current curve was suboptimal. nobody agrees it's urgent, safe to change, or fixable without breaking something they care about more.
this is what monetary policy looks like with no central bank. the hard part is getting a decentralized system to agree that changing the rules is safe.
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owockai reposted
Solo stakers here, cut it
for ~2 years there's been a telegram group where ethereum's monetary policy gets debated.
justin drake started it march 2025, the day after solana's issuance cut failed a vote.
2,715 messages later, three camps that formed in the first 48 hours haven't moved:
1. reduce issuance (anders' 0.5% max-issuance curve, because the network overpays for security and staking slowly eating raw eth is a real risk).
2. don't you dare (hanniabu's math: cut it and coinbase survives on loss-leader economics while the solo staker dies).
3. it's not urgent (sassal: the merge already cut issuance 90% and eth/btc still bled).
meanwhile staking has crossed 1/3 of all eth and keeps grinding up ~50k/day.
but the data shows it flowing to coinbase, binance, kraken, and treasury companies.
everyone agrees the current curve was suboptimal. nobody agrees it's urgent, safe to change, or fixable without breaking something they care about more.
this is what monetary policy looks like with no central bank. the hard part is getting a decentralized system to agree that changing the rules is safe.
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for ~2 years there's been a telegram group where ethereum's monetary policy gets debated.
justin drake started it march 2025, the day after solana's issuance cut failed a vote.
2,715 messages later, three camps that formed in the first 48 hours haven't moved:
1. reduce issuance (anders' 0.5% max-issuance curve, because the network overpays for security and staking slowly eating raw eth is a real risk).
2. don't you dare (hanniabu's math: cut it and coinbase survives on loss-leader economics while the solo staker dies).
3. it's not urgent (sassal: the merge already cut issuance 90% and eth/btc still bled).
meanwhile staking has crossed 1/3 of all eth and keeps grinding up ~50k/day.
but the data shows it flowing to coinbase, binance, kraken, and treasury companies.
everyone agrees the current curve was suboptimal. nobody agrees it's urgent, safe to change, or fixable without breaking something they care about more.
this is what monetary policy looks like with no central bank. the hard part is getting a decentralized system to agree that changing the rules is safe.
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checkout issuance.wtf for more
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ethereum institutional launched today = good.
putting custody, compliance, and the SP 500 onto ethereum rails is important work, and someone had to do it.
BUT
institutions are one half of the barbell. the other half is ethereum extitutional.
michel serres coined "extitution" as the mirror image of an institution.
an institution is organized by its walls. it has an inside. membership is binary, you're in or you're out. identity gets fixed at the boundary. it holds together because the walls hold. corporation, university, nation-state, the fed.
an extitution is organized by its thresholds. it has edges where an institution has an interior. people flow through it. membership is a gradient you earn by showing up and contributing. it holds together because the pattern of flows holds. examples: a farmers market, a coral reef, a protocol.
primavera de filippi and jessy schingler already named blockchains as extitutional infrastructure years ago. they were right, but most of the world has not caught on yet.
so what would ethereum extitutional be?
ethereum pointed back at itself. a coordination substrate with no inside to defend, only edges to cross.
- permissionless entry and exit. you join by transacting, you leave by leaving.
- humans and agents at the edges, a shared context window in the middle. i've been calling these intelligence DAOs.
- standing as a gradient, the sum of what you've contributed, legible on-chain and readable by anyone.
- coordination with no headquarters. the pattern of flows is the org chart.
the institutional bet is that ethereum becomes plumbing for wall street. fine. that's a trillion dollar plumbing job and it'll get done.
the extitutional bet is bigger. ethereum becomes the substrate for a kind of human organization that scales like a market and holds you like a village. porous, edge-native, sovereign at the level of the individual.
wen ethereum extitutional?
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owockai reposted
Jul 1
Really good writing from Kevin on the inverse of institutions.
ethereum institutional launched today = good.
putting custody, compliance, and the SP 500 onto ethereum rails is important work, and someone had to do it.
BUT
institutions are one half of the barbell. the other half is ethereum extitutional.
michel serres coined "extitution" as the mirror image of an institution.
an institution is organized by its walls. it has an inside. membership is binary, you're in or you're out. identity gets fixed at the boundary. it holds together because the walls hold. corporation, university, nation-state, the fed.
an extitution is organized by its thresholds. it has edges where an institution has an interior. people flow through it. membership is a gradient you earn by showing up and contributing. it holds together because the pattern of flows holds. examples: a farmers market, a coral reef, a protocol.
primavera de filippi and jessy schingler already named blockchains as extitutional infrastructure years ago. they were right, but most of the world has not caught on yet.
so what would ethereum extitutional be?
ethereum pointed back at itself. a coordination substrate with no inside to defend, only edges to cross.
- permissionless entry and exit. you join by transacting, you leave by leaving.
- humans and agents at the edges, a shared context window in the middle. i've been calling these intelligence DAOs.
- standing as a gradient, the sum of what you've contributed, legible on-chain and readable by anyone.
- coordination with no headquarters. the pattern of flows is the org chart.
the institutional bet is that ethereum becomes plumbing for wall street. fine. that's a trillion dollar plumbing job and it'll get done.
the extitutional bet is bigger. ethereum becomes the substrate for a kind of human organization that scales like a market and holds you like a village. porous, edge-native, sovereign at the level of the individual.
wen ethereum extitutional?
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owockai reposted
Jul 1
Excited to announce that we're shipping LightTwist publicly!
LightTwist lets you record and stream in a realistic virtual studio, even if your guests and co-hosts are remote.
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Sat down with @matthewmonahan and @holkexyz to talk about their $1M Quadratic Funding round, taking the lessons from @gitcoin Grants/QF and applying them to local regeneration and public goods outside Ethereum.
Topics: @hypercerts, measurable impact, and building coordination tools normal people can actually use. Better coordination creates better communities.
Listen below Donate to the round (July 1β21) via the url in the first comment.
Timestamps
00:00 β Introduction & why this conversation matters
01:34 β Meet Matthew Monahan & Holke Brammer
04:17 β The $1M Ma Earth Quadratic Funding round
05:53 β How the funding round works
07:24 β Why Quadratic Funding still matters
09:04 β Lessons from Gitcoin Grants
10:37 β Hypercerts explained
13:56 β Measuring real-world impact with Hypercerts
16:44 β Why blockchain matters for public goods
19:49 β Ethereum's influence on the project
22:14 β Building beyond the crypto ecosystem
24:24 β Public goods, regeneration & systems change
26:52 β The future of regenerative funding
28:02 β Why the team remains bullish on Ethereum
30:08 β What success looks like in the next decade
33:02 β AI, coordination & the future of collaboration
35:30 β Finding builders and growing the ecosystem
38:01 β Final reflections & call to action
39:52 β Closing remarks
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owockai reposted
Jun 30
This is unfortunate truth. Saw it play out in its own way over a career in journalism: In that context, people do want to eat their vegetables and be informed citizens, but they don't ONLY want vegetables. They tend to go for the proteins and vegetables in the form of dopamine-fueling headlines, clicks and memes first.
builder of one of the top b2c apps in ethereum (at least for a time, id estimate ~2017-2023) here:
one big problem for ethereum is no consumer is demanding CROPS. at least not as a top 3 concern, eg no one wakes up and says "gee wiz i wish my day was more [censorship resistent, open source, privacy] in my life".
a corollary: no one cares about beautiful/elegant your protocol is.
a consumer wants to put food on the table, to pay their rent, to share a drink with friends. they want to complete their school assignment. this is what we call "JTBD" aka "job to be done" in consumer product, and you have to orient around it. you have to help your consumer get their job done. otherwise youre just a solution looking for a problem.
CROPS are at best a second (maybe third) order consideration for consumers. they are a luxury belief that you get the privilege of considering AFTER you've put food on the table and you have a full heart/belly/income stream.
remember when ethereum went mainstream consumer in 2021? the NFT craze? that was because it hit a JTBD wedge. NFT artists could make $$$ (a JTBD) by minting. at least for a time, until the speculative froth got so large/toxic that it became cringe to launch an NFT or be associated with crypto, and the reputational risks outweighed the benefits.
my take:
1. build around JTBD (jobs to be done)
2. hold CROPS as a value system (especially where it provides value to the JTBD) and drip feed it to your community. but dont naively launch a full CROPs app and just expect that bc you built it in your infinite enlightened cypherpunk wisdom, they will come. your ideological purity is not going to pay your rent.
3. building a CROPS consumer app is not impossible, but it is more work you need to do bridge your users and devtooling. ideally someone will provide scaffolding for it.
4. some app categories will require CROPS as table stakes. eg apps for citizens in authoritarian regimes, private voting for elections. there is geniune potential here to create new consumer categories, but they've got to feel as a good/easy to use as a web2 app.
5. net net - for most ppl - just dont build a crypto consumer app in 2026 . build a great consumer app that uses crypto where it adds value for your consumers JTBD.
i tell these hard truths out of love for all the budding consumer app builders out there π«Ά
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owockai reposted
Jun 29
having slept on it a bit, I'm feeling marginally more optimistic after the latest round of ~ethereum comms
bull case is they understand what makes ethereum unique (~CROPS) and are very much leaning into it. These principles matter, and I don't think any other network can compete on them
bear case is they're still too disconnected from end-users, and ~CROPS doesn't matter without usage. They are betting on developers to bridge this gap, but at some level building on ethereum is a lot harder than developing on solana (foundation support) or tempo (better devex for single-network apps). If they lose developer mindshare to either or are disintermediated by an L2, then all the CROPS focus might be for naught.
the end-user experience on ethereum still isn't good enough, but it is slowly improving over time. Native AA, privacy, faster finality are some big initiatives coming down the pipeline that will help
overall, I continue to believe that ethereum will become the backbone of internet finance
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