A prominent ENS delegate is sounding the alarm over a governance proposal that would hand significant operational control to the ENS Foundation, calling it the beginning of the end for the Ethereum Name Service as a truly decentralized project.
Alex Netto, an ENS delegate since 2022 and founder of Blockful, claims the proposal “sets the start of ENS’s downfall.” It’s the kind of statement that tends to get attention in governance circles, and in this case, it’s sparking a broader debate about how much centralization is too much for a project built on Ethereum’s decentralization-first ethos.
What the proposal actually does
The proposal, titled “[Temp Check] Next Era of ENS DAO: Empowering the ENS Foundation,” was posted on June 19 on the ENS DAO governance forum by the ENS Foundation and Labs leadership group. At its core, the initiative would transfer authority over day-to-day operations, grant programs, and treasury and endowment strategy from the DAO to the Foundation.
ENS token holders would still maintain sole power over two things: appointing Foundation directors and setting protocol parameters. Everything else, the actual running of the organization, would shift to the Foundation.
