ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande put forward a proposal on Monday to delegate 5 million ENS tokens from the project’s dormant community treasury directly to individual participants. The move, he said, would end the DAO’s dependence on what he characterized as “just a 1-of-1 multisig.”
A governance crisis months in the making
The proposal didn’t materialize out of nowhere. ENS DAO has been mired in governance disputes throughout June and July 2026, with blocked votes and escalating tensions between community factions. At the center of the controversy sits Nick Johnson, ENS’s other co-founder, who reportedly holds approximately 50% of the active voting supply through self-delegated tokens.
The disputes have also touched on attempts to expand the ENS Foundation’s role, which some community members interpreted as a potential “governance attack.”
What 5 million tokens would actually change
