ENS DAO agrees to fund core working groups with $2.3 million

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) DAO has finalized an on-chain vote to fund its core working groups with $2.3 million to cover their activities for the first half of the year.

The ENS vote ended on Feb. 7, with 83% of participants in support of the proposal. ENS Founder and Lead Developer Nick Johnson was among those in favor of the plan. Other delegates who supported the funding proposal include Rotki Founder Eleftherios Karapetsas and UniLogin Founder Alexandre Van de Sande.

With the successful vote, a two-day timelock is the next step in the process. The funds will be released to the multi-signature addresses of the three core working groups at the expiration of the two-day pause. Each working group has stewards who were recently elected by the DAO to oversee these groups. These stewards will be responsible for deciding when to distribute the funds received to achieve their various initiatives.

The ENS ecosystem working group will receive $1.35 million in crypto tokens. This is the highest of the three working groups. This allocation is divided into 935,000 USDC ($935,000) and 254 ether ($418,000). ENS Foundation Director Brantly Millegan publicly expressed concerns about the size of the working group’s allocation. He was also among those who voted against the proposal due to this reason.

The size of the ecosystem working group’s allocation was not the only cause for debate. One of the line items in the group’s budget was a proposed $328,000 allocation for ENS Fairy — an initiative within the DAO that gifts premium domain names to celebrities. Some DAO delegates criticized the plan, arguing that it would give the project an undue advantage in the competition for expiring premium domains.