Former ENS lead Brantly Millegan launches social graph protocol for Ethereum users

Former Ethereum Name Service lead Brantly Millegan has launched a decentralized onchain social graph protocol for Ethereum accounts on mainnet.

Millegan’s Ethereum Follow Protocol is a “new primitive of the Ethereum identity stack, complementing other elements like ENS and SIWE [sign-in with Ethereum], and can enhance any crypto app,” Millegan posted on X late Tuesday.

EFP isn’t an X clone, and unlike other decentralized social protocols such as Lens, it does not provide posting functionality or its own profile system. Instead, it uses ENS to offer a social graph layer designed to be used in other applications.

“Anywhere you show an address, you should already be showing an ENS name, avatar, etc,” Milligan said. “Now, with EFP, you can also show how it's enmeshed in the community, providing more context for who they are: follower/following counts, friends of friends, etc.”

ENS allows users to convert long, complicated Ethereum addresses into easy-to-remember names like "alice.eth," making it simpler to send and receive transactions.

Users need ether on the Layer 2 network Base to facilitate operations like following or tagging other Ethereum accounts, updating profiles or interacting with other applications that leverage the EFP social graph.

Similar to ENS, EFP is designed as a public good, developed by a non-profit to provide a credibly neutral protocol, Milligan added. EFP’s development was supported by grants from the ENS DAO and the encrypted messaging and crypto transfer protocol Mask Network.

Millegan voted out of previous ENS role amid controversial comments

Millegan was voted out of his role at ENS DAO in February 2022 after a post from 2016 resurfaced on social media, sparking a fierce backlash. Millegan had branded homosexual people evil, denied the existence of transgenderism and described contraception as a perversion in the controversial post.

Many observers, including Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams, claimed Millegan’s views were antithetical to the mantra of DeFi and web3.

Millegan also faced further disciplinary action at ENS, including his immediate suspension, being asked to step down from his leadership roles at ENS, removal as a director from the ENS Foundation through a DAO vote, and his removal from the Singapore-based non-profit entity True Names that leads the development of ENS.