Christoph Jentzsch proposed on X that $ENS DAO dissolve itself rather than continue operating under what he called a broken governance structure.
“As it seems, the $ENS DAO is broken,” he wrote. “I would propose turning this into a win, by actually dissolving it. Its goals have been accomplished, the $ENS protocol is in good shape, it serves its purpose and can now be formally turned into a true public infrastructure by burning the key (set to 0x00) of the ENSv2 Universal Router, as well as distributing the remaining funds.”
Jentzsch said he holds no formal role in $ENS governance.
The post came a day after $ENS co-founder Nick Johnson single-handedly blocked an onchain vote to renew the DAO’s Security Council, and roughly two weeks after he self-delegated close to half the protocol’s active voting supply to back a separate proposal expanding the $ENS Foundation’s control over the treasury.
Jentzsch’s post quoted a thread from delegate spengrah.eth arguing that $ENS Labs, “via the project’s founder, Nick,” was moving to control the DAO’s operations, treasury and Security Council simultaneously: “The DAO looks like it has been captured. Voting power is concentrated in Labs, and is being wielded to take nearly-unilateral actions.”
Security Council Vote Fails as Johnson Casts Deciding Votes
The immediate trigger was the failure of EP 6.45, an onchain proposal to renew the DAO’s Security Council — a 4-of-8 multisig empowered to cancel malicious proposals that have already passed governance and entered the timelock queue. The council’s mandate was set to expire July 24.
The renewal went through two stages: an off-chain Snapshot vote, which passed, and a binding onchain executable vote, which did not. Johnson abstained on the Snapshot vote, posting that he supported renewal but not “with the current slate of members,” then voted no on the binding vote. As of June 30, the onchain vote stood at 82% against, with a close scheduled for July 5 at 8:59 PM ET, per vote.ensdao.org.
Johnson controls an estimated 3.26 million $ENS tokens — roughly 80% of votes cast in that election and about half of all $ENS currently delegated to any address.
Hours after the vote failed, $ENS Labs COO Katherine Wu posted a draft proposal for a successor council: eight members, a stricter 5-of-8 threshold to cancel proposals, a published mandate limiting vetoes to “malicious, coercive, or exploitative governance attacks,” and a legal appointment agreement with the $ENS Foundation for each member. Nominations close July 3. Johnson self-nominated on the forum, citing an 87% DAO participation rate, and wrote that he “agree[s] with the new security council mandate and charter and will act only in accordance with it.”
Root Cause: The Foundation Treasury Proposal
The Security Council fight grew out of an earlier dispute. On June 19, Wu published a temp-check proposal, “Next Era of $ENS DAO: Empowering the $ENS Foundation,” that would shift the DAO’s operational wallet, $ENS token holdings and its Karpatkey-managed Endowment to a five-seat $ENS Foundation board — proposed to include two $ENS Labs members, two Aragon-affiliated members and ETHGlobal founder Kartik Talwar, according to The Defiant. The proposal would preserve tokenholder authority over protocol upgrades and pricing while moving day-to-day treasury operations and grants to the Foundation.
On June 22, Johnson said he would self-delegate his $ENS holdings to support the measure. Delegates said the move gave him effective control of DAO outcomes. Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas wrote on the governance forum that Johnson had “delegated ~50% of the voting supply to himself, essentially becoming the DAO… In the end Nick has all the voting power right now so there is no DAO anymore.”
Security Council member Brantly Millegan called the proposal “the equivalent of treasury capture by $ENS Labs,” saying that if it passed primarily on Labs-aligned votes over community objections, “that is, by all common definitions, a governance attack,” and said he would prepare a Security Council veto transaction.
Meta-Governance Working Group lead Netto.eth wrote that the board composition “marks the downfall of $ENS” if it passed. Following the June 30 vote, Karapetsas wrote on X that the DAO was “dead,” and Ethereum commentator colludingnode changed his display handle to reference .gwei, an alternative naming service, writing “if a crisis like this is even remotely possible, it’s not good enough for Ethereum.”
Treasury and Protocol Scale
The Endowment, managed by Karpatkey since a November 2022 DAO vote, was seeded with an initial 16,000 $ETH in March 2023, according to the $ENS governance forum. As of Karpatkey’s most recent public reporting, roughly 71% of DAO funds sat in the Endowment, with the remainder in the operational wallet and registrar controller contracts.
$ENS traded around $4.33, with a market capitalization near $175 million, according to CoinGecko — down roughly 95% from its November 2021 peak, when the token’s airdrop-driven debut briefly pushed $ENS to a $1 billion market cap.
A Prior Governance Controversy
$ENS DAO was created in November 2021 by Johnson and True Names Limited, the Singapore-based nonprofit that has historically handled $ENS operations, alongside a token airdrop distributing a quarter of the 100 million $ENS supply to holders of .eth domains registered before October 31, 2021.
The DAO has faced governance controversy before: in February 2022, True Names Limited terminated Millegan’s contract as director of operations after a 2016 tweet resurfaced expressing views condemning homosexuality.
A subsequent DAO vote on removing Millegan from a separate role as an $ENS Foundation director failed, with 43.4% voting against removal and 37.5% in favor. Millegan has remained an active DAO participant and Security Council member through the current dispute.
Both the Security Council renewal and the Foundation temp-check remain unresolved. The onchain Security Council vote closes July 5, and the successor council’s nomination window closes July 3, with a follow-up vote still to come. The Foundation temp-check has not yet moved to a formal Snapshot vote. Jentzsch’s dissolution proposal has not been submitted as a formal governance item on the $ENS forum or put to any DAO vote. The Defiant previously covered the broader dispute as it unfolded in late June.
