ENS tokenholders have approved and executed a governance overhaul that turns the ENS Foundation into a staffed operating organization with control of an endowment valued at roughly $65 million, according to onchain records dated Aug. 11. The proposal passed with about 70% of voting support, placing a new legal and administrative structure between the Ethereum Name Service protocol and the day-to-day work required to run a global naming system.
The measure, called the “Next Era of ENS DAO,” gives the foundation responsibility for external policy engagement, trademark management, administrative operations and relationships with organizations including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. ENS Labs will remain responsible for core protocol work, including the planned ENSv2 upgrade.
The arrangement formalizes a division that many decentralized projects have struggled to manage: keeping protocol development and tokenholder governance onchain while allowing a staffed entity to handle contracts, employment, compliance-facing work and outreach that cannot be completed through smart contracts alone.
Foundation receives endowment and staffing mandate
The foundation’s endowment is funded by revenue from .eth name registrations. Under the approved proposal, the foundation will also take on stewardship responsibilities connected to protocol revenue, giving it a defined role in managing funds generated by the naming system.
ENS DAO will make a one-time transfer of 1 million ENS tokens to the foundation for employee compensation. The DAO will retain the balance of its ENS treasury, representing approximately 54.6% of the token’s total supply, according to the proposal materials.
That structure preserves the DAO’s large ownership position while giving the foundation a separate pool of tokens to recruit and compensate staff. A dedicated compensation allocation could make hiring less dependent on ad hoc governance votes, although it also creates an early test of how clearly the new organization reports its spending and token-management practices to ENS holders.
The foundation will be led by Executive Director Alexander Urbelis. Its initial five-member board also includes ENS founder Nick Johnson and independent directors Kartik Talwar, Brett Sun and Anthony Leutenegger. The fifth board seat is held by Urbelis in his executive capacity.
Tokenholders retain the right to appoint or remove directors, leaving the board accountable to ENS governance rather than permanently insulated from it. The independent directors will serve two-year terms before facing renewal decisions.
Timelock gives Security Council a backstop
Transactions from the endowment will face a nine-day timelock, according to the approved framework. The delay gives the ENS Security Council an opportunity to cancel a proposed transaction before it is finalized.
Timelocks are commonly used in decentralized governance to slow the movement of treasury assets and create a window for community review. In ENS’s case, the mechanism means the foundation can operate with greater administrative autonomy while large endowment actions remain subject to a technical safeguard controlled outside the foundation’s board.
The model distributes authority across several bodies: ENS tokenholders retain director-removal powers and a substantial treasury position; the foundation manages operational work and the endowment; the Security Council has the ability to intervene in pending endowment transactions; and ENS Labs continues to build the protocol.
That division could reduce the number of routine operational matters sent to tokenholder votes. It also places greater weight on the quality of the foundation’s reporting, because ENS holders will need enough information to assess board performance, executive decisions and use of registration revenue.
Governance dispute preceded the restructuring
The foundation expansion follows a contentious governance episode in June involving the Security Council. Johnson self-delegated roughly 3.26 million ENS tokens, described in the proposal’s context as about half of active voting power, to prevent an onchain vote that would have renewed the existing council.
A replacement Security Council was subsequently seated, clearing the way for the foundation proposal to proceed. The sequence exposed the practical influence that concentrated delegated voting power can have in a DAO, even where tokenholders have formal authority over key governance decisions.
ENS has long operated through a mix of DAO governance, development teams and legal entities, but the latest vote provides a more explicit operational mandate for the foundation. Policy work and trademark enforcement are particularly difficult to carry out through purely onchain processes, since they involve legal systems, external organizations and contractual relationships.
Engagement with ICANN could be relevant to ENS’s effort to represent decentralized naming interests in debates over internet identifiers and domain-name policy. ENS names are used across Ethereum applications and wallets, while conventional internet domain governance remains centered on established institutions and registries.
ENS Labs retains protocol focus
The restructuring does not transfer technical control of the ENS protocol to the foundation. ENS Labs will continue to lead development work, including ENSv2, the next major planned version of the system.
Keeping development responsibilities with ENS Labs allows the foundation to focus on organizational tasks that require staff, legal coordination and external representation. The separation also creates a clearer line between building the protocol and administering the resources and relationships around it.
The first practical measure of the new structure will be whether it can publish understandable budgets, explain compensation decisions and show how endowment funds support specific operational goals. Tokenholders now have a more conventional governance target in the form of a board and executive director, while retaining the ability to replace directors if the foundation’s performance falls short.
The vote gives ENS a framework for operating beyond tokenholder proposals and developer releases. Its durability will depend on whether the new foundation can use that flexibility without weakening the transparency and community oversight that the DAO was designed to provide.
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