ENS Working Groups: Progress and Future Directions (Main Stage Talk #7)

Transcript

all right um hello everyone um I don't know why it's just my face on there clearly we have more than just me speaking so apologize to our speakers for not having your faces on this gigantic screen um okay so before we get started um just a little back story about this panel and um my relationship with everyone on this panel so before joining ens Labs I served for a year on the ens Dow alongside these lovely folks I had the chance to work with each and every one of them um and actually being on the Dow side was what sort of ens pilled me into wanting to join Labs um and one of the things that

I really thought was really amazing was how much resp Labs had not Labs ens and decentralized governance to me was like actually a success ful implementation I think we talk about governance a lot in the space um and there's not not a lot of really healthy relationships between like uh whether it's like the Dow individual members of the Dow delegates but in my experience working with these folks working in the Dow environment was was nothing but positive so I'm really really excited to be on here with my former Dow colleagues um so yeah I'm going to pass it over I'm going to start with slow

tell me about you tell me about your working group um what you guys focus on what your role is and uh how long you've been involved with the ens Dow sure thing uh well thank you Katherine and so I'm slobo slobo eth uh this is Earl which is my support animal um I lead the ecosystem working group which is responsible for uh making sure that developers and the ecosystem is well taken care of uh we have initiatives to provide Grant fun in we support hackathons and collaboration with um ens Labs that staffs them and we do a bunch of other like kind of innovative programs but I don't want to hog too much uh time and I want to pass along to

uh my colleagues um I'm Simona Simona eth um and how long have I been in the Dow for I feel like three since the beginning um I started off as metagal Steward in the very first term and then for the past two terms I've been in the public goods working group um we as the name says we focus on funding public goods um not just ens related but any public goods in this ecosystem um and in this term together with um my fellow stewards Eduardo and ctron um we have um funded well over a million in public goods

funding which has you know oh I read doing like a little brief thing on what we've done this year or um just that's the next question okay just front running there um but yes we've done all that and I will talk more in a second about that all right thank you my name is Spence Spence doeth um and I'm going to go off script real quick these events are really hard to put on um I know there's not a lot of people in here but can we get a quick Round of Applause for everybody at Labs who's worked their butt off to make this happen I know right right there I know Aaron in the middle of the room ernie. eth has done a ton of work these characters right here I think came from her mind sorry everybody you have to talk

about yourself now now now about me okay sorry I can't help it I like to thank AV guys too no um so I the lead Steward of the meta governance working group and contrary to maybe its name meta governance does not actually govern anything but we do serve the Dow we we try to facilitate and make sure that governance happens in the right way the way it's supposed to that we follow the rules TOS that everyone's aware of how to make proposals that we take care of the funds as well as we can and just help make sure and facilitate the other working groups ability and their ability to to serve the protocol which is really I think the goal of the Dow in general which is just to ensure the protocol is here for a long time for as long as everyone in here has has reserved their

name right everyone everyone in here has a name if you have a name reserved for more than five years raise your hand that's a lot 10 all right all right 50 who has the longest we got one guy in here with 50 years that's a long time so anyway the Dow needs ens needs to be around the protocol needs to be around for all of those years that we have reserved names for and that's one of the things I think that the Dow is responsible for just making sure the protocol is pro protected has longevity and it's stable yeah so as you can tell the ens Dow is made out of three groups um and each of these seats are publicly elected by token holder some of you may have actually even voted for uh the folks in these seats um so give me a glimpse into

you know now that we're November of 2024 give me a glimpse um on how 2024 has gone for your working group and any cool initiatives or things that you want to highlight sure thing uh so for ecosystem I think the most important thing is how many hackers interacted with ens at uh the various hackathons so we've had over 300 um and we've done I think six uh hackathons uh mostly with eth global but also with ethr and the other one is now escaping me but uh so that's been really cool the other thing that's been a super interesting initiative that we haven't done before is work with drips and drips who aren't familiar is allows you to do public goods funding to a uh GitHub

repository and what we did is we actually funded something like graphql which is utilized by ens and because we did that even though it's a traditional web 2 company I'm sorry web 2 uh repo uh the maintainer of that was was on boarded to web 3 and there was actually several other people who did that and that's been incredibly exciting for me because it's using uh 's funds to bring more people especially highly talented developers into effecting the ecosystem or at least crypto to start and uh I love how there's this attitude of giving back to the things that ens is built on and people don't think about open source software because it just kind of works

um so those are the two things I most proud of which is the number of hackers we funded and the fact that uh we onboarded some maintainers of public repos onto un awesome thank you for your service thank you um so with uh the public goods working group um we obviously again as it says on the 10 um we very much focus on um public goods not just funding public goods at large in the ecosystem but also furthering the conversation around public goods public goods has traditionally been like this area that a lot of people talk about and then when it comes to action there's um not necessarily that much cash that makes it

towards public goods and so the incentives around building public goods haven't traditionally been there we remember that ens is a public good right and so this tradition of continuing funding public goods is something that is very very close to the Mandate where like is the Mandate of this working group and what we've done in this year is really trying to streamline and maximize that impact in as many ways as we can so more than talking about public goods and what it means more than talking to builders at many events this year and um supporting hackathons and some community events throughout the

world so far we are also just launching and just launched today it's gone live a partnership with build Guild uh you guys will be familiar with build Guild they are Builders who have been building for Builders since the very beginning and for a very long time and we launch this Builder grants platform that is live today um there's going to be a tweet um coming from y us and so on but the idea with that is to streamline all of these public goods grants at all stages of the build Journey whether you need a small amount of funding all the way through to large grants this platform is designed to take you through all of those stages

of building a public goods Builders are public goods what they can build is something very very important and we want to continue supporting them in a seamless of a way um as possible so um that's kind of I feel the culmination of 2024 for us so yeah exciting awesome great work um meta governance uh term five um there's several things we've done I think we've done some um good moves with the endowment to make it perpetual and self-funding which I think is really key um some good streamlining there uh we had some great uh initiatives around both what was called The veto contract and then more importantly the security

Council which came from some research from blockville specifically I don't know if anybody from blockville is in the room but black there we go at least one a couple of hands did some great research and not only did they do the research but they actually took action and they proposed some things that allowed us to put a a safety net if you will behind the proposal mechanism not perfect and ideal in a dow sense but there was some research around some you know some some differential between the value of the treasury and delegated votes and we needed it and you know blle took action there so that was a that was a big key thing I think also um you know just making sure the the working groups are working well um ideally if meta governance is doing its job and doing its job well you'll you'll hear less

about it I think is is really the goal there but um yeah yeah um well that's awesome a lot of um lot of achievements just in uh in the last 11 months from all of you um so turning it I guess a little bit more just on the topic of decentralized governance in general so I believe all of you are or have been involved with other other Dows other ecosystems um and of course there's no one doubt that fits all and there's no one doubt that no two doubts that run exactly the same um from your perspective what are some of the things that ens Dow sorry what are some of the things that sets the ens Dow apart from some of the other Dows that either you're part of or maybe are just a you know participant in is there something

that we do really well or maybe some low lights yes so I'll I'll start and I'm curious to see if my colleagues will agree I think uh ens does an excellent job of of delegating the right power to the right people and then those people having ultimate discretion whereas a lot of dows that I've seen they try to create a lot of process and then they just follow that process religiously and that's that has like pros and cons and I think ens really lets it empowers metago public goods and ecosystem to do what those people are right and the check on our kind of power is the fact that we have to have an election so and to me I think it's great because uh it's really

important to me that the best people are always in the best roles and I think other uh Dows are kind of focus more on process rather than actually like the end goal which is making sure that the right people are in the right places so that's my view yeah I would agree with that I think um I tweeted once that the most important thing in Dows well actually it's it's the balance between attention and action and I think to slow slobo point it is that balance between having a very good process because you do need process right let's figure let's be very realistic most people have no idea how to collaborate in a completely decentralized space we're just not for

Generations we're are not prepped for that so a lot of it is a process of learning and process is important but that balance of making sure that you have the right people with the right context context is a massive thing when it comes to governance and the ability to gain enough context to make sure that you facilitate and then enforce the right or make the right decisions is key sometimes there is a tendency to switch a lot of perspectives very quickly which is valuable because you do want fresh perspective but again you want that balance of context like depth and also Innovation and striking that balance is

a key one which I think to your point we've managed to do so far obviously experimentation can continue and we can figure things out but I would say that balance and meeting and matching that balance is an important thing to to be mindful of as we evolve all right um how are we different can I start with the obvious one Revenue um which I think changes the landscape across the board um you know in in us as a as a as a platform is really not very different than a a SAS software company um maybe that's an analogy I draw because it's it's where I come from but the unit economics are the exact same in terms of renewals and in terms of churn

and um um new users but that revenue and then that ability to kind of do what I described earlier which is make sure the protocol is here for a long time is different and in all honesty I think that this is a model that can bring a lot of the web 2 software companies into web 3 if we look this as the type of way a subscription software company can function in web 3 um but aside from that um how are we really different uh you know I see a lot of negative stuff sometimes on the is it's left Eris in here right there's people that that are often constantly talking negatively about Dows and um you know there are some Dows out there that I think deserve

some very negative criticism I don't think this is one of them I think we do a really good job of balancing the right number of of large delegates to get a good consensus around decisions um people that are stakeholders that care about the protocol that make decisions in the best interest of the protocol um I don't know quite how we've done that or how we've we've gotten there um but I do think that's different it's different than what I see in other Dows now I will say there's a couple of dows that I'm a part of really just one that are very small more pure Dow right where there aren't working groups um and that is simpler it's a simpler imp implementation of what a dow is it's very difficult to have this human coordination layer in the midst um and I think we do a good job of kind of

functioning almost as a living smart contract in terms of the way we we do things the rules the working group rules are what we execute on and I think that helps us stay um you know in a in a in a place that prevents the human coordination issues from becoming a problem it keeps us in a way of really serving the Dow and what the Dow is supposed to be which I think is different yeah let's let's you zoom out even a little bit more and talk about um what do you think again just like going back to you know Dows were really really hot in 21 they kind of became not so sexy like in the last two years and I I feel like now as more Protocols are approaching maturity the conversation of governance and what the right form

factor is is sort of back on the table um in in your personal opinion as you're thinking through decentralized governance and all the structure and all the safeguards uh that you can put in place to to set one up what are the non-negotiables like the absolute non-negotiables that like a any Dow that costs have a DA must have so you need to have multiple people with voting power it has to be decentralized and there has to be multiple perspectives if you only and I think that's what's another thing that's great about ens is uh we don't have a single whale that uh is is the main voter um if you kind of look at it technically

there's like a voting veto power but outside of that you know the top 10 people they all have about roughly equal voting power and they're actually not afraid to show it there are you know there are people who have really strong opinions and ens elicit strong opinions because it's so important and uh like many of us you know one us here and the people in the audience we often disagree and we disagree in public and it's kind of uncomfortable but I think in a way that freedom to disagree publicly and the fact that each of those delegates actually has a strong not only a voice but also the ability to influence actual actions that's that's sick uh so but I'll I'll let my colleagues add to

that do we want to mix up the order or should we do since you want to think um non-negotiables uh you know obviously a part of what we do is executable trans action transactions that happen on the blockchain there's nothing to negotiate there but all Dows have social proposals um and I think a non-negotiable is essentially following those proposals I think that's what makes a dow what it is again back to that autonomous nature we're trying we're trying to put training wheels on this new structure of doing things that still needs to kind of be cared for um to make sure that it gets wings and and takes off and so I think the non-negotiables are honoring

that um you know to Alex's point we don't have a whale we could I think you know we're still in the early phases but there are people that probably could you know exert an outsized influence in the Dow but fortunately for us I think our delegates our large delegates honor and intentionally honor that nature of kind of let's have a let's have a group of people with power that um make decisions that allow for contrarians um and I don't know that that's necessarily in the non-negotiable camp but um but but think honoring the proposals that take place kind of is yeah yeah there's no doubt without disagreement is basically it sorry and to that point one of the main main things to remember is that

Dows are made up of humans they have a lot of very very different ways of interacting of being able to communicate of being able to coordinate some people don't know have never had the experience of having to do that and so if you take that as a baseline reality there are just some things that you absolutely need to focus on accountability is a big one uh the ability to hold a space for discussion is very very important and also really this ability to have some sort of conflict resolution whether it is by having those discussions in spaces

where that's kind of a value ad type of discussion versus a um we're just annonymous people on a random Forum type of discussion is a very different thing and I think being able to create these spaces that actually not necessarily dictate but encourage that accountability based value ad discourse should be the Baseline of any kind of Dow and also this recognition that we are humans trying to collaborate and what do we need to help us do that and figuring out what the right process is maybe it does go through series of

experimentation and that's totally fine we're not going to figure it out like that because again a lot of us have no idea how to interact with other people a lot of people don't know how to communicate non-violently because traditionally we've just been trained generationally in a very different way in a very competitive very argumentative way and realizing these things and being able to incorporate those in a very mindful way of creating structures for governance is important um so yeah I I I'm trying to think about where to take this um let's let's actually talk about like um you know

Dows are relatively New Concept like I'm sure maybe each one of you you had had conversations maybe with a family or a friend when you try to describe to them how you work for this thing right and you have to run publicly for it and somehow you're making incredibly important decisions also I think for a lot of my friends and family it's it's a very like what moment um how would you say like and and all of you have also had working experience before coming into the Dow space um what are the biggest craziest differences between working in a normal corporate structure and working in a dow and this is couldna be like

anything you want to highlight so this could be like something you say to a friend or family that you know is going to shock them or something that was shocking to yourself even as you came into the Dow space Maybe maybe we start with yeah let's start yeah Simona let's start with you because I felt like you were on to something there okay um what's the biggest difference I would say and I think this applies to every single person who comes into this ecosystem and feels that ability to breathe a sigh of relief of like this kind of feels like freedom and being able to express my opinion and what I feel is right and valuable to me in and around other people who may be

value aligned there's sometimes this like whole thing of going and working a regular job and whatever that you're like am I like are we value aligned am I value aligned with my colleagues you may be with one or two this feels like that alignment is much deeper and much more than surface level and I think it's that type of I don't know enthusiasm energy that comes out of that that kind of helps you navigate the frustrations that we have in the fact that we are operating in completely nent structures that were kind of like buil building as we're sailing it's kind of like building a ship as you're on it and go like wh quick so that we can go further but it

is that type of energy and that type of belief that I think is the big thing that continues to propel us forward that continues to make us be here for another year even though it's sometimes tiring even though it's sometimes very frustrating the fact that we haven't made more Headway or that something is still not working as it should be but hey you get to put ideas into practice and make them manifest in a much shorter time in a much less bureaucratic way again there's a lot of things that we still need to work on but I think it's freedom and it's a breath that we are for a lot of us can take almost like

after two minutes of holding your breath that's what it feels like Spence what do you think CU you currently yeah work in both web two and web 3 right yeah I do I do um I spend most of my time primarily in web two um and I can tell you it's very difficult to take someone who does not understand blockchain or crypto let alone Dows or anything like that and get them from zero to what is this um you know you can take I've sat down and taken entire meals before you know where by just by the end of the meal they someone finally gets it but they're so there's so much information they have to absorb to get there that that by the time they get to the Revelation it's it doesn't have the power um but how is it

different um you know I I want to talk about the working groups because I kind of think of working groups as sort of something I hope to be a vestigial part of of of the future da like future da can be autonomous without the need for for this um so it's more about the delegates um what's different right the delegates do run the Dow the delegates make the proposals the delegates decide what happens it's about the delegates what is different delegates can't be fired right no one can fire a delegate just just doesn't happen it can't happen that's just the nature of erc20 Delegation it just just doesn't happen very different than any corporate or traditional structure um you know what does that mean it means that everyone

has to has to has to get along we have to find a consensus and it's difficult to do so but that nature of forcing that I think is the value of these structures um you know uh so that that would be what I'd say is different um the sticking power of the delegates right because a delegate is proof of stake essentially right because you're delegating this vote you could be doing something else with this token you could sell it but you're not you're delegating to someone that is you're putting your stake you're putting a value behind this person you know um and that can't be taken away right that's part of this whole Sovereign thing that we all work in and so I think that's really just the the biggest key difference for me for anybody who's familiar with web to yeah so kind of mirror this is there's

no one voice that's that's the main difference when you're in any Corporation there's or like usually there's going to be a shareholder and that shareholder is going to nominate a CEO there's going to be one clear voice here there are many voices and those voices can change at any moment um that's that's how I kind of describe it to some of my friends I'll say like oh yeah I work in a non-for-profit because it's the only way it kind of makes sense even though ens makes $30 million a year um but so do hospitals so it's okay um and but I think like having all these different voices um that come together and actually I'm going to use the word divining perspective of the delegates is a it's kind of hard because you know yes it's easy to say if a delegate or a

group of delegates approve a proposal it's very different because you know someone's got to write that proposal and that process it's like it doesn't actually happen in public it just o there's a proposal what do I think of it because most delegates have day jobs multiple obligations so it's kind of a weird thing is that like what you put on is what's the thing that's going to be judged but uh like how that like amorphous uh structure gets created to the point where it can be solidified into something that is the will of the delegates um that's been just absolutely phenomenal and something that I've never been able to properly articulate to uh my friends and colleagues because it's like this is what it is you know and it's like now we get to vote now we know

what they think and often times there's surprises things don't pass if people been paying attention so uh and I think that's like I mean I'm laughing because it's kind of funny and also quite painful yes um so there's a common uh there is the the common um I don't want to say criticism but I maybe I'll say uh there's a take that decentralized governance comes at the cost of effic efficiency do you think that is a feature or do you think that is a bug I don't I don't think it's either but it partially can I could um but it it's a necessity right there's nothing

about decentralizing that is more efficient there's nothing about decentralizing that is simpler everything about decentralizing is harder it takes more energy it takes more effort it takes longer it takes more coordination but we do it because the outcome is better right um and it's hard because it's always easier to kind of think oh well we can just make this decision this way oh we can just decide to do it this way because it always is simpler to move away from that decentralization um so I don't I don't know if the difficulty is a feature or a bug but uh but I think it's absolutely a part of it and I think being a part of this means that you have to understand and accept that you are you're you're undertaking that more difficult task

because of the quality of the outcome here's a quote that I think auke um mentioned in a conversation I don't know 2018 2019 it's basically like nobody comes home in the anywhere in the world and goes GH my day was so centralized that sucked and it's true right centralization we have lived with it for so long that we think it's normal right that's just normality but actually and I'm going to bring you into biomimicry here cuz I like this stuff and the Beautiful background of the tree is inspiring me so in nature the balance point is the optimum window of viability

now where is that it's between diversity and full efficiency it is in the middle it is absolutely not with full efficiency you know who goes for full efficiency it's the way we have constructed things and a centralization but what that does is by removing the level of diversity it makes a system brittle if you look at any man-made reforested area it is all in straight lines you light a match in one of those things it will go up like that you light a match in a jungle that has loads of different layers of vegetation and this

with this with this at some point it will stop because it is is resilient diversity and diversity of opinion diversity of doing things is makes a system resilient over efficiency and we've seen this with the financial system time and time and time again it makes a system brittle efficiency should be dep pedestalize IM immediately yes there is some benefit to it and so on but definitely not to the level that we hold it as like oh my god let's be more efficient sometimes it's not good thank you for that um it's okay I think I'll keep it brief there's

efficiency and there's Effectiveness if I want to get downstairs from uh the roof I can jump and not survive or and and that would be very efficient but that wouldn't really be effective so if you pull back far enough the the goal of decentralized organizations is to be extremely effective at the right time scale and that's what it comes down to it's what is your time scale that you're judging things by um and that's why like if you want to go far um sorry if if if you want to go fast uh go alone if you want to go far go together and like ultimately that's that's what Dows are about and like we want to go forever well done that that is that's a great note to end on um for those of you the audience who are curious about ens da

Check out the forums each one of these uh working groups have open calls every week they're open to the public um tune in just hear about what these what what they're up to and uh hope to see any of you who are doubt curious in the forums and in our calls and with that thank you so much to our lead stewards for imparting so much Dow wisdom today thanks everybody thank you Catherine yes moderating the panel