ENS Labs scales back plan to move DAO treasury control after delegate pushback

When your community tells you to pump the brakes, sometimes you actually listen. ENS Labs COO Katherine Wu published a revised executable draft Thursday that establishes an ENS Foundation but conspicuously drops the most contentious element of the original plan: transferring the DAO’s operational wallet to the new entity. The move comes after weeks of delegate opposition to an earlier version Wu introduced on June 19, which would have shifted both the operational wallet and ENS token holdings to the Foundation. For a DAO sitting on a treasury valued between $350 million and $400 million, that’s not exactly a minor administrative reshuffling. What changed and why it matters The original proposal envisioned a governance structure modeled after established nonprofits like the Mozilla Foundation and the Linux Foundation. The pitch was straightforward: professionalize operations, create a more structured approach to grants and long-term capital planning, and give ENS something resembling institutional credibility. Community members flagged the risk of treasury capture by ENS Labs insiders. Co-founder Nick Johnson’s self-delegation practices added fuel to the debate, raising questions ab...