ENS DAO Holds Time-Sensitive Vote to Replace Security Council Before July 24 Expiry

Why the vote is urgent

Johnson said the timing is driven by the expiration date of the current council. In the ENS governance forum, he wrote that the executable proposal was needed quickly to ensure completion before the existing council lapses, and said it implements what delegates had already approved in the prior social proposal.

Not everyone agreed with the pace. Delegate James Waugh said the proposal should have remained on the forum for at least 12 hours before moving to a vote. Johnson responded that the executable did not add new terms and simply enacted the previously approved framework.

To reduce the risk of any interruption, the proposal would authorize the new council as an additional veto authority during any overlap with the outgoing one.

Who would serve on the new council

The proposed council uses a 5-of-8 multisig. Seven of the eight signers correspond to public ENS identities visible from the contract: Nick Johnson; ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande, known as avsa.eth; Alex Netto, netto.eth, an ENS delegate since 2022 and founder of Blockful; Griff Green, griff.eth, co-founder of Giveth and the White Hat Group; Pablo Sabbatella, pablito.eth, founder of Opsek and a member of the Security Alliance who has also served on the Arbitrum and Optimism security councils; and ENS delegates Colton Liberacki, coltron.eth, and Kevin Gaspar, validator.eth. The eighth signer is a dedicated address without a public identity attached.

The lineup spans different factions around ENS and Ethereum. Johnson and Van de Sande are both ENS co-founders, while Netto has been a notable critic of efforts to concentrate power in ENS Foundation and ENS Labs. Green, Sabbatella and others are more closely associated with the broader Ethereum security community than with ENS Labs itself.

Backdrop: a governance dispute over influence

The current vote comes after a broader argument about power inside the DAO. The failed June proposal, EP 6.45, renewed debate over whether one address has too much influence over outcomes. Johnson is estimated to control about 3.26 million ENS tokens, roughly half of all ENS delegated to any single address. He said at the time that he backed renewing the council in principle, but not with the earlier slate of members.

The result drew criticism from delegates who argued that the DAO had become overly dependent on one voter. It also led at least one community member to suggest dissolving the DAO entirely. Hours after the failed vote, ENS Labs Chief Operating Officer Katherine Wu, known as katherine.eth, posted the draft that later became the framework now up for final onchain approval.

What still needs to happen

The measure is progressing but remains unresolved. It is scheduled to close around July 20 and must reach the DAO’s 1 million-token quorum. As of Monday, about 779,000 votes had been cast, leaving the proposal below the required threshold.

The structure itself is intended to address some of the concentration concerns raised in June. According to the proposal, the new council would operate under a stricter 5-of-8 threshold, include legal agreements, and have a removal mechanism. If approved, queued and executed, the new contract would hold the DAO’s cancel power for two years. Elected members would have 48 hours after the election closes to sign an Appointment Agreement and complete KYC and background checks. Anyone declining would be replaced by the next-ranked candidate who passed the election’s “NONE BELOW” threshold.

ENS token moves were limited alongside the governance developments. Over the previous 24 hours, ENS rose 3.2%, compared with a 5.3% gain in ETH and a 2% rise in Bitcoin. Over the past week it was roughly flat, and over 30 days it was down about 14%.