ENS DAO Governance Crisis: Founder Unilaterally Blocks Security Council Renewal, Community Calls for Dissolving DAO
According to The Defiant, ENS DAO is facing a serious governance crisis. ENS co-founder Nick Johnson holds approximately 3.26 million ENS tokens, accounting for nearly 50% of all currently delegated voting power. On June 30, he voted against the on-chain binding vote for the Security Council renewal, causing the proposal to fail with 82% opposing votes; the Security Council authorization will expire on July 24. Previously, Johnson also self-delegated a significant amount of voting power to support a proposal to transfer the DAO operating wallet, ENS token holdings, and the endowment managed by Karpatkey to the ENS Foundation's five-member board, triggering strong community skepticism regarding "governance capture." Rotki founder Lefteris Karapetsas stated plainly "DAO is dead," while Security Council member Brantly Millegan characterized the proposal as "fiscal capture by ENS Labs." In response, "The DAO" original code author Christoph Jentzsch publicly proposed directly dissolving ENS DAO, suggesting destroying the ENSv2 universal router key and distributing remaining funds to formally transform the protocol into public infrastructure. Currently, Security Council on-chain voting will close on July 5, ENS Labs COO Katherine