The ENS Saga and the Pitfalls of DAO Democracy

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are touted as the ultimate governance structure, but where do they break down?

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Will Gottsegen, CoinDesk’s media and culture reporter, joins “Opinionated” hosts Danny Nelson and Ben Schiller to discuss what recent events in the Ethereum Name Service Foundation (ENS) say about the limitations of DAO governance.

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When homophobic and transphobic posts from ENS director Brantly Millegan were uncovered, Millegan was promptly fired from his role at the nonprofit that operates the ENS. However, the ENS put the decision to remove Millegan from the organization as a whole to a DAO vote, but it failed to pass.

Millegan himself was able to sway the vote. Without his voting power, obtained through tokens and delegations, the vote would not have failed. Additionally, almost a fifth of the total votes cast were abstentions.

What does the ENS voting outcome tell us about the effectiveness, ethics and future of DAOs?

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is by Elision.

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

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