ENS tokenholders have approved and executed the "Next Era of ENS DAO" proposal on-chain, establishing the ENS Foundation as an operational organization. The Foundation now includes a full-time executive director, dedicated staff and a five-member board, assuming on-chain control of the DAO's endowment.
The proposal, authored by delegate katherine.eth and submitted by ENS founder Nick Johnson, transfers 1 million ENS tokens to the Foundation Safe. Those tokens are restricted for employee compensation under a published framework with multi-year vesting schedules.
The structural change addresses a core limitation of DAO governance: a DAO lacks the legal and operational capacity to engage in many institutional venues. Those include pursuing recognition for the.ens TLD at ICANN and signing agreements for participation in IETF and W3C standards work.
Historically, some of those responsibilities fell informally to ENS Labs, the engineering organization focused on protocol development. ENS Labs was never formally mandated to serve as the protocol's institutional representative, leaving a gap in external engagement.
With the Foundation operational, ENS gains a dedicated entity that can pursue formal.ens TLD recognition, execute agreements for standards body participation, employ staff directly, enforce trademarks against impersonation, respond to legal processes and represent ENS in global regulatory discussions on decentralized naming.
The shift also clarifies ENS Labs' role. The engineering team can now focus on product and protocol work, including ENSv2 development and core infrastructure.
ENS tokenholders retain authority over the core protocol, the remaining DAO-held ENS tokens—representing 54.6 percent of total supply—the operational wallet and the power to appoint and remove Foundation directors.
The endowment, funded by revenue from.eth name registrations, keeps its assets in place. Its transactions are now subject to a nine-day timelock. During that window, the ENS Security Council can cancel any transaction deemed outside the Foundation's mandate. Alex Urbelis serves as executive director on the Foundation's five-seat board.
