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Working Groups

Useful Information

The ENS DAO uses working groups to manage the DAO’s work-related activities.

Working groups allow decisions to be made, and funding to be distributed, without the need for every initiative or decision to be passed by the DAO as a Social or Executable Proposal.

Each working group has a different focus area and mission, aligned with the ENS DAO Constitution and the broader needs of the DAO.

There are currently three working groups:

More information about each of the Working Groups is available by clicking on the links above.

General information about Working Groups can be found below.

Working groups are governed by a set of rules covering the creation, management, and dissolution of working groups.

The initial discussion surrounding the formation of working groups took place in the governance forum in November 2021.

The working group rules were passed as a social proposal in December 2021. Four working groups were established following the successful outcome of this vote, with the first steward elections taking place in January 2022.

The foundational working groups were Meta-Governance, ENS Ecosystem, Community, and Public Goods. The Community Working Group was dissolved following a social vote in June 2022, with community initiatives being moved to the ENS Ecosystem Working Group. The remaining working groups are Meta-Governance, ENS Ecosystem, and Public Goods.

The initial set of working group rules were repealed and replaced by a new set of working group rules in June 2022. These are the most up-to-date working group rules.

Each working group has three stewards. Stewards are elected to serve in working groups for a term, which is six months long. The responsibilities of Stewards are set out in Rule 5 of the Working Group Rules.

The first term starts on Jan 1 and ends immediately before the second Term starts on July 1. The second term starts on July 1 and ends immediately before the first term of the following year starts (see Rule 3).

Once a Term starts, each working group must appoint a Lead Steward within five days (see Rule 8.1). The responsibilities of Lead Stewards are set out in Rule 8.7.

The stewards must also collectively appoint a secretary for the Term. The roles and responsibilities of the secretary are set out in Rule 9.8.

Election methods used for steward elections are chosen by Meta-Governance Working Group stewards each Term. The first two elections used ranked-choice voting, while the third election used approval voting.

The most recent steward elections for the Q3/Q4 Term of 2023 took place in June 2022. The stewards, including the lead stewards, for this term are:

The secretary for the Q3/Q4 2023 term is limes.eth.

A link to these elections can be found here for MetaGovernance, here for ENS Ecosystem, and here for Public Goods.

The forum post announcing the lead stewards and secretary for the Q1/Q2 2023 term can be found here.

The rules governing working group funding requests are set out in Rule 10 of the Working Group Rules.

Elected stewards are able to request funds from the DAO during funding windows in the months of January, April, July, and October each year. Requests outside of these funding windows may be made in exceptional circumstances.

To request funding, each working group must first pass a budget as a Social Proposal during a funding window.

Once budgets have been approved by a social vote, a new collective Executable Proposal will be put to a vote during the same funding window.

If a collective proposal passes an executable vote, the requested funds will be distributed to the respective working group multi-sigs. Working group multisigs are controlled by the DAO, but managed by multisig-signers.

Each working group has a multi-sig managed by four multisig-signers. The multisig-signers are made up of three current elected Stewards for that working group and the Secretary appointed for that Term.

Each multi-sig requires three-of-four signing to approve transactions.

Stewards are able to form subgroups (Rule 3.5.2) in order to distribute funding more effectively and delegate responsibility for decision-making to members of the community with specific knowledge or expertise.

More information about the structure of each working group is available here:

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