ENS, as a domain service and identity protocol operating on Ethereum, originally hoped to combat power concentration through the voting structure of the ENS DAO's tokens, but conflicts surrounding governance saw a notable escalation on July 7, 2026. On that day, ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande put forth a highly controversial governance reform proposal: to utilize approximately 5 million ENS tokens that had been sitting idle in the DAO treasury, no longer allowing them to sleep in the treasury, but instead entrusting them to multiple individual participants in order to dilute the current highly centralized voting power structure. The proposal directly targeted a single representative that had long been discussed within the community—reportedly possessing enough voting power to reach quorum alone and pass any proposal, even exceeding the total voting power of the last 50 representatives. This disparity in voting power was viewed by many members as a deviation from the original intention of decentralizing ENS DAO, and Alex’s attempt to reshape the power landscape with 5 million treasury tokens was quickly interpreted as an effort to dismantle the “one vote can kill” capability at the institutional level; however, the proposal has yet to provide specific delegation timelines and distribution mechanisms, and there remains no unified opinion within the community on whether this method should be used to break the existing pattern. As long as a single representative can still independently meet the quorum requirement, this game surrounding the risks of concentrated voting power is destined to continue to pull on the governance legitimacy and future direction of ENS DAO.
Single Representative’s One Vote Can Kill: The Current Imbalance in ENS Governance
Under the current token voting structure of ENS DAO, this single representative is no longer just one voice among many but has the ability to complete the entire governance process alone. According to public information, the voting power they hold is enough to independently meet the legal quorum requirements for ENS DAO. This means that any proposal entering the voting stage, from achieving valid votes to final execution, can be pushed onto the chain for implementation with the support of just this one address, leaving the choices of all other representatives technically as mere annotations that either add to or diminish this outcome.
More critically, according to a single source, this representative's votes have already surpassed the total voting power of the last 50 representatives, rendering the so-called “representative system” nearly ineffective in practice. As a result, community opinion has described it as approaching a “one vote veto” style of control: whether adjusting protocol parameters or utilizing treasury assets, if this representative chooses to oppose, even dozens of representatives combined cannot overturn it; conversely, if they choose to support, no amount of opposing votes can change the decision. In a DAO designed with decentralization as its intent, emphasizing multi-player games and open discussions, having power so highly concentrated in a single delegate is viewed as a direct departure from the original design intentions, thus putting the current governance legitimacy of ENS DAO under repeated scrutiny.
Where Will the 5 Million ENS in the Treasury Go: Proposal Design and Game Theory
In this structure where "one representative can decide everything," the most prominent and controversial chip is the approximately 5 million idle ENS tokens still quietly resting in the ENS DAO treasury. Originally set aside as a resource for the long-term development of the protocol, many community members now see them as a governance tool capable of reshaping the power landscape. On July 7, 2026, ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande encapsulated this idea in a proposal: no longer allowing treasury tokens to remain dormant, but instead distributing these 5 million ENS to multiple individual participants rather than creating another "large representative."
In public statements, the goal of this proposal is straightforward—to use the tokens in the treasury to dilute the existing excessive concentration and break the “one vote can kill” situation. However, the subtlety in the design is that power will not simply be "dispersed into the air," but rather transferred from a central point to several selected individuals, which could both allow more voices to gain substantial voting power and potentially foster new power alliances among these participants with added chips. More crucially, the proposal has yet to disclose specific delegation timelines, voting weight distribution methods, and other mechanism details, making it difficult for outsiders to assess the extent to which these 5 million ENS will genuinely change the game structure, or merely shift the centralization issue from a visible single point to a more covert multi-point interaction.
Decentralization Ideals Under Pressure: Voices of Community Division
With the mechanism details yet unresolved, controversy has rapidly fermented within the ENS community. Public materials indicate that there has been a sustained high-intensity confrontation surrounding this reform proposal to utilize approximately 5 million treasury ENS, which many participants view as one of the core events in the recent escalation of governance infighting and power allocation disputes: one side is anger over the single representative's "one vote can kill" status, while the other is deep distrust regarding how to dismantle this structure.
The narrative of supporters is very clear—given that the existing power landscape has deviated from the original intent of decentralization within ENS DAO, the idle voting power in the treasury must be used to dilute monopoly, allowing more individual participants to gain tangible governance chips, thus restoring a diverse and balanced structure. Opponents, however, view the same action from a different angle; they are concerned that the DAO's proactive intervention with treasury assets will open new risk exposures: if these newly added chips form a new power alliance behind the scenes or create a long-term dependency on the treasury, the governance structure may merely slide from one centralization to another. As of now, there are no publicly available on-chain voting results or support/oppose ratios, with the focal point of the debate remaining on an unresolved choice—whether to accept the more controllable compromise between the ideal of decentralization and the power redistribution led by the treasury.
ENS’s Key Role in the Ethereum Ecosystem and Governance Risks
ENS has long ceased to be just a "memorable address." It is embedded as a domain service and identity protocol at the base layer of Ethereum: wallet frontends, DeFi applications, and social tools use it to complete address resolution and identity display, allowing users to condense their on-chain existence into a single name. Developers view ENS as the default identity interface. On such an infrastructure, the technical reliability of the protocol itself is merely a prerequisite; more critically, the governance surrounding it needs to be robust and trustworthy enough.
ENS DAO is precisely this layer of trust, managing protocol parameters and treasury resources through token voting, with decisions formed directly by ENS token holders or through representatives. The current controversy surrounding concentrated voting power and reform proposals is no longer just a technical detail of “whether a certain address is overly powerful,” but touches upon whether users can be assured that their names won't be dictated by a minority, whether developers can confidently build products on a governance structure that could be resolved with a single vote, and whether the broader Ethereum ecosystem can tolerate the long-term image of such a key building block.
More realistically, ENS is not an isolated case; other DAOs employing token voting face similar challenges with concentrated representation and the usage of treasury assets. The extreme concentration of voting power seen in the single representative within ENS DAO and the reform idea aiming to dilute this concentration with approximately 5 million treasury tokens are easily perceived by outsiders as a negative or cautionary example: if even identity infrastructure can sway in the power struggle, all experiments touting "decentralized governance" must re-examine their vulnerabilities. In other words, the debate surrounding power concentration and treasury intervention in ENS has already been pushed into the coordinate system of the entire on-chain governance experiment. It will serve as a long-term case, reminding later DAOs to confront centralization risks when designing voting mechanisms and treasury weights, rather than trying to mend uncontrollable power structures with riskier means afterward.
From Big Holder Dominance to Governance Experiment: Next Observation Points for ENS
This debate surrounding the single representative's "one vote can kill" and the utilization of 5 million ENS from the treasury fundamentally lays the core contradictions of ENS DAO on-chain: one side is the ideal of "community co-governance" within the decentralization narrative, while the other is the reality of highly concentrated voting power, which can even meet the quorum independently. Alex's proposed treasury delegation plan appears to be born out of a need for correction—distributing idle tokens to more individual participants to dilute the control of a single point. However, in the absence of detailed allocation mechanisms and design timelines, it also risks evolving into a tool for another power alliance, transforming "correction" into a new round of games. As of July 7, 2026, this proposal remains in the discussion and opinion collection phase, with no formal voting results or execution timeline appearing on-chain, and the community has yet to reach a consensus on how to address the concentration of power in a single representative. The next points truly worth tracking on-chain are several specific variables: whether the proposal is formally submitted to the governance process, whether alternative or supplementary reform routes emerge, and whether that representative with overwhelming voting power chooses to publicly respond regarding their stance on centralization amidst the controversy. Before these key actions are clarified, the governance reform of ENS remains an ongoing experiment, and all observers need to treat it as a long-term case, continuously tracking each on-chain vote and role adjustment to assess how far this attempt to transition from big holder dominance to governance redesign can truly go.
Join our community to discuss together and become stronger!
AiCoin exclusive Hyperliquid benefits: https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/AICOIN88
AiCoin exclusive Aster benefits: https://www.asterdex.com/zh-CN/referral/9C50e2
On-chain Telegram community: https://t.me/AiCoinWhaleData
On-chain community: https://www.aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=N6OVMor5g
AiCoin on-chain Twitter: https://x.com/aicoinwhaledata
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
