ENS DAO Governance Crisis: Founder Blocks Security Council Renewal; Community Calls for Dissolution

According to The Defiant, the ENS DAO is embroiled in a severe governance crisis. ENS co-founder Nick Johnson holds approximately 3.26 million ENS tokens, accounting for nearly 50% of the current delegated voting power. On June 30, he voted against the on-chain binding proposal to renew the Security Committee’s mandate, resulting in the proposal’s defeat with 82% opposition; the Security Committee’s authorization will expire on July 24. Previously, Johnson self-delegated a large portion of voting power to support a proposal transferring control of the DAO’s operational wallet, ENS token holdings, and the donation fund managed by Karpatkey to a five-member board of the ENS Foundation, sparking strong community concerns over “governance capture.” Lefteris Karapetsas, founder of Rotki, bluntly declared, “The DAO is dead,” while Security Committee member Brantly Millegan characterized the proposal as “fiscal capture by ENS Labs.” In response, Christoph Jentzsch, the original author of “The DAO” code, publicly proposed dissolving the ENS DAO outright, suggesting the destruction of the ENSv2 universal router key and distribution of remaining funds to formally transition the protocol into public infrastructure. The on-chain vote for the Security Committee closes on July 5, and ENS Labs COO Katherine