The ENS DAO governance system has plunged into chaos after co-founder Nick Johnson used approximately half of the active voting supply to block an on-chain proposal to renew the protocol's Security Council. The vote, which concluded on June 30, 2026, sought to extend the mandate of the 4-of-8 multisig body responsible for canceling malicious proposals in the DAO's timelock. Johnson, who had abstained from the earlier off-chain Snapshot vote, cast roughly 3.26 million ENS tokens—representing around 80% of the votes in the executable round—against the renewal, citing dissatisfaction with the current slate of council members.
Community reaction was swift and harsh. Delegate Lefteris Karapetsas declared that "ENS DAO is dead," pointing to the concentration of power in Johnson's hands. Brantly Millegan, a former ENS contributor, called the implosion "a catastrophe for Ethereum." Johnson later defended his actions, stating he supported renewal but wanted changes to the council's composition. The controversy reignited debates about decentralization, as the ENS Foundation—which Johnson helps govern—is simultaneously pushing a temp check proposal to consolidate operational and financial control from the DAO to the Foundation.
The situation is compounded by the massive disparity between the DAO's total treasury of $350 million and its non-ENS reserves of just $88 million. The ENS token, priced at $4.07, has lost more than 95% of its value since its 2021 peak of $85.69, creating a vulnerability to “residual floating value takeover attacks,” where an actor could buy tokens on the open market to extract treasury funds. In response, a new proposal aims to establish an eight-member Security Council with a stricter 5/8 approval threshold, with the nomination period open until July 3, 2026. Meanwhile, ENS Labs recently canceled its Namechain Layer 2 and will deploy the ENSv2 protocol directly on Ethereum mainnet.
