Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_62006d613415f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Delegates and members of the Ethereum Name Service foundation are weighing a draft proposal to terminate Millegan</li>
 <li>The development is dividing ENS&#8217; community, with some defending the director&#8217;s right to religious views, while others decry discrimination</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Controversy has erupted within the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) community after a more than 5-year-old tweet by the foundation&#8217;s director of operations, Brantly Millegan, resurfaced on Friday.



Delegate members from the Decentralized Autonomous Organization protocol are weighing up whether to terminate Millegan&#8217;s directorship for comments made in 2016 about his views regarding homosexuality, transgender people and abortions, among other topics.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="358" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-16819" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=50 50w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/tweet-1024x358.jpg?w=1184 1184w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Brantly Millegan&#8217;s tweet from 2016</figcaption></figure>



A <a href="https://discuss.ens.domains/t/draft-proposal-dao-wide-proposal-to-terminate-directorship-of-brantly-millegan-at-the-ens-foundation/10277?u=viaeth" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">draft proposal</a> has been put forth to DAO delegates — those with voting rights making decisions affecting the protocol — to weigh in. The draft is not an active proposal, but a consideration for delegates to bring forward a vote on whether he should remain in a director role.



ENS is a domain name service designed to turn Ethereum machine-readable addresses into human-readable ones.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">not really anything to address? i adhere to the world&#39;s largest religion and apparently that&#39;s not allowed in web3?&mdash; brantly.eth (@BrantlyMillegan) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrantlyMillegan/status/1490181411004952576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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The controversy has called into question the nature of DAOs and the relationships they possess with voting delegates. Millegan is ENS&#8217; largest and most powerful delegate with <a href="https://www.withtally.com/governance/eip155:1:0x323A76393544d5ecca80cd6ef2A560C6a395b7E3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">377.68K votes</a>. Coinbase comes in at number two, only slightly behind Millegan with 333K of the DAO&#8217;s total voting share, after the director&#8217;s power gap narrowed following the resurfaced tweet.



Millegan has since been removed from his role as community steward following a &#8220;simple indicative majority vote&#8221; on Sunday, after the director defended his views in a Twitter Space discussion on Friday.



&#8220;After listening carefully to the concerns of the stewards, delegates, and many other community members, I believe it is in the best interest of ENS and the communality to remove Brantly from his role as a Community Steward,&#8221; said community steward member <a href="https://discuss.ens.domains/t/removing-brantly-eth-as-a-community-steward/10408/11" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kevin</a> &#8220;validator.eth&#8221; on Sunday.



While the 2016 <a href="https://twitter.com/brantlymillegan/status/731075016691994624?s=21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a> has since been removed for violating Twitter&#8217;s rules, a debate has opened up within social circles as to how the director&#8217;s views should be dealt with, if at all.



&#8220;You are accusing Brantly of misconduct but failed to produce evidence of such actions in this proposal. Right now, I see that the DAO has power to remov[e] him, but that’s all,&#8221; said one delegate going by the name &#8220;irreverent.&#8221;



&#8220;I would suggest clearly stating the relevant information (ie, the tweets, spaces, etc.) as well as any guidelines or specific clauses that he has violated. If the current proposal is submitted, I will vote NO because I see no clear misconduct being displayed&nbsp;given the current information within the draft&nbsp;and it feels like an angry mob vote.&#8221;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">&#8220;This vibe is definitely something I do not want the DAO to give off.&#8221;</blockquote>



Those within the community defending Millegan&#8217;s right to free speech point to examples that the director has not acted upon his beliefs to de-platform minorities within the protocol. Others still call into question his public views and their effect on the protocol&#8217;s market health.



&#8220;He is bad for ENS because he creates segregation of users by his words and actions, said &#8220;Healing Visions,&#8221; another ENS delegate weighing in on the draft proposal. &#8220;Many have removed their .eth name, the price is down and will abandon the platform. If you can’t get behind it from a human perspective, which would be very sad, then from a business perspective it doesn’t make sense to keep him.&#8221;



The lead developer of ENS, Nick Johnson, announced Monday morning that Millegan would no longer be working with True Names Limited, the nonprofit company that funds ENS development.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">True Names Limited (TNL), the nonprofit that funds and organises development on <a href="https://twitter.com/ensdomains?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ensdomains</a>, has terminated the contract of Brantly Millegan effective today.&mdash; nick.eth (@nicksdjohnson) <a href="https://twitter.com/nicksdjohnson/status/1490581937375027202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Blockworks attempted to contact Millegan to discuss the draft proposal but did not receive a reply by press time.



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