ENS DAO establishes new Foundation to oversee $65 million endowment

ENS tokenholders have approved the Next Era of ENS DAO proposal, establishing the ENS Foundation as a fully operational organization with a full-time Executive Director, staff and a five-member board. The proposal has also been executed onchain.

Under the new structure, the Foundation’s board assumes administrative control of the ENS Endowment Safe, which held approximately $65 million in ETH and stablecoins as of July 2026. The assets remain at their existing address rather than being transferred to a new wallet.

Transactions from the endowment will pass through a nine-day timelock by default, giving the ENS Security Council the ability to cancel transactions that fall outside the Foundation’s mandate. The endowment is funded through revenue from .eth name registration fees.

The Foundation will operate through published budgets approved by its board and will provide annual audited financial statements and quarterly grant updates.

The overhaul gives the Foundation the legal and operational structure to represent Ethereum Name Service in areas that the DAO itself cannot directly handle. 

It can now participate in organizations including ICANN, IETF and W3C, pursue recognition and stewardship of the .ens top-level domain and represent ENS in regulatory discussions surrounding decentralized naming.

It will also take responsibility for ENS trademarks and other intellectual property, employ full-time staff and serve as a formal counterparty for courts, registrars, standards organizations and other institutions.

The new structure separates those responsibilities from ENS Labs, which had previously handled some institutional work alongside development of the protocol. ENS Labs will remain a separate organization focused on engineering, integrations and products including ENSv2.

Despite the Foundation’s new authority over the endowment, control of the broader protocol remains with ENS tokenholders. Smart contract upgrades, ENS pricing and fee structures, root key and registry control, constitutional amendments and decisions involving DAO-held ENS tokens remain under tokenholder governance.

The DAO’s ENS holdings, representing 54.6% of the total token supply, will remain under tokenholder control. The approved proposal includes one exception: a one-time transfer of 1 million ENS to the Foundation restricted to employee compensation under a published framework.

The DAO’s separate operational wallet, which held approximately $16 million in ETH and stablecoins as of July, also remains under DAO control.

The ENS Foundation and ENS Labs will remain separate legal and operating entities. The Foundation does not own ENS Labs, while ENS Labs has no governance rights over the Foundation, the endowment, DAO-held ENS or the protocol.

The inaugural Foundation board consists of Executive Director Alexander Urbelis, ENS founder and ENS Labs CEO Nick Johnson, A.Capital Ventures General Partner and ETHGlobal co-founder Kartik Talwar, Prelude co-founder Brett Sun and Aragon CEO Anthony Leutenegger. The three independent directors serve two-year terms renewable by tokenholders.

Existing grants, funding streams and other current commitments will continue under their existing terms as the Foundation begins taking over its approved operational, financial, policy and institutional responsibilities.