ENS tokenholders approved the Next Era of ENS DAO proposal with about 70% support, putting the $65M endowment under a newly operational ENS Foundation with a five-member board, an executive director and staff.

The DAO keeps its 54.6% token majority and authority over the protocol, but the Foundation can now do what a purely decentralized body cannot: engage institutions like ICANN and defend ENS trademarks. The endowment is funded from .eth registration fees.

The revamp lands after a governance fight, when ENS Labs CEO Nick Johnson self-delegated 3.26M tokens to block a Security Council renewal, a move critics called a governance attack.