Standards Mandate Before Standards Power: A W3C/DID Compact for the ENS Foundation

The temp check gives the Foundation a stronger external face for ENS, but it does not say how that face is authorized when ENS enters standards rooms. That matters because standards work can quietly define what wallets, browsers, DID tooling, and institutions think ENS is allowed to become. A public comment in the ENS forum already pointed to live W3C DID Resolution work and the value of ENS engaging standards bodies. The gap is not whether engagement is good. The gap is who sets the mandate, what gets reported back, and how the community can tell whether representation served ENS rather than just institutional convenience. Add a Standards Mandate Compact before the Foundation receives expanded standards authority. The compact has five parts: 1) publish the standards venues in scope, starting with W3C DID Resolution and adjacent wallet/browser interoperability rooms; 2) publish two concrete 90-day deliverables, an ENS/.eth interoperability note and a DID Resolution contribution plan; 3) post short public minutes after material meetings, including the decision premises, trade-offs, and rejected alternatives; 4) maintain a dissent log where delegates, builders, registrants, and international users can flag standards risks without turning every issue into a token vote; 5) require a board response when high-signal objections show that a proposed standards position could narrow ENS neutrality, portability, or user sovereignty. This is intentionally not another custody proposal, board-selection fight, grant-veto layer, or generic accountability charter. It accepts that the Foundation may need to represent ENS externally, then makes that representation legible and bounded. It also protects the pro-Foundation case: a serious institution should be able to show what mandate it carried into standards bodies, what changed after community review, and which risks it chose to accept. Budget request: $90,000 for one 90-day cycle. Use it for a standards coordinator, one technical contributor familiar with ENS resolution and DID tooling, light legal/policy review, documentation, and public review sessions. Deliverables are due at day 30, day 60, and day 90. If the compact does not produce public artifacts by day 90, the standards mandate expires by default and must be renewed explicitly before the Foundation claims expanded standards representation under this pilot. The success condition is simple: ENS can move faster in standards spaces without letting any single office monopolize the facts, language, or legitimacy of how ENS is represented to the outside world.