Do Not Campaign With the Commons: A Foundation Electioneering Firewall

The ENS Foundation debate is now less about whether institutions can help ENS and more about how institutions behave when their own authority is on the ballot. A foundation that holds legal, operational, grants, standards, or communications capacity will naturally have more channels than an ordinary delegate. It can publish official updates, brief service providers, shape grant-program context, answer legal questions, and set the frame for what counts as responsible governance. Some of that is necessary. ENS needs a Foundation that can communicate clearly. But when the vote is about the Foundation's own mandate, renewal, budget, removal, director powers, or operational expansion, ordinary communication can become institutional campaigning. That is a non-domination problem. The shared infrastructure should not become the loudest political actor in votes about itself. ENS should add a narrow Campaign Firewall for Foundation-related votes. ## Mechanism: Foundation Campaign Firewall The rule is not "the Foundation must be silent." The rule is that public-interest capacity cannot be used as a one-sided campaign machine when the institution's own power is directly at stake. ### 1. Trigger **Who decides:** the DAO ratifies the trigger as part of the Foundation transition policy. The firewall activates for any vote or temp check that materially changes: - Foundation custody, spending authority, annual budget, or renewal; - director appointment, removal, compensation, conflict rules, or indemnity; - grants-program absorption or service-provider transition authority; - standards, legal, or external-representation mandate; - emergency powers, operational-wallet powers, Endowment permissions, or Security Council cancellation rights; - winding-up, asset disposition, trademarks, or public identity controlled by Foundation-linked entities. If the ballot directly affects the Foundation's own authority, the firewall applies. ### 2. Allowed institutional speech **Who executes:** the Foundation may still publish neutral operational information through official channels. Allowed communications include: - factual summaries of the proposal text; - deadlines, links, quorum information, and voting instructions; - legal or operational risk disclosures, with sources and uncertainty clearly labeled; - implementation-readiness notes; - answers to delegate questions when the answer is archived publicly; - corrections of false factual claims, limited to the corrected fact and supporting source. This lets ENS get the benefit of expertise without letting expertise become unbounded persuasion. ### 3. Barred institutional electioneering During the firewall window, Foundation resources should not be used for: - official-channel endorsements of one ballot outcome; - paid staff time to campaign for the Foundation's preferred result outside factual Q&A; - grant, vendor, or service-provider pressure tied to a voting position; - selective briefings that give one camp non-public information; - Foundation-funded content, events, or influencer activity advocating an outcome; - using implementation access to define opponents as irresponsible, hostile, or anti-ENS. Individuals can still speak in their personal capacity. The point is to separate personal accountable partiality from institutional amplification funded by the commons. ### 4. Public Q&A with right of reply **Who maintains:** the Foundation maintains a public Q&A page for triggered votes. A neutral DAO steward or independent reviewer checks whether the page is complete enough to rely on. For each official answer, the page should show: - the question asked; - who answered; - the factual basis; - what remains uncertain; - links to the proposal, forum thread, vote, and relevant documents; - any correction history. If the Foundation publishes a risk claim that materially supports one side, delegates from the other side get a short right of reply on the same page. The reply is not an endorsement. It is a symmetry rule: when official infrastructure frames a risk, affected voters can see the strongest public counterclaim in the same place. ### 5. Challenge and cure **Who can challenge:** any delegate, steward, director, Security Council member, or minimum-signature group of tokenholders can file a firewall challenge during the vote or within seven days after it. **Who reviews:** an independent reviewer or pre-named steward panel classifies the communication as factual, personal, advocacy, pressure, selective disclosure, or unclear. **Cure path:** if a violation is found, the remedy should be proportional: 1. publish a correction or label; 2. disclose the communication and source of funding; 3. add an equal right-of-reply placement; 4. extend the voting or comment window when timing affected deliberation; 5. pause expansion or renewal of the affected authority until the cure is complete. This is not a censorship tool. It is a procedural remedy when the institution uses shared capacity in a self-interested vote. ### 6. Expiry and renewal The firewall should run as a 12-month pilot covering the Foundation transition, first annual budget, any renewal vote, and any director-removal or authority-expansion process. It expires unless renewed after a public report listing: - triggered votes; - official communications published; - challenges filed; - violations found; - cures completed; - unresolved edge cases. If it creates bureaucracy without preventing domination, let it expire. If it prevents institutional self-campaigning while preserving useful information, make it standing policy. ## Why this is not duplicative This is not another custody proposal. It applies whether assets stay in the DAO, move to a Foundation-controlled process, or remain in a hybrid structure. It is not the same as a conflict-of-interest policy. COI rules ask whether a person has a conflict. This asks whether shared institutional resources are being used to campaign for the institution's own power. It is not the same as a dispute ladder, amendment ledger, or evidence baseline. Those improve process quality. The firewall governs the specific moment when official Foundation channels can tilt a vote about the Foundation itself. It also does not attack any named person or current team. Good institutions need these rules precisely because good people are still inside incentive structures. ## What would change our mind This proposal is unnecessary if the executable Foundation package already contains a binding communications and electioneering policy for votes about Foundation authority, with public Q&A, right of reply, challenge review, proportional cure, and renewal/expiry terms. If that exists, fund implementation and reporting. If it does not, ENS is building a powerful public-interest operator without defining how that operator behaves during votes about its own power. ## Budget logic Requested budget: **$95,000** for a 12-month Campaign Firewall pilot. That budget can cover policy drafting, public Q&A infrastructure, independent review time, challenge handling, reporting, and right-of-reply operations for Foundation-related votes. The amount is intentionally smaller than an operations or legal restructure budget because the mechanism should be light. It should protect legitimacy without becoming a new center of power. ## Lovepunks / non-domination frame A commons can have institutions. It just cannot let the institution become the only voice with a microphone when the community is deciding how much power that institution should hold. The Foundation should be able to inform. Delegates should be able to dissent. Fee-payers, builders, grantees, and tokenholders should be able to hear both without the commons funding only one side of the story.