The Lobbying Log: Delegate Contact Disclosure for Foundation-Power Votes

ENS can have an empowered Foundation without letting influence move through private channels that ordinary nameholders and smaller delegates cannot see. The current debate focuses on custody, legal authority, grants, directors, Security Council permissions, and removal. Those are important. But there is another practical problem: once the Foundation or Foundation-linked operators become the professional center of gravity, they can shape delegate opinion through private calls, chats, briefings, sponsor pressure, vendor pressure, and relationship networks. Private conversation is not corruption by itself. Delegates need to ask questions. Operators need to explain implementation. But when a vote changes the Foundation's own authority, undisclosed lobbying creates a legitimacy problem. The DAO cannot tell whether public consensus came from open deliberation or from private institutional pressure. ENS should adopt a narrow Delegate Contact Disclosure rule for Foundation-power votes. ## Mechanism: Delegate Contact Disclosure Log ### 1. Trigger The log activates for any Snapshot, Tally, executable proposal, temp check, or renewal process that materially changes: - Foundation custody, mandate, annual budget, or spending discretion; - director appointment, removal, compensation, indemnity, or conflict rules; - grants-program absorption, service-provider authority, or public-goods funding control; - Security Council cancellation permissions, emergency powers, or operational-wallet powers; - Endowment permissions, role modifiers, or other control surfaces that move authority from DAO vote to institutional operation. The trigger is about institutional power, not about ordinary ENS governance discussion. ### 2. Who must disclose Disclosure should apply to Foundation directors, officers, staff, contractors, paid contributors acting in a Foundation capacity, Foundation-funded communications vendors, and service providers who are asking delegates to support, oppose, amend, delay, or privately coordinate around a triggered vote. It should also apply when a delegate is contacted with non-public implementation details, private legal claims, or promised access that could affect their vote. It should not apply to ordinary public forum replies, public calls, public spaces, public Discord comments, or personal opinions clearly made outside institutional capacity. ### 3. What gets logged For each covered contact, the public log should include: - date of contact; - contacted delegate or delegate team; - contacting person or entity; - paid or official role, if any; - proposal or vote discussed; - whether support, opposition, amendment, abstention, delay, or private coordination was requested; - links to materials shared, unless confidentiality is legally required; - a short reason for any redaction. The log does not need to publish private chat transcripts. It needs enough metadata for the DAO to see the influence map around votes that expand institutional power. ### 4. Delegate-side option Delegates should be allowed to self-report covered contacts if the institutional actor does not log them within five business days. A simple form can let delegates submit the same metadata and attach optional evidence. To avoid weaponizing the process, contested entries should be marked as contested rather than treated as proven misconduct. ### 5. Threshold and safe harbor Small conversations should not create bureaucracy. The rule can use a threshold: - one-off factual scheduling or link-sharing is exempt; - public office-hours follow-up is exempt if the source material is public; - any request for a voting position, amendment strategy, delay strategy, or private coordination must be logged; - any outreach to delegates holding more than a DAO-ratified voting-power threshold must be logged; - repeated contacts to a delegate bloc must be logged even if each contact is framed as informal. A safe harbor should protect good-faith late disclosures. If a covered contact is logged within five business days, there is no penalty unless the omission was intentional or repeated. ### 6. Enforcement and remedy A DAO-appointed reviewer or small steward panel can check the log during the vote and for fourteen days after it. Remedies should be procedural, not punitive by default: 1. publish the missing entry; 2. label contested facts; 3. add the materials to the public proposal page; 4. extend a comment window if private lobbying materially preceded a deadline; 5. require a disclosure report before the next renewal, budget, or authority expansion. If a pattern of concealed lobbying appears, renewal of the affected Foundation authority should pause until the disclosure report is complete. ### 7. Budget logic Requested budget: **$70,000** for a 12-month Delegate Contact Disclosure pilot. This should cover a lightweight public log, intake form, reviewer time, basic evidence handling, redaction policy, delegate guidance, and a renewal report. It is intentionally small. ENS needs visibility, not a new surveillance bureaucracy. ## Why this is distinct This is not a custody rule. It works no matter where the treasury sits. It is not a conflict-of-interest policy. A person can have no formal conflict and still use institutional access to privately steer votes about institutional power. It is not an electioneering ban. The Foundation may still answer questions, publish factual materials, and make public arguments when allowed. This proposal only says that covered private delegate-contact around Foundation-power votes should leave a public metadata trail. It is also not an accusation against any named person. The mechanism is for the next decade of ENS, not only the current vote. ## Lovepunks / non-domination frame A commons can tolerate disagreement. It cannot stay legitimate if influence becomes visible only to the people already inside the room. If the Foundation is going to become more powerful, ENS should make the private influence map around that power visible enough for fee-payers, builders, delegates, and tokenholders to judge it.