The Next Era proposal identifies a real structural mismatch. Tokenholder votes are slow, context-poor, and force binary choices on operational questions that need judgment and continuity. Shifting operational stewardship to a foundation board is a reasonable response, and the precedent from Mozilla, Signal, and ISRG is sound. But the proposal as written leaves a question open that matters to the whole system: how does the community signal between votes? The removal authority is strong — but it is reactive. It activates only when something has already gone wrong. What is missing is a continuous, low-cost channel for the community to express support, concern, or dissent — one that does not require the friction of a formal governance proposal or the weight of a removal petition. This proposal addresses fault line #2 (board legitimacy) and #5 (reversibility) from the gathering briefing. A board that cannot hear its skeptics is structurally deaf; a removal backstop that only fires after damage is done is not reversibility — it is damage control. A community-signal layer makes the board legible to the people it serves, and makes the removal backstop preventive rather than just reactive. Signal, not veto. Tokenholders and community members register directional preferences on 3–5 specific questions per quarter — questions the board is already deciding. Should this quarter prioritize treasury preservation or ecosystem growth? Should the Endowment withdrawal cap be 3% or 5%? Should this grant round fund infrastructure or community onboarding? Not open-ended sentiment. Structured input on real decisions. The board publishes the questions. The community signals on them. The signals are advisory — the board retains full operational authority. But they are published, and the board must respond. Binding force without a veto. Advisory signals that the board can ignore are theater. But making signals binding turns them into a veto, which this proposal explicitly rejects. The middle ground is a mandatory response threshold. If a signal crosses 5% of delegated voting power, the board must publish a written response within 14 days — what they heard, what they changed, and what they chose not to change and why. The board can act against the signal. It cannot stay silent. Silence is what makes a signal layer theater. A required reply is what makes it infrastructure. No structural advantage. The signaling mechanism uses quadratic weighting so that breadth of participation outweighs depth of token holdings. No group's advantage should be structural rather than evidential. You may win with broader evidence of support. You may not win by being the only one who can afford to signal. Phased build — works today, upgrades later. Phase 1 ships on existing infrastructure. A Snapshot space (or Tally temperature-check) with quadratic weighting, the board's quarterly questions, a published response template, and one pilot signaling round against an actual Foundation decision. No ZK required. No dependency on another proposal. Buildable in weeks, not months. Phase 2 upgrades to ZK nullifier signaling — the same Semaphore and Merkle-root stack specified in the Cryptographic Accountability proposal — when that infrastructure is available. Phase 2 adds privacy-preserving participation (voter identities hidden until threshold, preventing retaliation against dissenters) and sybil resistance through nullifier-based uniqueness proofs. The signal layer works at Phase 1. It gets stronger at Phase 2. It does not wait for Phase 2 to exist. Regenerative cycles. The Foundation's quarterly reporting includes what the signals told them, what they changed in response, and what they chose not to change and why. This creates a feedback loop — the kind that living systems use to adapt. Without the mandatory response threshold, this is theater. With it, the board and the community co-evolve. How this fits alongside the Return-on-Governance standard. The RoG proposal measures what the Foundation does — treasury performance, mandate delivery, allocation outcomes. This proposal measures what the community wants — directional preference, concern, dissent. Both belong in the same quarterly report. One is the dashboard; the other is the steering wheel. RoG makes the Foundation's outputs verifiable. A signal layer makes the community's input continuous. Together they turn "trust the board" into "verify the board and hear the community" — without adding a new vote, a new institution, or a new delay. How this connects to the Tag-Gated Accountability proposal. That proposal specifies that "mandate expansions require a DAO signal before taking effect." It does not define what that signal mechanism is. This is it. The verification layer makes the Foundation's actions visible. The signal layer gives the community a voice to act on what it sees. Each does something the other assumes but doesn't provide. What this adds to the Next Era proposal. The Next Era proposal already commits to quarterly financial reporting and annual budget publication. This extension asks for one additional section in each report — community-signal response — and one new practice: publishing 3–5 questions per quarter for the community to signal on. It does not slow the board down. It does not require a new vote. It asks the board to listen and respond as a structural practice, not just when a removal petition forces it to. Build scope and budget. This proposal requests $4,000 across two phases. Phase 1 delivers a working signal layer on existing infrastructure. Phase 2 produces the spec for a privacy-preserving upgrade. Both phases complete within one quarter (8 weeks). Phase 1 — Working signal layer (weeks 1–6): Deliverable 1.1: Quadratic signaling infrastructure — $1,500. Setup and configuration of a Snapshot space (or Tally temperature-check) with quadratic weighting enabled. This includes: Snapshot space creation with ENS token delegation verification (gating participation to actual tokenholders and delegates); quadratic voting strategy configuration (vote weight = √tokens, so 100 tokens = 10 signal strength, 1 token = 1 signal strength); question template design — a standardized format for the board to publish 3–5 questions per quarter, each with a title, a brief context paragraph, and 2–4 directional options (not yes/no — directional: "prioritize X over Y," "increase/decrease/maintain"); and a signal threshold dashboard — a read-only page showing live participation rate against the 5% delegated-voting-power threshold, so the community can see whether a signal has crossed the line that triggers a mandatory board response. The dashboard queries Snapshot for live participation data and the ENS Governor contract for total delegated voting power, calculating the 5% threshold in real time. Deliverable 1.2: Board response template and publishing workflow — $500. A standardized response template the Foundation uses when a signal crosses the 5% threshold. Four required fields: What we heard (summary of signal outcome, participation rate, signal strength distribution); What we changed (specific decisions revised, with before/after); What we chose not to change and why (explicit reasoning for overruling the signal); Next review date (when this question reappears in the next signaling cycle). Includes a publishing workflow: Markdown template → board sign-off → publication on the Foundation's governance page → link in the quarterly RoG report. This is the mechanism that converts "the board should listen" from a hope into a practice. Deliverable 1.3: Community outreach and pilot preparation — included in Deliverable 1.4 cost. The pilot fails without participants. This step is explicit, not assumed: an ENS forum post announcing the pilot and its purpose, a Discord announcement in the ENS governance channel, direct nudges to active delegates and working group members, and a published pilot guide explaining how to participate. Four weeks of setup and outreach before the signaling window opens — because a pilot with 12 participants undermines the proposal's case rather than strengthening it. Deliverable 1.4: Pilot signaling round — $1,000. One live pilot round conducted against an actual Foundation decision within the first quarter. Includes: question selection (if the Foundation is not yet operational, against a simulated decision from the temp check — e.g., "Should the Endowment withdrawal cap be 3% or 5%?"); a 7-day signaling window with real ENS tokenholder participation; a post-pilot analysis report covering participation rate, signal distribution, whether the 5% threshold was crossed, qualitative observations on skeptic participation, and recommendations for iteration. The pilot is the proof of concept. If it fails — low participation, sybil attacks, or the board ignores the result — that is data for the one-year sunset review, not a reason to abandon the design. Phase 1 timeline: Week 1 — Snapshot space setup, quadratic config, question template design. Weeks 2–3 — Response template, publishing workflow, threshold dashboard (dashboard requires querying two data sources: Snapshot API and ENS Governor contract). Weeks 3–4 — Community outreach begins: forum post, Discord announcement, delegate nudges, pilot guide published. Week 5 — Pilot question finalized, community announcement, signaling window opens. Week 6 — Signaling window closes, post-pilot analysis report published. Phase 1 total: $3,000. Phase 2 — ZK upgrade spec (weeks 4–8, overlaps with Phase 1 pilot): Deliverable 2.1: ZK nullifier signaling specification — $1,000. A technical specification document (not implementation) covering: architecture — how Semaphore nullifier commitments map onto the signal layer's question/response cycle; participation model — how voters register identity commitments (Merkle tree of ENS-delegated addresses), cast signals (nullifier-based to prevent double-signing), and remain private until the 5% threshold is reached; sybil resistance — how nullifier uniqueness proofs prevent one address from signaling multiple times on the same question; upgrade path — how Phase 1's Snapshot-based signaling migrates to Phase 2's onchain ZK signaling without losing historical data; integration requirements — what the Foundation's reporting pipeline needs to accept ZK-verified signal results (schema, data format, verification endpoint); dependencies — explicit list of what must exist (Semaphore deployment, ENS delegation registry access) before Phase 2 implementation can begin, and whether the Cryptographic Accountability proposal's infrastructure satisfies those dependencies. Deliverable 2.2: Implementation cost estimate for Phase 2 build. A scoped cost estimate (not budget request) for the actual ZK signaling build — contract development, audit, deployment — so the DAO can evaluate Phase 2 as a future funding decision with real numbers, not a blank check. Phase 2 timeline: Weeks 4–6 — Spec drafting (overlaps with Phase 1 pilot and outreach). Weeks 7–8 — Review, revision, publication. Phase 2 total: $1,000. Total budget: $4,000. What the DAO gets: a working signal layer (Phase 1), a tested pilot with real participation data, a published spec for the privacy-preserving upgrade (Phase 2), and a cost estimate for future implementation — all within one quarter. The 8-week timeline reflects two realities: the threshold dashboard requires querying two data sources (Snapshot + ENS Governor), and a pilot without organized outreach will not produce meaningful participation. The one-year sunset review applies to the mechanism, not the build: if the signal layer is not producing useful information after 12 months, it is revised or sunset regardless of whether Phase 2 has shipped. Revision is built in. The signal mechanism is reviewed after one year of operation — is it producing useful information? Is the board responding to signals that cross the 5% threshold? Are skeptics participating, or has it become an echo of the convinced? If it is not working, it should be revised or sunset. What would change my mind. Show that the Foundation charter already requires quarterly community consultation with published response — and this layer is redundant. Show that quadratic signaling at ENS's scale produces sybil attacks or collusion that outweigh the participation benefit — and a different weighting mechanism is needed. Show that the board's existing quarterly reporting already includes what the community told them and what they changed — and the structural practice this proposal asks for already exists. The goal is not to slow the Foundation. It is to keep the Foundation legible to the community it serves — so that when tokenholders do vote, rarely and consequentially, they vote with continuous information rather than accumulated silence.