alt_ens.md

Some thoughts on an alternate approach to ENS.

• Goals

• Prevent gold rush style initial allocation of TLN's

• Token holder pool grows slowly over time, expanding out from the Ethereum Foundation.

• Force TLD name allocation to occur slowly at first. Allow careful deliberation and time to learn from mistakes during early votes.

• Slowly allow TLD name allocation to speed up, with all restrictions removed once all tokens have been distributed.

• The only TLN's that mayb be elligible to be pre-allocated are:

  • /f/ for free-for-all
  • something for the Ethereum foundation. (My only hesitance is that this should potentially live under it's own TLD for all not-for-profit organizations)

• Voting mechanic potentially changed to use Quadratic Voting - http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/

  • incentivises participation in the voting process
  • Reduces the effect of tirany by the majority

• ENS Token Distribution.

  • All crowdsale profit goes to the Ethereum foundation.
  • Phase 1 (35% of the total tokens over 6 months)
    • During phase 1, tokens may not be transferred (only used to vote).
    • During phase 1 the number of TLD's that can be registered will be limited to a very small number, spread evenly across the time period.
    • The first distribution is directly to the Ethereum Foundation who are expected to distribute them as they see fit.
    • The second and third distribution would be restricted a pool of up to N people where N is the number of current token holders (effectively doubling the number of token holders). These people would be directly nominated (and potentially voted on) by all current token holders. The tokens would be evenly distributed among these individuals.
  • Phase 2 (65% of the tokens over 6 months)
    • There will be 3 crowdsales during phase 2.
    • During phase 2, each token token holder may nominate N people to be eligible in the crowd sale.
    • The number of nominations starts at 2 and doubles for each crowdsale.
    • Only nominated accounts may participate in the crowdsale.
    • Token purchase combines two mechanisms.
      • As outlined by Maker, a portion is sold each day porportional to the total purchase price.
      • The portion will be determined by the square root of the purchase amount (like in quadratic voting, a mechanism to de-incentivise large purchases).
    • The number of TLN's that can be registered during phase 2 will rise slowly (something like 10-30 TLN's per month)
  • Phase 3
    • Once all tokens have been distributed, tokens will be opened up to be fully transferrable.
    • All restrictions on TLN name registrations will be lifted.

Possible Ideas

• A portion of the name registration fees are directed towards the Ethereum Foundation. An annual vote of some sort might occur to change this percentage, or to add new recipients to the benefactor list.

I like everything you have to say except that in my opinion "ethereum foundation" should not be a privileged entity. Even a pure crowdsale would be better IMO (income from sale goes to the DAO itself)

I would suggest a time period to transition from eth foundation to full dao in order to support ethereum itself further early on. A regular vote could allow the transition to be controlled by participants.

agreed with @sillytuna ....it's unclear how much further the Ethereum Foundation can continue on its funding....but we should keep them from monopolizing the funds, this I agree.