ENS (Ethereum Name Service) reported in a blog post that a majority of its community voted to indefinitely remove Brantly Millegan from his position as a community steward, with 75% in favour.
“Brantly has been a valued team member of TNL for the past three years. However, as a team we felt that his position with TNL is no longer tenable,” Johnson said. “Many of you were hurt by Brantly’s comments over the past 24 hours, and we strongly believe that ENS should be an inclusive community. Going forward we’ll continue to do everything we can to ensure that remains the case.”
Millegan was voted out of the ENS DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) using the governance token after a tweet from 2016 surfaced over the weekend, generating immediate outrage. Millegan had labelled homosexuals as evil, disputed the existence of transgenderism, and referred to contraception as a perversion in the tweet.
Millegan could face more disciplinary action, according to ENS, including immediate suspension while the community decides what to do; being asked to step down from his leadership roles at ENS (he is currently director of operations); removal as a director of the ENS foundation via a DAO vote; and removal from True Names Limited that leads the development of ENS.
Some delegates warned about the perils of cancel culture and the absurdity of a decentralised service centred around the voice of one person, but the vote was not unanimous. ENS is a well-known provider of Ethereum-related domain names in the form of NFTs that can be used as usernames in crypto ecosystems.
