governance

ENS DAO has voted to approve the proposal "Next Era of ENS DAO" and completed on-chain execution, officially establishing the ENS Foundation to promote the ENS ecosystem into a new governance phase.According to the proposal, the ENS Foundation will become a fully operational organization, equipped with a full-time executive director, a professional team, and a board of directors consisting of 5 members, responsible for undertaking institutional work related to ENS in areas such as law, policy, standard-setting, and brand protection.ENS stated that over the past nearly ten years, ENS has developed into an important infrastructure within the Ethereum ecosystem, with millions of registered domain names, and has been integrated by numerous wallets, applications, and Layer 2 networks. However, the DAO itself lacks legal entity status, making it unable to effectively participate in the governance of the internet naming system, sign institutional cooperation agreements, hire full-time employees, maintain trademark rights, or engage in regulatory discussions. The establishment of the ENS Foundation aims to fill this gap. In the future, the foundation will be responsible for:Representing ENS in internet standard organizations such as ICANN, IETF, and W3C, promoting the recognition and management of the ".ens" top-level domain (TLD);Participating in policy discussions as a legal entity, communicating with regulatory agencies and government departments;Holding and protecting ENS trademarks and intellectual property, combating phishing and impersonation;Hiring full-time employees responsible for ecosystem operations, funding programs, and fund management;Becoming a formal cooperation entity between traditional institutions such as registrars and standard organizations and the ENS ecosystem.

GnosisDAO is initiating a governance proposal GIP-152 on whether to split the Gnosis App into an independent company led by the original team. The proposal is now live on Snapshot, and voting will close on August 12 at 14:19 (UTC), with a required quorum of 75,000 votes to take effect. Community members can vote on whether to support the separation of the Gnosis App from the GnosisDAO ecosystem through Snapshot.The proposal outlines that GnosisDAO will invest $1.5 million in cash and inject a product and IP valued at $1 million, obtaining at least 25% equity through SAFE at a post-money valuation of $10 million, while completely separating the Gnosis App from Gnosis Ltd's annual budget of $3.1 million. The new company will focus on self-custody payments and card services, using the Circles protocol as its core, with 18 months of funding primarily allocated for the team, compliance operations, and customer acquisition, and will continue to drive on-chain and payment network usage through Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Chain. Current Snapshot voting results show that approximately 66% are in favor.

On July 31, the Financial Regulatory Administration, the Central Bank, the Securities Regulatory Commission, and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Improving the Governance of Financial Institutions," proposing 22 measures. It aims to establish a governance mechanism for financial institutions by 2029 that features clear boundaries of responsibilities and powers, compatible incentives and constraints, strict risk management, and standardized and efficient operations. Core measures include: strict control over shareholder access, building a "firewall" between industrial capital and financial capital, penetrating identification of major shareholders and actual controllers, and prohibiting the concealment of control rights and related relationships; strict regulation of shareholder behavior, prohibiting the transfer of benefits to shareholders and related parties; strengthening the responsibilities of directors, senior executives, and other "key minorities," and preventing the "flow of personnel with violations"; implementing lifelong accountability for major illegal and irregular behaviors; early intervention for institutions with significant governance defects; promoting the revision of important laws and regulations in the financial sector, and improving systems related to shareholder equity, corporate governance, and market exit.

According to The Block, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stated that quantum computing could pose a significant challenge to Bitcoin's governance capabilities. If the Bitcoin network cannot coordinate the necessary upgrades, BTC may lose its status as the largest cryptocurrency asset globally.Hoskinson mentioned that the problem with Bitcoin is that it is "frozen in time," making any changes very difficult. He believes that the early disappointment with Bitcoin's lack of flexibility was one of the reasons that led to the birth of Ethereum.

According to official news, the ENS DAO has approved the proposal to activate a new security committee, with a term of two years. The committee consists of eight members and has veto power, allowing it to cancel proposals during the waiting period after malicious proposals are passed but before execution. The committee's authority is limited to canceling transactions within the time lock and cannot access treasury funds, submit proposals, or rewrite approved proposals.The committee can only exercise its power under emergency conditions specified in its charter. ENS points out that governance itself may become an attack surface—voting rights can be borrowed to initiate attacks, proposal codes can hide malicious behavior, and credential leaks can be used to push harmful transactions. The new committee adopts a 5-of-8 multi-signature, requiring at least five members' agreement to cancel a proposal, and must seek DAO voting for extension after the two-year term.

According to Yu Jin monitoring, the hacker who emptied the Bonk treasury of 4.426 trillion BONK through a governance proposal has completed the liquidation, and the last 400 billion BONK (1.17 million USD) has also been deposited into Coinbase.As of now, all 4.426 trillion BONK that he extracted from the Bonk treasury 13 days ago has been transferred to CEX. Due to his selling over the past few days, the price of BONK has dropped by 40%. When he first obtained these BONK, they were worth 21.2 million USD, and after selling while the price was falling, the total cash amount should be around 13.58 million USD.

On July 18, 2026, at 21:44:51 UTC, Cardano activated the Van Rossem hard fork, upgrading the network to protocol version 11, with no reported downtime. This upgrade is part of the changes within the Conway ledger era, aimed at reducing the operating costs of Plutus smart contracts, enhancing ledger security, and introducing new cryptographic tools.Van Rossem includes 5 Cardano Improvement Proposals, involving BLS12-381 multi-scalar multiplication, on-chain array types, optimization of multi-asset value processing, acceleration of list operations, and built-in modular exponentiation. Staking pools are now prohibited from reusing the same verifiable random function key across the entire network; each pool must hold a unique key bound to its identity.This upgrade was completed through the Cardano on-chain governance process, with the proposal to activation advanced by on-chain voting. Delegated representatives passed the proposal with a support rate of 77.63%, while the support rate among staking pool operators was 52.7%, and the constitutional committee's voting result was 6-0-0-1. Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA saw their total balance rise to the highest level since 2023, currently controlling over a quarter of the circulating supply of ADA. Cardano will subsequently advance Ouroboros Leios and plans to achieve a target of over 1,000 transactions per second during the testing period in 2026.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, a relevant address that previously transferred $21.2 million worth of BONK from the Bonk treasury through a governance proposal transferred 1.186 trillion BONK (approximately $4.11 million) to Binance yesterday and today transferred another 400 billion BONK to Coinbase, worth about $1.28 million.Data shows that of the 4.426 trillion BONK transferred from the Bonk treasury through the governance proposal, 1.626 trillion BONK (approximately $5.58 million) has already been transferred to centralized exchanges. Additionally, in the 11 days since this address transferred assets from the Bonk treasury, the price of BONK has dropped by about 36%, from $0.0000047 to $0.000003.

Uniswap founder Hayden posted on the X platform that Uniswap has just submitted two governance proposals for final on-chain voting, including enabling v2 and v3 protocol fees on the Robinhood Chain, as well as enabling v4 protocol fees on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Robinhood, BNB, Polygon, and Optimism. The remaining third proposal related to v4 chain is about to be submitted.Both proposals will direct all new protocol fees into the existing UNI burn mechanism. Based on the current trading volume, especially the trading volume related to Robinhood, the impact on UNI burn is expected to be significant.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, a certain address transferred 1.186 trillion BONK to Binance 3 hours ago, worth 4.11 million USD. This address spent 4.4 million USD to buy BONK tokens that reached the governance voting threshold 10 days ago, then initiated and passed a governance proposal to transfer 4.426 trillion BONK from the Bonk treasury, worth 21.2 million USD.On the same day, the address transferred 40 billion BONK to OKX, worth 190,000 USD, and today transferred another 1.186 trillion BONK to Binance, currently still holding 3.2 trillion BONK, worth 10.98 million USD. The price of BONK has dropped 28% in 10 days, from 0.0000047 USD to 0.0000034 USD.

According to BlockSec Phalcon monitoring, the BarnBridge SMART Yield (cUSDC) protocol was attacked on Ethereum, resulting in a loss of approximately $776,000, suspected to be a governance attack.The attacker first gained DAO governance rights, then upgraded the SmartYield/controller proxy to a malicious implementation contract, which subsequently called the _takeUnderlying privileged function of CompoundProvider, using the pre-existing USDC authorizations of 50 user accounts to transfer aggregated funds to the attacker through transferFees.

Uniswap founder Hayden posted on the X platform, stating that many people have not noticed that the Uniswap protocol fees have been activated and UNI has been burned. He continues to receive replies believing that the protocol fees have not been activated.Currently, there are 3 governance proposals being voted on: 1) Robinhood Chain fees (v2/v3); 2) v4 fees; 3) fee bridge cleanup on xlayer, ava, megaeth, sonium.

On-chain security officer Specter stated that after a preliminary investigation into the BONK DAO governance attack incident, there are noteworthy on-chain associations: the founder of Realms and Crypto Notte were both found to have on-chain fund exposure linked to suspected attacker addresses.Specter pointed out that the attacker created a malicious governance proposal through a certain address on June 30, 2026, which required support equivalent to 1% of the circulating supply of BONK in voting rights to pass. Subsequently, between July 4 and 5, the attacker acquired the necessary voting rights through purchases on exchanges and by obtaining loans via marginfi, with the loan amounting to approximately 4 million dollars.

On-chain security agency Specter released preliminary investigation results on the BONK DAO governance attack. After tracing the on-chain fund flow, important suspicions were discovered: the founder of Realms, addresses related to Crypto Notte, and the suspected attacker’s wallet showed traces of fund transactions.According to the review, the attacker released a malicious governance proposal on June 30, with a proposal approval threshold of 1% of the total circulating supply of BONK voting rights. From July 4 to 5, the attacker acquired sufficient voting weight of approximately 4 million USD through purchasing coins on exchanges and borrowing from Marginfi, facilitating the proposal's implementation and completing the governance attack.

ENS co-founder Alex Van de Sande proposed a formal draft on Monday, suggesting to delegate 5 million ENS tokens from the ENS DAO's idle community treasury to individual participants to break the current concentration of governance power. Van de Sande pointed out in the proposal that currently, a representative with a sufficient quorum can not only execute any proposal but can also veto the votes of the next 50 representatives, implicitly referring to co-founder Nick Johnson. The tokens come from the unclaimed community treasury shares from the original ENS airdrop five years ago, and participants do not own or cannot sell these tokens. Van de Sande also proposed to add another 5 million tokens for delegation next year, trigger the revocation of delegation after six months of inactivity, and automatically terminate the overall arrangement after two years.This proposal comes at a time when the governance dispute within ENS DAO is escalating: Johnson previously delegated his ENS tokens (approximately 50% of the total delegated amount) to support a proposal to transfer the DAO's operational wallet to the ENS Foundation, and then used his voting power to block the renewal of the security committee, drawing criticism from several community members, with the original The DAO code author Christoph Jentzsch even suggesting to directly dissolve the ENS DAO.

BonkDAO disclosed on platform X that it suffered a malicious governance proposal attack, resulting in approximately 20 million dollars worth of BONK tokens being stolen from the BonkDAO treasury.BonkDAO stated that during the investigation, the attacker was identified using an exchange wallet to purchase BONK before the proposal was initiated, and they are currently collaborating with exchanges, cross-chain bridges, and the Solana Foundation. Additionally, the team has notified law enforcement and continues to work with relevant parties to recover funds and trace the responsible individuals.

After Marc Zeller, the founder of the Aave-Chan Initiative (ACI) and a contributor to Aave's ecosystem governance, announced the end of the ACI project, community users inquired whether he still held AAVE tokens or had sold them. In response, Marc Zeller stated that he had liquidated his AAVE holdings when he resigned from Chaos Labs (he may still hold a very small amount of "dust-level" tokens).Previously, Marc Zeller announced that the governance work of ACI, which lasted for more than three years, had concluded, and a new project is expected to be announced soon. During his participation in governance, the Aave protocol transformed from an annual deficit of about $35 million to an annual revenue of approximately $150 million, while the AAVE token increased about ninefold during the same period.

The Solana Foundation announced the official launch of the on-chain governance mechanism Solana Governance Proposals (SGP). Validators can now submit, support, and decide on core protocol decisions through SGP. All proposals are conducted on-chain, using a voting mechanism based on staking weight, and verified through Merkle proofs. Any validator that has at least 100,000 SOL delegated can initiate an SGP. Unlike the Solana Improvement Documents (SIMD), which focus on technical and protocol changes, SGP is primarily used to express governance opinions within the ecosystem. Proposals must receive at least 15% support from the total staked network before entering the formal voting phase.

The recent voting results of the ENS DAO, which governs the Ethereum Name Service, have sparked controversy within the community, as some members pointed out.In the latest on-chain vote, ENS founder Nick Johnson cast approximately 3.26 million votes against the proposal to extend the security committee's term for two years. This proposal had previously passed a Snapshot community vote, but the on-chain execution proposal did not receive support.As the controversy escalated, some community members expressed concerns about the degree of decentralization in the ENS DAO governance mechanism. However, there are also viewpoints suggesting that this incident reflects more on the distribution structure of governance tokens rather than a failure of the protocol itself.