Ethereum Name Service fires director of operations over resurfaced tweet

Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) fired its director of operations, Brantly Millegan, over derogatory comments he made about the LGBTQ community, according to CoinDesk. ENS founder Nick Johnson announced that True Names Limited, the nonprofit that backs the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), terminated Millegan’s contract.

ENS is the blockchain protocol that converts wallet addresses into custom domain names. It provides nearly 300,000 cryptocurrency users with an easy way to create a kind of web3 username, and is formatted “username.eth.” Its widespread use was part of why Millegan’s years-old comments, made in a tweet, caused an uproar. Several members of the community expressed outrage about his comments and said they hope to keep web3 inclusive.

Although Millegan has been fired from True Names Limited, the ENS DAO still has to vote him out. At this time of writing, delegates are still voting on a proposal to remove Millegan as the director of operations. So far, most have voted “yes” to remove Millegan, agreeing with the sentiment of the proposal that says his statements go “against the very fabric of Web3.”

“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,” Johnson said in a post on ENS’s discussion forum. “Going forward we’ll continue to do everything we can to ensure that remains the case.”

Millegan’s tweet, sent in 2016, says, “Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn’t exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is a perversion. So is masturbation and porn.” Shortly after the tweet resurfaced, Millegan wrote, “Looks like I’ve got my first mob.” Millegan, who identifies himself as Catholic in his Twitter profile, also wrote, “Nice to see some ppl finally read the first word of my bio.”

In a post on the ENS Discord, Millegan says he’s “never excluded anyone from ENS” or his work “because of who they are or what they believed.” He added that it’s not “practical or moral” for web3 to “exclude many traditional-minded Christians, Muslims, Jews” that may share his beliefs.

Millegan is an important member of the ENS community, as a member-chosen representative called a delegate who helps make decisions for the DAO. Community members use ENS tokens to vote on the delegates they want, and delegates with more votes have more power when it comes to decision-making. With over 370,000 votes, Millegan has more votes than any other delegate. Some users on Twitter are urging members of the community to redelegate, or shift their votes, elsewhere.