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# System prepended metadata

title: 'Call with Alisha, Governance Coordinator for ENS'

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# Call with Alisha, Governance Coordinator for ENS


Andrew: can you tell us a little bit about the grants and public goods funding ENS has done in the past?

Alisha: it's only pretty recent that we had access to a large amount of funds. Starting in August 2022. Also, the ENS constitution says that public funds must be a very secondary concern in terms of funding. Our funding is very developer-focused. We believe in funding devs versus things like animal shelters.

ENS has a grants program... ENS grants (https://ensgrants.xyz/rounds/19). They have small and large grants:
https://discuss.ens.domains/t/public-goods-growth-grants/16886 
https://ensgrants.notion.site/Growth-Grants-4593e6f3598b47d4ae15fbba1a19fee2

Alisha feels like this is a very basic version of grants. It doesn't really excite her. She would really like to see something more novel. On the other hand it's better than nothing.

Andrew: what was the last FOSS project you funded?

Alisha: here's a good sample of what we fund: https://ensgrants.xyz/rounds/19

Alisha: we mostly fund libraries... tools and infrastructure for devs. Things like revoke.cash

Andrew: who decides how grants are distributed?

Alisha: for the small grants, sterwards are elected and they decide on who gets the small grants. I have a strong preference for having dictators rather than token voting on everything. Prefer max discretion and max accountability. However, stewards will be deciding soon on what the next distribution mechanism will look like through a vote very soon.

Andrew: what do you think about dependency funding?

Alisha: my preference would be to prioritize funding dependencies. However we haven't done very much of this to date. However in general this is something we're very interested in.

Ele: do you require KYC for grants and how do you think about KYC?
Alisha: we want to start doing way more of this

Andrew: what about benefits? Do you look to get benefits from projects you fund?

Alisha: in general we don't look for upside. If we wanted to do that, we would probably need to do that with a foundation rather than with multi-sigs, due to the fact that this could be somethign more like an investment. So we don't look for tokens or any other motive. The only motive we have is to fund things we rely on as well as what we consider critical infrastructure.

Alisha: we always give funds in USDC. Never in native ENS tokens.

Andrew: any preferences between funding individuals versus projects?

Alisha: I want to make sure people get the cash in hand. It's the responsibility of the grant distributor to do that well. What would Ricmoo get paid in Defi or to work for Amazon. So it's important to take the individual case into account.

Andrew: what do you think about streaming as an option?

Alisha: it's very interesting. Not because I care about how they spend it (because all our funding is retroactive). But more about because there is visibility around what is being shipped. This can cause the recipients to do better work and more work. So streaming is something we would like to explore.
