The main issue with ENS DAO, and with most DAOs I’m familiar with, is not that someone is trying to capture the DAO. That happens in those other DAOs too, just less openly. The problem is that there is no real alternative on the table, so the proposal to capture the DAO starts to look reasonable. The DAO itself - understood as the collective of tokenholders and delegates - has failed to organize around any credible alternative. That means the capture can be framed as pure operational optimization: this is the only path forward, and the DAO is effectively forced to accept whatever the steward proposes. So why keep the friction of a DAO vote? The issue is that, under this framework, the governance token makes no sense and should go to 0. That is the fair price of a governance token without meaningful governance. If you want your governance token to be worth something, prioritize governance before treasury or operational optimization, so the latter follows from the former. It’s hard, but it’s the only way. Otherwise you’re cooked anyway, and no amount of operational excellence will save you.