Back in 2016, Brantly Millegan had written: "Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn't exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is a perversion. So is masturbation and porn."
Ethereum Name Service has been plunged into controversy after a 2016 tweet by the project's director of operations resurfaced.
Back in 2016, Brantly Millegan — known as brantly.eth on Twitter — had posted:
"Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn't exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is a perversion. So is masturbation and porn."
A number of ENS users have described his remarks as "unacceptable" — and other team members at the project have also spoken out. Alisha.eth wrote:
"ENS is for everyone. I personally find Brantly's views to be the antithesis of the values we stand for in Web3."
Much like the domain names used for websites, ENS aims to provide human-readable addresses for crypto wallets.
Millegan's initial tweet has been taken down for violating Twitter's terms of service — but in a follow-up post on Saturday, he appeared unrepentant, writing:
"Looks like I've got my first mob. Nice to see some people finally read the first word of my bio. I love you all, I'm going to keep working on Web 3.0."
The first word of Millegan's Twitter bio is Catholic.
Uniswap inventor Hayden Adams responded by saying:
"Web3 should be inclusive and welcoming. You represent a core Web3 protocol and your public statements don't reflect these values, so people are understandably upset. If you love everyone you should apologize to the people you called evil, non-existent and perverse."
Listen to the CoinMarketRecap podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts
Millegan Voted Out
On Sunday, a vote was held that resulted in Millegan being removed as a community steward.
Earlier in the day, ENS lead developer Nick Johnson had shared a message from Millegan that had said:
"I want to make it clear that I've never excluded anyone from ENS or my work (or even my personal life) because of who they are or what they believed. I just don't believe in doing that. I believe in working with, and also being friends with, a wide range of people."
The post continued:
"Yes, I believe Catholic doctrine (not a secret,) and I'm not changing that, and I don't think it's practical or moral for the Web3 industry to exclude the many traditional-minded Christians, Muslims, Jews and others who agree with me. I'm obviously aware many people disagree with me and that's fine. I believe in tolerance with a wide net, I live that out, and I ask others to give me and others the same."
The ENS decentralized autonomous organization has also discussed immediately suspending him from "leadership roles while the community is consulted and next steps are formed."
By Monday morning, it has confirmed that True Names Limited — the non-profit "that leads and supports development of the Ethereum Name Service — had terminated Millegan's employment effective immediately. Johnson tweeted:
"Brantly has been a valued member of TNL for the past three years. However, as a team we felt that his position with TNL is no longer tenable. 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."
ENS DAO allows users to delegate their votes to others — and at present, Millegan has more voting power than anyone else, including Coinbase. This could prove problematic to those who are calling for him to be ousted.
Millegan's critics have been urging other ENS users to redelegate their votes — and it does appear his majority is eroding.
A screenshot shared by @dystopiabreaker on Twitter suggested Millegan had 427,000 votes early on Sunday morning — but by that evening, this had dwindled to 378,000 votes.
ENS has won plaudits for holding a Twitter Spaces that allowed users to air their concerns and ask questions of leadership.
