Brantly Millegan, until recently Director of Operations for ENS, was fired from his job because of a tweet. ENS, or Ethereum News Service, fired him after a common community decision. His 2016 tweet on homosexuality and evil acts was deemed abhorrent. The tweet also contained his opinion on the non-existence of transgenderism, abortion being murder and how contraception is perverse. Founder and developer of ENS Nick Johnson confirmed this news in a tweet of his own. He also said that Millegan was no longer part of the DAO and neither the DOO of True Names Ltd.
ENS has the ability to point a particular domain name to a particular wallet. Users can navigate to any .eth name compared to finding their way to a complex address related to a wallet. Domains can also be traded as non-fungible tokens. Per ENS records, there are over 675,000 names registered. In practical terms, you have a name you own, and it has all the needed decentralization as well as resistance to censorship supported by Ethereum’s programmability. This information was shared with CoinDesk in 2020 by Millegan when he was asked to describe the project.
Millegan cited religious beliefs as a reason for not offering a public apology for this tweet. In a post on the Discord site, he reiterated his religious beliefs and also that he is open to working with all kinds of people. It didn’t matter what views these people held. He is also quoted as saying that traditional thinking Christians, Jews and Muslims should not be excluded from being part of the Web3 community. He is supposed to have received messages supporting him from people who are traditional followers of these and other religious groups. The vote to remove him was not unanimous. Some delegates warned that the cancel culture could be dangerous.
Brantly was key to the success of ENS and should still be here, according to a supporter, “victorstark” in an online discussion forum. According to him, the tweet was published more than 4 years ago.
