ENS operations director Brantly Millegan fired for inappropriate comments

Twitter removed the tweets in question and suspended Brantly Millegan's account, preventing him from responding to critics and supporters on the social media platform.

True Names Limited, the non-profit organization behind distributed domain protocol Ethereum Name Service, announced that it was terminating its contract with Operations Director Brantly Millegan after many discovered his previous anti-LBGTQIA tweet.

On February 6, the decentralized autonomous organization of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) asked users to take action over Millegan's May 2016 tweet that "homosexuality is evil" and that "transgender discrimination does not exist." What actions (if any) are discussed. The DAO said that some had proposed suspending Millegan's leadership at ENS, voted to remove him as a director of the ENS Foundation, and called for his resignation.

Although the DAO has not formally voted on any resolutions as of press time, ENS founder and developer Nick Johnson earlier announced that True Names Limited had terminated Millegan's contract because his position was "no longer tenable." Twitter also removed homophobic tweets and suspended Millegan's account, preventing him from tweeting, liking and retweeting content.

"Brantly's comments have hurt many of you in the past 24 hours, and we strongly believe that ENS should be an inclusive community," Johnson said. "Going forward, we will continue to do everything we can to ensure the situation remains the same."

Before losing access to his Twitter account, Millegan stood by his 2016 statement, suggesting it was in line with his Catholic faith. He later claimed in a Discord discussion that he "never excluded anyone from ENS based on their identity or beliefs."

"I think it's unrealistic and immoral for the web3 industry to exclude many Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others who agree with me with traditional beliefs," Millegan said on Discord.

However, the 2016 tweet wasn't the only controversial statement. In 2018, Millegan reiterated his views on homosexuality in a post on the social media platform about birth control, calling it "very unethical". In addition, a November 2016 tweet from the director of ENS operations revealed that he had published an article in the conservative news outlet National Review promoting a dubious narrative of racial bias.

"I believe this is the mainstream traditional Christian position held by the largest religion in the world," Millegan said Feb. 5. "It's not entirely marginal."

It's unclear how many in the ENS community support Millegan's removal, but Johnson's termination of Millegan's contract shows that there is a significant number in favor of doing so. ENS representative Eleftherios Karapetsas said in a governance discussion forum that Millegan should be given a chance to respond to the community's outrage, but "if he does still believe that a group of people should not have a right to live, or have hatred for them, I think as the project lead is not suitable."

He added on Twitter:

"You can disagree with someone and still coexist, as long as neither side tries to impose their views on the other, or hurt them because of their beliefs."

Launched in 2017, the ENS protocol allows users to register domain names ending in ".eth" and direct them to an Ethereum wallet address. The project distributed 100 million ENS governance tokens in an airdrop in November 2021.