Bessie Liu

Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_62bc4a78e6f3f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Recent MakerDAO governance battle was seen as a clashing of interests: venture capital vs. small fry</li>
 <li>Roughly 30% of MKR token holders took part in the vote, with 60.17% voting against the proposal and 38.28% voting in favor</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



MakerDAO community members voted against adding an advisory committee that would manage internal checks and balances within the DAO and educate governance token holders on complexities surrounding future proposals.



The <a href="https://mips.makerdao.com/mips/details/MIP39c2SP33#sentence-summary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proposal</a>, introduced by MakerDAO figure Luca Prosperi, intended to create a Lending Oversight Core Unit (nicknamed “LOVE”), an addition to the current <a href="https://forum.makerdao.com/c/core-units/31" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">22 other core units</a> (CUs). The idea was to implement a more streamlined leadership structure within the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization).



But the broader community didn’t love the concept. The decision to turn down a potential advisory committee was finalized on Monday, after more than <a href="https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/QmWYajMq#vote-breakdown" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">60%</a> of votes were cast against the proposal and <a href="https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/QmWYajMq#vote-breakdown">3</a><a href="https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/QmWYajMq#vote-breakdown" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">8%</a> voted in favor. By Maker governance standards, these were close votes with a high turnout — holders of 293,911 governance tokens holders took part in the LOVE vote, amounting to nearly 30% of the circulating supply.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Over the last several days, we&#39;ve seen the number of votes cast reach an all-time high, MKR borrow rates on Aave spike and a massive shift in MKR delegation in the last minutes of voting.&mdash; GFX Labs (@labsGFX) <a href="https://twitter.com/labsGFX/status/1541488161968340992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“I do not believe that the DAO should be engaging in activities that require large amounts of trust in isolated groups of individuals, have little to no real-time transparency, or that are not driving us toward a decentralized future,” Chris Blec, recognized delegate of MakerDAO, <a href="https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/QmWYajMq#comments" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a> in the forum discussion. 



Blec continued: “Every CU is incentivized to find ways to justify its own existence, and I feel that the proposed scope of LOVE would allow far too much subjectivity in that regard.”



According to GFX Labs, a group focused on DAO governance matters, clear battle lines were drawn between opposing philosophical camps.



“Those who want to see more organization and control voted YES (TradFi and VCs). The NOs (most of the community) generally opposed the price tag and few deliverables and favored&nbsp;[Rune Christensen’s] Endgame plan.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Heading for the endgame</h3>



MakerDAO is a cornerstone of the Ethereum decentralized finance ecosystem, allowing users to lend and borrow cryptocurrency, peer to peer. The protocol has its own native token, MKR, which allows holders to vote on various governance proposals. 



Since December 2017, the DAO has regulated over-collateralized stablecoin DAI, which aims to maintain a one-to-one peg with the US dollar and has grown to become the fourth largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization in excess of $6.2 billion, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/stablecoins" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to CoinGecko</a>.



Christensen, who founded MakerDAO in 2014, <a href="https://forum.makerdao.com/t/the-endgame-plan-parts-1-2/15456" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">outlined</a> an “ambitious initiative” two months ago to move the DAO toward a “predetermined, immutable end state” sometime in the future, which he called The Endgame Plan.



“A key objective for me is to deal with the major contradictions and challenges that I see, and to also ensure that the project gets on a path towards a truly decentralized equilibrium,” Christensen wrote.



The plan calls on Maker DAO to restructure itself around a series of “MetaDAOs” or subDAOs that would replace the CUs with their own distinct incentive-aligning token.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A slow road to effective governance for DAOs</h3>



Voter apathy has been a problem in Maker governance, despite the recent uptick in participation.



Delegates such as the pseudonymous Hasu, host of the Uncommon Core podcast, have been advocating for a more streamlined approach “to move away from micromanagement and towards a board-of-directors style DAO that sets the strategic direction for the protocol,” as he <a href="https://twitter.com/hasufl/status/1540683663385407488" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote on Twitter</a>, in the final days of the vote. 



Although DAOs are primarily member-driven organizations, as it currently stands, DAOs have two main membership models: token-based membership and share-based membership. Over the past few months, a number of challenges have arisen around token- and share-based DAO governance, and MakerDAO is not alone in its examination of new governance structures. 



Last week, Solana-powered lending protocol Solend DAO passed a governance proposal limiting users&#8217; borrowing to $50 million per account, with rollouts starting at $120 million and gradually decreasing. This proposal came after a single whale wallet gained over 90% of the protocol’s available lending assets, throwing into question how DAOs can practically deal with contract law in the physical space. 



Staking community Lido DAO had also <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/lido-dao-proposes-governance-switch-up/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proposed a dual governance solution</a> to reduce the decision-making scope of its LDO token holders. Although Lido DAO is currently deployed on the Ethereum network, LDO token holders have governance over liquid staking protocols on Polygon and Solana, which means their motivations may vary from those of stakers who are primarily on the Ethereum network. 



“Token-based governance is great for product-based protocols, but it is not the best for media DAOs or ecosystem DAOs because a community should not be owned by the richest or the one that arrived before others,” Marco Moshi, DAO lead at Polygon, told Blockworks. 



Moshi says an organization&#8217;s stakeholders will likely change over time, and DAOs should take into account that their organization is evolving and the individuals involved will also be regularly changing. 



“The DAO space is very interesting and is a main evolution of Web3, it is one of the places where we can witness a real big level of engagement on the community side and on the builder side, so we must support new developments that will come after existing DAOs, and evolve and adopt a new generation of DAO tooling systems,” Moshi said.



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MakerDAO Votes Against More Streamlined Leadership

Jocelyn Yang

<div id="highlights-block_62b575fa3f5f5" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>A per-account borrow limit of $50 million will be imposed, according to Solend’s new governance proposal amid the liquidity crisis</li>
 <li>The protocol will also temporarily reduce the liquidation penalty for SOL from 5% to 2%</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Solend, Solana-based decentralized lending and borrowing protocol, passed <a href="https://realms.today/dao/7sf3tcWm58vhtkJMwuw2P3T6UBX7UE5VKxPMnXJUZ1Hn/proposal/CmrzCA2vQxqptyzZ8A9RSG9GeC7gB8nxKs2RvXiiwvh6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its third governance proposal</a>, one which limits users’ borrowing on the platform to $50 million per account, with rollout starting at $120 million and gradually decreasing, the company <a href="https://realms.today/dao/7sf3tcWm58vhtkJMwuw2P3T6UBX7UE5VKxPMnXJUZ1Hn/proposal/CmrzCA2vQxqptyzZ8A9RSG9GeC7gB8nxKs2RvXiiwvh6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> in a blog post this week. 



Any debt above the limit will be eligible for liquidation, regardless of collateral value, according to Solend.&nbsp;



This move comes as the company has been grappling with how to protect itself against a brewing liquidation crisis. The Solana DeFi platform’s DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) members <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-lending-protocol-faces-governance-conundrum/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">attempted to decide</a> whether to take over a “whale account” — a wallet holding <a href="https://blog.solend.fi/slnd1-mitigate-risk-from-whale-1504285ab4d2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“an extremely large margin position”</a> that was close to liquidation. Initially, they voted to do so, but following community backlash, a second vote on Monday reversed its initial take-over. 



Even so, the Solend team maintains that the whale account is “continuing to impose a heavy strain on Solend users,” and so it introduced its <a href="https://realms.today/dao/7sf3tcWm58vhtkJMwuw2P3T6UBX7UE5VKxPMnXJUZ1Hn/proposal/CmrzCA2vQxqptyzZ8A9RSG9GeC7gB8nxKs2RvXiiwvh6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">third proposal</a> — a compromise which will temporarily reduce the maximum liquidation close factor from 20% to 1%. The new plan “caps the amount that can be liquidated in a single transaction.” 



The protocol will also temporarily reduce the liquidation penalty for SOL from 5% to 2%. “This should reduce liquidator spam while still being enough of a bonus for liquidators to break even on slippage,” the proposal read, eventually getting 99.7% of votes that green-lighted this authorization.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Solend is reaching out to market makers to help provide better on-chain liquidity. This combined with our proposals should reduce DEX market impact to a manageable level,” the proposal stated. </blockquote>



Early Thursday, Solend observed that the whale borrower had continued to reduce their position on the platform, paying down a further <a href="https://twitter.com/solendprotocol/status/1539962978740862976" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$3 million of debt</a> after lowering their USDC debt position <a href="https://twitter.com/solendprotocol/status/1539190870557093888" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">by $25 million</a> on Tuesday and <a href="https://twitter.com/solendprotocol/status/1539589994792161280" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$11.5 million</a> on Wednesday, actions which further reduce the protocol&#8217;s risk. 



The SOL token price has also seen a steady climb, changing hands for at $38.55 as of 4:30 am ET Friday. 



Yet, many questions surrounding Solend still remain, including liquidation and the mechanism of DAOs voting.&nbsp;



“We think that decreasing the limit is not the best solution in bear market, people should wisely take the loans in every amount, but also thinking about liquidation risks,” Shirly Valge, COO of blockchain company Velas, told Blockworks.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“We think LTV (loan to value) is the key. Decreasing LTV will not put vaults in liquidation risks and people will use such instruments more wisely,” she added. </blockquote>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Solend DAO and problems of decentralized governance</h3>



Earlier this week, Solend’s second proposal received 1,480,264 “yes” votes and 3,535 “no” votes with a majority of 99.8%. One wallet made up 90% of votes. Critics <a href="https://twitter.com/brandonbedf/status/1539009231168348168" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pounced</a> that the protocol can hardly be said to be decentralized.



Solend told Blockworks that the voting whale user bought all their SLND from secondary markets a few months ago and didn’t buy it for the purpose of voting on a specific proposal. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Their [Users’] trading history is on chain, and we can help pull those transactions if needed,” they added,” it added. </blockquote>



The team acknowledged that its new approach is not perfect — for instance, “a user could split their account up to circumvent the per-account borrow limit.” But they suggest that such shortcomings can be addressed later.



According to Solend, it wouldn’t be an issue “if there was enough liquidity or if liquidations were improved to be able to handle them in an OTC-like way (i.e. auction or request for quote rather than market sell). We&#8217;re exploring this.”



Still, the example of Solend’s governance proposal has put forward the greater question of how decentralized these so-called DAOs really are, as well as the practical limitations of dealing with meatspace contract law.&nbsp;



Last week, Merit Circle and seed investors Yield Guild Games (YGG) crashed into a <a href="https://beincrypto.com/merit-circle-dao-votes-yield-guild-games-out/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=embeded_automation&amp;utm_campaign=news" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">legal dispute</a> after Merit Circle DAO members voted to refund YGG’s initial investment — a move that would represent a blatant contractual breach with the Gibraltar corporation Merit Circle Limited, which initially made the deal. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Uhh… a massive DAO just voted to “refund” one of their investors who was owed a 30x return ($5M+) This is an insane story that impacts all builders in web3 and as a founder I need to speak out Merit Circle DAO vs YGG 🧵&mdash; Tim Connors is in NYC (@itstimconnors) <a href="https://twitter.com/itstimconnors/status/1536734104422522881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 14, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Crypto-specialist attorney Grant Gulovsen, said in <a href="https://protos.com/solend-dao-struggles-another-day-another-dao/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an interview</a> with Protos that “a DAO voting to retroactively change the terms of a contract typically won’t have any legal effect on the terms or the enforceability of the original contract terms unless the original contract explicitly allowed for that to happen.” 



The team managed to <a href="https://vote.meritcircle.io/#/proposal/QmanW7dTyF2LvvU9iAGwj3i9D4F3TS7ZbxR33jVCmKMrgR" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">renegotiate the contract terms</a> with YGG, which the DAO also approved, effectively reaching a compromise that avoided a legal crisis.



But both examples, Solend and Merit Circle, highlight unresolved questions about who’re really in charge of these projects; is it the teams doing the work, or the masses voting their tokens off-chain?



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DAOs

Solend Imposes Account Borrow Limit, Underscoring Challenge of DAO Governance

Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_62afc95119535" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Solend Labs ponders emergency powers, in challenge for decentralized governance ideal</li>
 <li>Should the price of SOL have dropped below $22.30 before a vote was made, chaos would have ensued Solend Labs said in a post</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Users of the Solana-based lending and borrowing protocol Solend granted emergency power to the platform&#8217;s steward in order to mitigate liquidation risks presented by Solend&#8217;s biggest bagholder.



Those powers, gifted via the Solend-based decentralized autonomous organization&#8217;s (DAO) first <a href="https://realms.today/dao/7sf3tcWm58vhtkJMwuw2P3T6UBX7UE5VKxPMnXJUZ1Hn/proposal/HuaL6cDtuNtfnJgvwMnYiZDHVCoLAuDtVFgJD8kYChJ4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">governance proposal</a>, allow Solend Labs to take over the whale&#8217;s account in order to execute an over-the-counter trade should the price of Solana&#8217;s native token SOL drop below $22.30.



But, after public outcry, a <a href="https://realms.today/dao/7sf3tcWm58vhtkJMwuw2P3T6UBX7UE5VKxPMnXJUZ1Hn/proposal/3geE5P3D7VJRaNNDVfZciGsXgwGiao1hSNpRM6jWNa5A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">second signalling proposal</a> sought to walk back the first.



The first proposal gave developers a green light to implement special margin requirements for large whales borrowing more than 20% from the protocol&#8217;s primary pool, with a 35% liquidation threshold now in place.



More than 1.15 million votes were cast in favor of authorizing the special powers or roughly 97.5%, versus 30,101 against (2.5%). However, a single account, representing 1% of the total users participating, cast more than 1 million votes in the affirmative, Solana-based Realms <a href="https://realms.today/dao/7sf3tcWm58vhtkJMwuw2P3T6UBX7UE5VKxPMnXJUZ1Hn/proposal/HuaL6cDtuNtfnJgvwMnYiZDHVCoLAuDtVFgJD8kYChJ4/explore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data shows</a>, revealing a stark centralization in the decision-making process.



The whale <a href="https://solend.fi/dashboard?wallet=3oSE9CtGMQeAdtkm2U3ENhEpkFMfvrckJMA8QwVsuRbE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">account</a> in question presents a systemic risk to the protocol, Solana&#8217;s network and its users, due to the account holding &#8220;an extremely large margin position&#8221; close to liquidation, Solend said in a <a href="https://blog.solend.fi/slnd1-mitigate-risk-from-whale-1504285ab4d2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">post</a> ahead of the vote on Sunday. 



After repeated attempts to contact the whale, Solend said it was put to a vote to take premptive action over the account. The move raises questions regarding the principles and spirit of decentralized finance, which aims to remove middlemen and empower financial self-sovereignty. 



Roughly $108 million worth of USDC and USDT is being borrowed by the whale, against $170 million worth of SOL deposited as collateral in the protocol&#8217;s main pool. That represents roughly 88% of USDC borrows and 95% of SOL deposits for the lending platform.



Should the price of SOL drop below $22.30 the whale’s account could be liquidated for up to 20% of their borrowings, estimated to be worth $21 million, Solend said. SOL was last seen changing hands for around $32.60 after bouncing from a 24-hour low of $29, <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/assets/sol/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blockworks Research</a> data shows.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;It&#8217;d be difficult for the market to absorb such an impact since liquidators generally market sell on DEXes,&#8221; Solend said in its post. &#8220;In the worst case, Solend could end up with bad debt. This could cause chaos, putting a strain on the Solana network.&#8221;</blockquote>



Following concerns about the potential risk, users have begun withdrawing assets en masse, forcing USDC and USDT utilization in the protocol&#8217;s primary pool to spike to 100%, Solend confirmed in its post. The result leaves remaining depositors unable to withdraw. What&#8217;s worse, any positions collateralized by deposits of the two stablecoins are unable to be liquidated.



&#8220;Letting a liquidation of this size to happen on-chain is extremely risky.&nbsp;DEX liquidity isn’t deep enough to handle a sale of this size and could cause cascading effects,&#8221; Solend said.



The governance move has roiled DeFi proponents, who see it as a tacit admission that not only Solend&#8217;s design choices failed, but the Solana Ventures-backed protocol is centralized — a DAO in name only.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Sqlana&#39;s Solend leverage platform just spun up a fake vote as cover to control a whale&#39;s account so that it wouldn&#39;t get liquidated &amp; crash the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24SOL&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$SOL</a> server again. Solend is an official portfolio company of Solana. Insider deals. Central servers. This is the definition of CeFi. <a href="https://t.co/AZ5N3eJmaB">https://t.co/AZ5N3eJmaB</a>&mdash; Evan Van Ness 🦇🔊 (@evan_van_ness) <a href="https://twitter.com/evan_van_ness/status/1538610017573773318?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



It&#8217;s unclear what the next steps are following the second vaguely-worded proposal meant to placate critics of the first. The proposal, which was approved by a similarly overwhelming majority of SLND — the protocol&#8217;s governance token — ostensibly &#8220;invalidates&#8221; the first, and lengthens the duration of governance votes from a comically short six hours to a full day.



The team also pledges to &#8220;work on a new proposal that does not involve emergency powers to take over an account.&#8221;



The conundrum marks another headache for the budding Solana ecosystem, whose network has experienced <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-price-dips-after-another-network-outage/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">several outages</a> this year, shaking faith in the stability and resiliency to maintain consistent uptime in the face of intense market activity.



Solana has a history of downtime caused specifically by on-chain liquidations, though this instance represents a 100 times greater impact to the network and ecosystem, Solend <a href="https://twitter.com/solendprotocol/status/1538553657158881280?s=20&amp;t=gL7a9q79nlz9kBdM8WbYaA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a> Sunday. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;It&#8217;s extremely risky for everyone involved.&#8221;</blockquote>



Fears of market contagion continue to plague the confidence and resolve of the crypto market which is still reeling from the aftereffects of Luna&#8217;s implosion in May and lender Celsius halting <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/celsius-lending-platform-suspends-withdrawals-and-transfers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">withdrawals and transfers</a> a week ago.



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