Monthly Governance Reports

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Boardroom’s Monthly Governance Reports are compendiums of key governance updates for the preceding month. When combined with our Weekly Governance Recaps, these monthly installments allow users of Moonwell governance to obtain a high-level view of forum activity, Snapshot and on-chain proposal outcomes, ongoing goals and initiatives of the DAO, and insights into governance participation rates.

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February 2024 Update

The monthly governance recaps serve as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This monthly update covers Moonwell governance activities for February 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals and Milestones
  2. Voting Insights and Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion and Links

Proposals and Milestones

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet and Warden Finance continued to provide consistent recommendations on risk parameters and IR curve adjustments. Gauntlet utilized Cap Guardian to adjust borrow and supply caps for assets including wstETH and xcUSDC. Warden Finance worked with Gauntlet to offer risk management support across the Base, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments.

  2. Rebalancing Funds to Ensure Protocol Economic Sustainability: Prior to a productive debate among delegates, the Moonriver deployment of Moonwell reached a critical juncture when 50% of the initial MFAM tokens meant for liquidity incentives were exhausted. As a relatively urgent matter, the DAO settled on a strategy to maintain and extend liquidity incentives to users. The suggested solution was to reallocate 20% of the MFAM token supply originally allocated to Developer Grants and Incentives to be used as MFAM liquidity incentives. With multiple options regarding how long to make the distribution period, the community signaled on Snapshot that they’d prefer the shortest period: two years. While the Snapshot passed, there was a substantial number of opposing votes. Rather than being a binding commitment, this proposal was meant to signal where to pull the tokens from and to determine the rate. Utilizing the entire 20% developer grants and incentives pool was not a mandate. Monthly on-chain votes will still be required. As a result of this Snapshot passing, the community decided to pass MIP-R13, which included adjustments to the amount of MFAM released per cycle for the funds to last another two years.

  3. Governance Best-Practices: Throughout early February, Moonwell delegates continued to engage in a debate on managing the MFAM incentives budget and protocol monetary sustainability; in turn, they unearthed:

  • the need to more thoroughly discuss topics in the forums before bringing them up to Snapshot votes,
  • the need to keep all governance discussion on the relevant topic contained in the forum, without letting it spill over into Telegram or other channels, and
  • the need to stay on top of runway issues before they become critical.

  1. New third-party integrations: Boardroom officially kickstarted a partnership with Moonwell as a governance facilitator and data service provider on February 5, 2024. Boardroom began producing recurring governance content, including regular updates and monthly governance calls. The first call was hosted on February 15. On February 20, Boardroom published a proxy report which is meant to give community members a 360-degree view of the Moonwell DAO in its current state.

  2. Development of the Nomad Collateral Redemption and Reallocation Initiative:
    Core contributor Elliot gave the community an update on the progress of the Nomad Recovery. He provided technical details surrounding the recovery process and explained the delays in this effort. He went on to raise potential mitigation to the issue of bridging Nomad assets, volunteering that a trusted community member could un-bridge assets using an externally-owned account (EOA), redeem the Nomad assets on mainnet for their corresponding underlying tokens, and then send the underlying to the multisig. He nominated himself for the role and encouraged others to do so as well.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Gauntlet Guardianship: The community voted to extend Gauntlet’s role as the Cap Guardian on both Moonriver and Moonbeam networks.
  • USDC Anywhere: Lunar Labs launched a feature to facilitate cross-chain lending and borrowing of USDC across multiple Ethereum networks, using Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) and Socket technology. This removes the need for unofficial, wrapped versions of USDC by minting native USDC on the target network.
  • MIP-M18 Passed: This proposal adjusted the incentives around USDC. With Native USDC (xcUSDC) increasing in liquidity on Moonbeam, the goal was to shift incentives away from the bridged USDC (Wormhole) pool to the xcUSDC pool.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends:

February saw:

  • five on-chain proposals
  • four Snapshot proposals
  • 24 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for on-chain proposals averaged 46, with a maximum of 78 and a minimum of 22.

Proposal On-chain votes
MIP-B13 59
MIP-R12 22
MIP-M17 78
MIP-M18 47
MIP-R13 26

The voter turnout for Snapshot proposals averaged 24, with a maximum of 51 and a minimum of 11.

Proposal Off-chain votes
Gauntlet to Become Cap Guardian on Moonbeam 51
Gauntlet to Become Cap Guardian on Moonriver 11
MFAM Token Reallocation for Liquidity Incentives 19
Migrating the Apollo Vault to Aera V2 15

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in January when a proposal for the Moonwell Asset Listing Framework managed to attract 54 voters.

Success Insights

  • On-chain: The on-chain proposals in February witnessed a 100% success rate. All proposals passed with 99.7% consensus or above, with the exception of MIP-R13 which garnered a more divisive 57.7% “For” vote.
  • Off-chain: Snapshot proposals also enjoyed consistent success rates. Of the four proposals submitted on Snapshot, none were defeated. There was a high degree of consensus opinion, with three of the proposals closing with 99-100% agreement. The outlier was again the Snapshot for Rebalancing MFAM Liquidity Incentives, which passed Snapshot with a 68.55% agreement rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

Generally, the Moonwell community can be described as growing and engaged. At this stage in the protocol’s development, the DAO has multiple highly involved members. In the future, as Moonwell continues to scale the size of the DAO while maintaining this quality of engagement, it could become one of the most vibrant DeFi communities. The delegates are well-informed, enabling them to hold meaningful discussions on the future of Moonwell governance from a high level; the proposals that are made are consistently high-quality. The primary service providers also continue to make thoroughly researched and well-presented proposals; their contributions routinely result in the highest voter turnout.

In Boardroom’s first Governance Community call in mid-February, multiple service providers presented details about their past work, current work, and proposal activity during the month. Delegates were also able to share their opinions on an impactful proposal, debating high-level Moonwell governance practices. The recording of the call can be found here. Continuing these conversations in real-time could prove to be net-positive in terms of community dynamics; it maps a “voice” to the names of users in the forums and allows for deeper discussion on critical issues.

Opportunities

As Moonwell matures and scales, challenges understandably arise in communicating every aspect of the DAO’s operations with every community member. For example, this forum post displayed a misunderstanding of MFAM runway before a contributor to the Moonwell protocol was able to clarify the situation. As the DAO continues to grow and add new members, these types of misunderstandings are commonplace. Because no single team member can scale their attention infinitely, it becomes increasingly important to

  1. Create clear, non-technical communications that can answer a wide range of questions.
  2. Make them as easy as possible to find and identify.
  3. Enable community moderators or other active members to easily point newcomers to the relevant resources to help clear up confusion quickly and efficiently.

Boardroom suggests that the community always engage in effective communication. Please reach out if you need support in writing proposals or forum posts.

In the same vein, there is an opportunity to increase productive participation in governance through official rewards programs. The Moonwell could reward the types of user behaviors that most benefit the protocol while avoiding appealing to farmers. We would suggest that the community write a proposal on this if it so desires.

Finally, documentation and education could become a quasi-open source effort by opening the editing of Moonwell Docs. By encouraging community members to help create content for the protocol, Moonwell cannot only benefit from more up-to-date and concise information, but they can also increase the level of understanding of the protocol among the community.

Conclusion

The February 2024 report highlights governance initiatives and high-level discussions on protocol sustainability, milestones achieved by core contributors, a healthy amount of voter turnout, constructive levels of non-consensus voting behavior, and a few immediate opportunities that could improve participation in governance in the short to medium term.

In the future, these monthly updates will include data to track the metrics of the current month compared to the previous month.

Links

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March 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This monthly update covers Moonwell governance activities for March 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals and Milestones
  2. Voting Insights and Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion and Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet utilized Cap Guardian to adjust borrow and supply caps for different assets in March. For example, here is a forum post from March 14th where Gauntlet altered the borrow/supply caps for USDC and DAI on Base. The supporting data for these decisions can vary. In this case, the decrease in DAI caps was implemented to prevent concentration risk due to declining circulating supply. Similarly, Warden Finance contributed their risk analysis with posts including “Rebalancing of Base Liquidity Incentives,” informing the community of a new rewards pool for the native USDC market and an upcoming Safety Module for Base.

  2. Preparations for the xERC20 Token Standard: On March 16, Moonwell contributor Elliot of Solidity Labs introduced MIP-M21: Upgrade Wormhole Bridge Adapter on Moonbeam. This was the first in a series of proposals to activate multichain governance for Moonwell. To enable WELL to be used on Base for voting and staking, MIP-M21 detailed upgrading the Wormhole Bridge Adapter on Moonbeam. The upgrade would improve the user experience of bridging, automatically unwrapping the WELL (xERC20) back to the original Moonbeam WELL token on transfer. Following MIP-M21, Elliot proposed MIP-M23 and MIP-M24: Multichain Governor and WELL Migration. This pair of proposals sought to move from Compound’s Governor Alpha smart contract to the new cross-chain governor, activate xWELL, and accept ownership of the contracts, finalizing the new governor’s abilities. These three proposals successfully passed their on-chain vote. Finally, on March 31, Elliot outlined MIP-M25 Base Safety Module Activation. MIP-M25 aims to enable rewards for stakers in the Safety Module with the new multichain WELL token on Base.

  3. Reward Speed Proposals: In mid-March, delegate Curly submitted a pair of regular on-chain proposals for Moonbeam and Moonriver. These proposals dealt with the rebalancing of liquidity incentives to ensure that the protocol maintains healthy levels of rewards on the networks. Both passed their onchain votes and the reward speeds were adjusted accordingly.

  4. Enhancing Frax Liquidity: @curly submitted MIP-M22 for on-chain voting on March 20. This successful proposal was a follow-up to MIP-16 and aimed to enhance FRAX liquidity on Moonbeam. This comes as part of the Nomad Collateral Redemption and Reallocation initiative being spearheaded by Solidity Labs. The discussion can be found here.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Aera V2 Migration: The community voted in late February to migrate the existing Apollo vault from Aera V1 to V2. There were multiple potential voting outcomes for the proposal, but the community decided to upgrade the vault with the addition of leveraging Aave USDC to generate yield. On March 1, Aera informed the community that the vault was live. The Moonwell community can track financial data for the V2 vault here.

  • USDC Anywhere Galxe Campaign: On March 4, Moonwell kicked off a campaign using Galxe to help users explore the cross-chain USDC update launched in February. The total prize pool was 1000 USDC and 10 total winners had the opportunity to be randomly selected after completing the tasks and minting the NFT.

  • New Asset Support: In early March, delegate @coolhorsegirl proposed activating a WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) market on Moonwell. In doing so, Moonwell would be the first lending market on Base to support the asset. The proposal first went up for a successful Snapshot vote. Following that, Gauntlet provided their initial recommendations for the asset and Coolhorsegirl informed the community that an on-chain proposal was in the works.

  • Total Value Locked (TVL) Highs: On March 11, the Moonwell protocol deployment on Base reached a significant milestone: $70M TVL. Only 17 days later, that metric became $100M.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in March:

  • 8 on-chain proposals
  • 1 Snapshot proposal
  • 26 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for on-chain proposals averaged 56, with a maximum of 105 and a minimum of 13.

Proposal On-chain votes
MIP-B14 30
MIP-M19 33
MIP-M20 36
MIP-R14 13
MIP-M21 75
MIP-M22 63
MIP-M23 91
MIP-M24 105

This month had a below-average number of Snapshot proposals compared to the number of onchain proposals.

Proposal Off-chain votes
Add WBTC to Moonwell on Base 49

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in February when a proposal for Gauntlet becoming Cap Guardian on Moonbeam managed to attract 51 voters.

Success Insights:

  • On-chain: The on-chain proposals in March witnessed a 100% success rate. All proposals passed with 91.4% consensus or above.
  • Off-chain: The single Snapshot proposal for March also successfully passed with a high degree of consensus opinion, coming in at 99.2% agreement.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

The overarching theme for March can be summed up as “adaptability to changes.” The community has stayed aware of the evolution of the Moonwell protocol and consistently showed up to vote for the highest-impact decisions. Upgrading the governance smart contract infrastructure is a difficult task; this is even more true for infrastructure that requires cross-chain message passing. Moonwell contributors and the community worked in tandem to push out and pass three high-level MIPs that improve the user experience of voting and staking on Base. March has also notably included more on-chain proposals than the previous months. The community has continued to stay engaged; a quorum was reached on every proposal.

The largest increase in community numbers came from the @MoonwellGov X account which could be attributed to increased account activity. Finally, there continue to be healthy debates in the forums. As an example, look at the discussion brought forth by contributor @elliot on MIP-M23 and MIP-M24. @curly sought clarification on the implementation details of the pair of MIPs and gave constructive feedback on the rollout/minimum proposal threshold. Conversations like these help Moonwell become more resilient as they reduce the chance of blindspots that could introduce negative externalities to the protocol.

Opportunities

While Moonwell continues to scale - as reflected in TVL growth, an increasing social media following, and engagement on the forums - there is an opportunity to directly reward users who perform the actions that most benefit the governance of the protocol. Those actions could include voting on on-chain proposals, attending the monthly governance call or submitting a question, voting on Snapshot, registering in the forums or replying to forum posts in a meaningful way, starting a governance discussion in Discord, or staking to help secure the protocol. Boardroom will work in tandem with Moonwell delegates to formalize these ideas and put it up for a community vote in the near future.

Conclusion

The March 2024 report highlights high-level governance-related changes, major protocol milestones, an increasing number of onchain proposals, and a growing level of community engagement. Moonwell has seen maintenance or improvement in nearly all governance metrics when compared to February. The total on-chain vote count, the number of forum posts, and the number of on-chain proposals are all up. Social media following is either on-par or up across all channels. A voting quorum is consistently reached.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, April 4th at 5pm UTC in Discord to hear directly from the main contributors to the multichain governance upgrades from this month.

Links

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April 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for April 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet releases market recommendations that include MIPs to adjust important asset risk parameters (e.g. collateral factors and borrow caps) intending to balance risk and capital efficiency. On April 1, for example, Gauntlet submitted three MIPs based on this forum post for Moonwell’s Base, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments: MIP-B15, MIP-M25, and MIP-R15. Gauntlet also regularly used Cap Guardian to make changes to borrow/supply caps without the need for a governance proposal, as seen here. Similarly, Warden Finance contributed their risk analysis with a forum post “Rebalancing of Base Liquidity Incentives” to inform the community of various Base-related updates. Notably, the liquidity situation surrounding DAI and rETH circulating supplies has improved when compared to previous months.

  2. Final Stages of the xERC20 Implementation & Multichain Governance: Throughout March, multiple forum discussions and onchain votes took place to enable voting and staking from Base with native WELL. Three proposals related to multichain governance were passed in March: MIP-M21 (Upgrade Wormhole Bridge Adapter on Moonbeam) and MIP-M23/MIP-M24 (Multichain Governor and WELL migration). On the first day of April, @Elliot of Solidity Labs introduced MIP-B16 to enable rewards for users in the Safety Module with the new WELL token on Base. Staking rewards officially went live on April 11th.

  3. Reward Speed Proposals: In mid-April, delegate Curly submitted a pair of regular onchain proposals for Moonbeam and Moonriver. This type of proposal aims to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on the two networks. They aren’t required on Base as Warden is serving as the incentives admin for Moonwell’s Base deployment. Both proposals passed their onchain votes and the reward speeds were adjusted accordingly.

  4. New Moonwell Market Proposal: Gauntlet, in mid-April, proposed to onboard AERO as collateral on Moonwell’s Base deployment. AERO is the native utility token of Aerodrome Finance, a next-generation AMM designed to serve as Base’s central liquidity hub. Ahead of a successful Snapshot vote, Gauntlet gave their initial risk recommendations, including supply/borrow caps and IR parameters. The Snapshot signal progressed to an onchain vote on April 29th.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Moonwell is PINK Galxe Campaign: Delegate Curly announced the launch of a Galxe campaign on April 6th. The campaign is centered around Moonwell’s grant of 1.2M $PINK tokens from the Moonbeam Foundation. Users can complete tasks and earn their share of the reward.

  • Bolstering FRAX Market Liquidity on Moonbeam: In mid-April, Solidity Labs announced the successful completion of MIP-M16. The end result of many months of effort, FRAX suppliers can now enjoy enhanced liquidity and improved market stability.

  • Based Voter Galxe Campaign: On April 12th, Moonwell launched a new campaign to encourage governance participation using the upgraded native WELL token on Base. To join, users are required to vote on at least one onchain proposal before May 10th, using native WELL on Base. Those who successfully mint the Based Voter NFT will be entered into a drawing. After one month, 20 winners will be randomly rewarded with $100 USDC each, resulting in a total prize pool of $2000.

  • Native WELL rewards on Base: Native WELL rewards on Base went live on April 19th. Previously, suppliers on Base have received Wormhole WELL tokens as rewards.

  • TVL: Following last month’s $100M milestone in Moonwell TVL on Base, that figure grew to $150M on April 23rd.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in April:

  • 7 onchain proposals
  • 1 Snapshot proposal
  • 24 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 45, with a maximum of 100 and a minimum of 11.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-R15 11
MIP-M25 45
MIP-B15 42
MIP-B16 57
MIP-R16 17
MIP-M26 100

This month, there was a single Snapshot signal vote.

Proposal Offchain votes
Add AERO market to Moonwell on Base 86

This Snaphot proposal overtakes the previous maximum number of Snapshot voters, which occurred in February when a proposal for Gauntlet becoming Cap Guardian on Moonbeam managed to attract 51 voters.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in April witnessed a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: The single Snapshot proposal for April successfully passed with a high degree of consensus opinion, coming in at 94.09% agreement.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

April showed a strong voter turnout despite a wider market downturn. Although there were a few governance proposal resubmissions, the community stayed aware of short-notice changes and consistently showed up to reach quorum. Gauntlet’s Snapshot proposal saw the highest signal vote turnout in months and it beat the previous high by a wide margin. Similarly, a resubmission of MIP-M26 gathered 100 votes, which is on par with last month’s maximum of 105. Social account growth metrics are up across the board.

Opportunities

Going forward, there is an opportunity to expand the Based Voter Galxe governance incentive program into a wider, all-encompassing effort. Rather than solely encouraging a single voting metric (voting onchain) on a single network, the program’s scope could be increased to include all Moonwell deployments. Similarly, the qualifying voter actions could cover more ground. There is also an opportunity to transform Moonwell’s passive delegates into active delegates. Keep an eye out for forum posts related to these efforts sometime in May.

Conclusion

The April 2024 report highlights consistent contributor activity, sustained voter turnout, increasing social sentiment, new market proposals, the conclusion of the effort to bolster FRAX liquidity, and more. The community remains engaged and a voting quorum is consistently reached.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, May 2nd at 5pm UTC in Discord to hear directly from Gauntlet and Solidity Labs on the above topics.

Links

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May 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for May 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. Launch of the Moonwell Foundation: On May 2nd, the Moonwell Foundation was officially announced. Operating from the Cayman Islands, the Foundation was created to support the Moonwell ecosystem. Some of the main advantages of this structure include the ability to enter legal agreements (e.g. business development and partnerships), safeguarding a substantial treasury, and the establishment of a Moonwell Security Council. To commemorate this milestone, a new Galxe “I Signed the DAO Constitution” NFT was created.
  2. Conclusion of the Based Voter Galxe Campaign and high proposal turnout: On May 10th, the Based Voter campaign was concluded and out of the 215 eligible addresses, 145 users minted the NFT. 20 holders were randomly selected to win $100 USDC, each. The campaign also coincided with the highest onchain voter turnout for a proposal since August 2023 for MIP-B17.
  3. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet kickstarted the month with market recommendations that included MIPs to adjust important asset risk parameters (e.g. collateral factors and IR parameters), intending to balance risk and capital efficiency. These larger market recommendation posts work in parallel with Gauntlet’s regular weekly updates. These updates give an overview of assets that have an average utilization >= 75%, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. Similarly, Warden Finance contributed with updates to the Base deployment’s liquidity incentives, as seen in this post from mid-May.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • New Moonwell markets: After the successful passing of MIP-B17, the AERO market was officially added to Base on May 4th. WELL rewards were also activated, allowing users to supply the asset and receive fees and additional rewards.
  • Extra USDC rewards to drive further USDC adoption on Base: In mid-May, Gauntlet announced the results of an effort to incentivize native USDC supply with extra rewards for the past two months. Supply grew from $16.8M to $48.5M and borrows grew from $13M to $37.5M.
  • TVL: On May 20th, the Base deployment of Moonwell reached a significant Total Value Locked milestone: $200M. This value is up from April’s milestone of $150M.
  • Lower fees on Base: In late May, the gas target on Base was increased 6.25 Mgas/s, significantly lowering fees globally. For Moonwell, this means cheaper lending, borrowing, and rewards claiming.
  • Smart Wallet Technical Preview: At the end of the month, Majin announced the launch of the technical preview of Coinbase’s Smart Wallet. Users can use Moonwell to create their own Smart Wallet and enjoy sponsored gas fees. For details on how to fund the Smart Wallet, see the Discord announcement above.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in May:

  • 5 onchain proposals
  • 1 Snapshot proposal
  • 21 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 51, with a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 90.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-R17 17
MIP-B18 53
MIP-M27 90
MIP-R18 16
MIP-M28 79

This month, there was a single Snapshot signal vote.

Proposal Offchain votes
Moonwell Security Council - Initial Roster Ratification 41

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in April when a proposal from Gauntlet to Add AERO Market to Moonwell on Base managed to attract 86 voters. The vote count for this month’s Snapshot proposal was on par with the average Snapshot turnout.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in May witnessed an 80% success rate. Note: MIP-M28 was successfully passed by the community, but it is considered “defeated” due to a technical issue.
  • Offchain: The single Snapshot proposal for May successfully passed with a high degree of consensus opinion. 100% of voters chose “Yes” to ratify the initial roster.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

Moonwell’s contributors continue to operate like a well-oiled machine. Operationally, this cohesion sets the stage for a lot of growth in the future. This month, Gauntlet created five cap adjustment posts and regularly provided market updates and risk parameter adjustments, Warden Finance handled all things related to Base incentives reporting, Boardroom continued supporting the protocol’s governance, and other non-contributors such as the Aera team provided updates on the current state of the Aera vault. When coupled with the launch of the Moonwell Foundation, one of the most important updates in the history of Moonwell’s governance, many systems are now in place to accommodate the onboarding of many new users and governance participants.

We also continue to see new and existing community members creating discussions in the forums. Novel, thought-provoking ideas help the protocol’s development regardless of whether or not they turn into Snapshot votes or MIPs.

Opportunities

Throughout April and May, Boardroom successfully ran a “Based Voter” campaign designed to incentivize users to upgrade their WELL and vote using the native token on Base. $100 USDC was awarded to 20 winners for a total prize of $2000. The campaign resulted in over 200 eligible addresses and 145 successful minters. It also coincided with the largest voter turnout since August 2023; MIP-B17 gathered 145 onchain votes. There is an opportunity to expand this smaller event to a full-scale, recurring campaign. For the “Based Voter” NFT, the single required user action was to vote onchain from Base. For the full campaign, there could be more qualifying user actions, including attending the monthly Governance Call, voting on a Snapshot proposal, and creating quality replies and discussions in the forums and on Discord. In the near term, we want to increase the number of new users getting involved in governance. The best way to accomplish that is to offer the potential to earn WELL rewards. Second, we want to better engage the community members who are already somewhat active in Moonwell governance. We saw great results from the smaller Based Voter campaign and see an opportunity to sustainably extend those results over a longer period of time and with a larger number of user actions. Finally, using WELL as a reward offers more protocol alignment than USDC.

Conclusion

The May 2024 report highlights a large update for Moonwell governance from a meta-perspective, consistent milestones such as new asset support and TVL records, cohesion among contributors, and an uptick in net-new ideas and discussions from community members. Voter turnout this month continued to hold average levels despite the lower volume of proposals created. Social metrics are increasing as well; Discord, the governance X account, and the chat Telegram channel saw the most amount of growth this month.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, June 6th at 5pm UTC in Discord.

Links

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June 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for June 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet continued their coverage of Moonwell with monthly recommendations in early June that included MIPs to adjust important asset risk parameters (e.g. collateral factors and IR parameters), intending to balance risk and capital efficiency. Throughout the month, they continued to post regular weekly updates. Similarly, Warden Finance contributed with coverage of the Base deployment’s liquidity incentives, as seen in this post from mid-June.
  2. Integrating MetaMorpho Moonwell Vaults: In early June, Block Analitica proposed a collaboration between Moonwell, Block Analitica, B.Protocol, and Morpho Blue. Block Analitica is a risk management firm; Morpho Blue is a governance-minimized lending protocol that hosts MetaMorpho, a protocol for creating lending vaults; and B.Protocol is a builder of open-source protocols and risk mitigation infrastructure. This proposal entailed creating yield-generating Moonwell MetaMorpho vaults with initial support for USDC and WETH. The proposal then progressed to a Snapshot vote before moving onchain. It successfully passed its onchain voting period and the USDC and WETH MetaMorpho vaults were launched on June 19th. The launch of the vaults was a quick success, resulting in significant growth across all metrics of the Base instance of Morpho Blue. By June 20th, total deposits reached $17.47M and total borrows reached $2.41M. The Flagship Moonwell ETH vault and Flagship Moonwell USDC vault accounted for ~70% of all deposits. When these metrics were reached, Block Analitica and B.Protocol submitted a cap to the Flagship Moonwell ETH vault USDC/WETH market to address user demand and maintain momentum. By the end of the month, deposits totaled $20M.
  3. Largest amount of proposals in a week: In the first week of June, Moonwell experienced the largest amount of proposals in a single week in the protocol’s history. The community came together to collectively push through MIP-M29​​ (Gauntlet’s Moonbeam Recommendations), MIP-B19 (Gauntlet’s Base Recommendations), MIP-R19 (Gauntlet’s Moonriver Recommendations), MIP-M30 (transferring the wBTC Market Admin to the new governor), MIP-M31 and MIP-R20 (Rebalancing Moonriver and Moonbeam Liquidity Incentives), a Morpho Snapshot proposal, and MIP-B20 (adjusting the Base Safety Module reward speed). Even more impressive is that for one of the proposals, MIP-M30, voting took place from Boardroom’s front-end due to its support of the old governor contract.
  4. New network deployment proposal: In mid-June, following Moonwell’s successful activation on Base, delegate @coolhorsegirl created a Snapshot signal vote to potentially activate Moonwell on Optimism. The Snapshot passed, and the proposal is expected to progress to an onchain vote in the coming weeks.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Smart Wallet: Following last month’s technical preview, Coinbase’s Smart Wallets were officially integrated into Moonwell on June 5th. To learn more about Smart Wallet features and how to use a Smart Wallet on Moonwell, check out this Discord announcement.
  • Moonwell Contributor Luke Youngblood on the Unchained Podcast and The Scoop Podcast: June 7th, Laura Shin posted a new episode of the Unchained podcast featuring Luke Youngblood. The pair discussed the newly unveiled Coinbase Smart Wallet, onchain finance and Coinbase’s role in making it easier to use, and Moonwell’s focus on emerging markets. On June 28th, Frank Chaparro of The Scoop Podcast hosted Luke to further discuss the Coinbase Smart Wallet and other topics.
  • Moonwell MetaMorpho Vaults (ETH and USDC): In mid-June, prior to the official launch, Moonwell announced that the technical preview for Moonwell MetaMorpho vaults had gone live. To use this preview, users could supply either ETH or USDC to one of the newly established vaults. The vault dynamically allocates funds across Morpho Blue markets. By June 29th, the vaults had already reached $20M in total deposits.
  • June Monthly Governance Participant Galxe campaign: In June, Moonwell kicked off a full-scale, monthly recurring governance campaign. Each month, $2000 WELL will be rewarded to 20 random NFT minters ($100 each). For June, the qualifying tasks for users to complete were (1) vote on at least two onchain proposals during June and (2) create a quality forum reply.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in June:

  • 7 onchain proposals (excluding one canceled proposal)
  • 2 Snapshot proposals
  • 27 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 41, with a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 67.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-B19 47
MIP-R19 15
MIP-M31 37
MIP-R20 14
MIP-B20 57
MIP-M32 53
MIP-B21 67

The original MIP-B20 proposal gathered an additional 38 votes before being canceled, but it is not included in this month’s analysis.

This month, there were two Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
[Temp Check] Moonwell MetaMorpho Vaults: Next-Gen DeFi Lending 39
Activate Moonwell Protocol on Optimism 50

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in April when a proposal from Gauntlet to Add AERO Market to Moonwell on Base managed to attract 86 voters.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in June witnessed a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: Both Snapshot proposals for June successfully passed with a high degree of consensus opinion. 100% of voters chose “Yes” to activate Moonwell on Optimism and to deploy Moonwell MetaMorpho Flagship vaults.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

A total of seven onchain proposals makes June tied with April for the second-most amount of passed proposals in a single month since Boardroom began covering Moonwell governance. The average number of votes for April was on par with this month, coming in at 45 and 41 votes, respectively. During this period, the first week of June included the highest number of proposals for a single week. Those included market recommendations from Gauntlet, a transfer of the wBTC market admin, token liquidity incentives rebalancing for Moonriver and Moonbeam, a Snapshot for the Morpho proposal, and a Base Safety Module reward speed adjustment. This is the most attentive that governance participants have ever had to be, and they consistently came together to reach quorum.

Thematically, the community is focused on passing forward-looking integrations that could benefit the protocol in the future. One main example from this month was the proposal which accepted ownership of and incentivized the Moonwell MetaMorpho Vaults. Uncoincidentally, this proposal received the highest voter turnout all month. In just over one week after the proposal’s passing and the initial vaults going live, the Moonwell Flagship Vaults gathered $20M in deposits. Another example of the prioritization of forward-looking Moonwell integrations, a Snapshot temp check from mid-June indicated that the community is strongly in favor of activating the protocol on Optimism. This proposal is expected to progress to an onchain vote in the near future.

Opportunities

After gathering data from the Based Voter campaign and the first month of the Monthly Governance Participant campaign, we see an opportunity to make the campaigns more inclusive. While we want to properly incentivize all aspects of getting involved in governance, it makes sense for July to be focused solely on increasing onchain voter turnout. We still encourage thoughtful forum activity, Discord discussions, and governance call attendance, but for this month, we will limit direct incentives to encouraging voting onchain.

In terms of the wider community, there is an opportunity for users to make their voices heard during choppy market conditions. In times like these, novel discussions and increased voter turnout go a long way to indicate the future direction of the Moonwell protocol. Users who wish to get involved in governance have an opportunity to stand out from the crowd and contribute directly to a leading DeFi protocol.

Conclusion

The June 2024 report highlights an uptick in the number of passed proposals in a short time period, without sacrificing voter attention. The proposals that consistently engage the community the most tend to be future integrations and activations that expand Moonwell’s reach and influence. There are opportunities to make the Galxe campaign incentives more inclusive and for individual users to make their voices heard. Voter turnout was on par with previous months and social metrics generally continue to rise across the board.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Wednesday, June 3rd at 5pm UTC in Discord.

Links

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7

July 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for July 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. Block Analitica and B.Protocol’s first actions as Curator and Allocator of the Moonwell Flagship USDC Vault: In mid-July, Block Analitica and B.Protocol announced a transition from the exchange rate oracle cbETH/USDC market to the new cbETH/USDC market utilizing a secondary price oracle. One of the reasons for this transition was the intention to strengthen the risk management of the Moonwell Flagship USDC vault. This serves as the first exercise of Curator/Allocator responsibilities after the initial introduction post and subsequent successful onchain proposal back in June. At the end of the month, the teams created a similar forum post for the Moonwell Flagship USDC - wstETH/USDC Market Listing with a Market Price Oracle.
  2. Moonwell’s First Multi-Network Proposal - MIP-X01: As a part of the effort to potentially activate Moonwell on Optimism (following a successful Snapshot signal vote), the first onchain proposal in this process was created to activate the WELL token on OP Mainnet and facilitate its cross-network transfer capabilities. This was a first-of-its-kind “multi-network” proposal, meaning that changes will be executed on different networks simultaneously. The proposal additionally sought to upgrade the Multichain Governor on Moonbeam and the Vote Collection contract on Base.
  3. Moonwell Activation on Optimism: In late July, the first Optimism-native MIP was published. MIP-O00 and MIP-O01 sought to officially activate the Moonwell protocol on OP Mainnet and expand Moonwell’s reach within the Optimism Superchain. The pair of proposals were overwhelmingly supported and passed by the community. The protocol was activated on Optimism on July 29th.
  4. New Moonwell Markets: In the first half of June, Justin from Ether.fi created a forum discussion with the intention of adding a weETH market to Moonwell’s Base deployment. Ether.fi is a liquid staking protocol built on Ethereum; the protocol issues eETH as a liquid restaking token and weETH is its non-rebasing equivalent. For more information on risk assessment, decentralization, market history, and more, see the forum post. On July 25th, the team submitted a Snapshot to gauge the community’s sentiment on this proposal. It passed its voting period and is expected to move to an onchain vote in August. Similarly, a representative for Kelp DAO created a forum post at the end of the month with the intention of adding Kelp DAO’s liquid restaking token (LRT), wrsETH, to the Moonwell markets on Base. KelpDAO is a liquid restaking protocol built on top of EigenLayer; users can stake and restake on the platform to earn rewards and DeFi yields. For more, see: Add wrsETH market to Moonwell on Base
  5. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet published two MIPs on the first day of the month to adjust asset risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base and Moonbeam deployments. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. In the first week of the month, delegate Curly submitted MIP-M34 and MIP-R21. These monthly reward speed proposals aim to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on Moonbeam and Moonriver.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • July Monthly Governance Participant Galxe campaign: The second iteration of the three-month Moonwell Governance Galxe campaign period reduced the required actions of users when compared to the campaign for June. For this campaign, users were required to vote on at least two onchain proposals during the July calendar month. The previous local maximum in voter turnout occurred in April when MIP-B17 gathered 145 onchain votes, which coincided with the Based Voter Galxe campaign and was the highest amount of votes received on a proposal since August 2023. With the July campaign, the first two proposals of the month, MIP-M33 and MIP-B22, eclipsed MIP-B17 with 195 and 198 votes, respectively. MIP-X01 further went on to gather 237 votes.
  • Isolated Markets on Moonwell: In early July, Isolated Markets were launched for Moonwell. These markets are a result of the collaboration between Morpho Blue and Moonwell; they are specialized lending pools that pair one collateral asset with one borrowable asset and each pool operates independently of one another. 8 Isolated Markets were available on launch.
  • Optimism SuperFest & Galxe Campaign: On July 9th, Moonwell announced that, as a part of Optimism’s SuperFest (a DeFi incentives campaign funded with 1.5M OP), users could supply USDC on Moonwell to earn OP rewards. Users could use Galxe to mint the commemorative SuperFest NFT.
  • Optimism Retro Funding Round 4: On July 18th, Moonwell announced that they were a recipient of Optimism Retro Funding Round 4, receiving 80,156.8 OP tokens. 100% of the funding will be distributed as liquidity incentives on Moonwell.
  • Growing Number of Moonwell Users on Base: By July 15th, Moonwell on Base had grown to over 150,000 users since launch on the network.
  • Podcast Appearance: Moonwell contributor Luke Youngblood appeared on the Pirate Pod to explore Moonwell’s “lending made simple” approach that has propelled it as one of the leading DeFi projects on Base.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in July:

  • 7 onchain proposals
  • 1 Snapshot proposal
  • 20 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 154, with a minimum of 13 and a maximum of 237.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-B22 198
MIP-M33 195
MIP-R21 13
MIP-M34 46
MIP-X01 237
MIP-O00 217
MIP-O01 174

This month, there was a single Snapshot signal vote.

Proposal Offchain votes
[Temp Check] Add weETH Markets to Moonwell on Base 44

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in April when a proposal from Gauntlet to Add AERO Market to Moonwell on Base managed to attract 86 voters.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in July witnessed a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: The single Snapshot proposal for the month passed with 76.48% consensus.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

With the adjusted requirements of July’s Galxe governance incentivization campaign, we have seen the highest voter turnout since April 2023 with MIP-B22, MIP-M33, and MIP-X01. The community has also been receptive to fundamental changes in Moonwell’s governance systems. First, MIP-X01 brought about upgrades to the governance contracts on Moonbeam and Base, enabling changes to be executed on multiple chains without the need for multiple proposals. This likely is correlated with the community’s excitement for the efforts to activate the Moonwell protocol on Optimism mainnet. Given Moonwell’s significant traction on Base, users appear eager to play an equally large role in Optimism’s Superchain strategy.

Opportunities

After gathering data from the June Galxe campaign, we determined that the best path going forward for July was to reduce the requirements to mint the NFT. It makes the campaign more inclusive and still accomplishes one of our primary goals of increasing voter turnout. These governance incentive campaigns have given us valuable data and have largely had positive results on short-term voter metrics. Now, following the final August iteration of the campaign, it makes sense to shift focus to long-term engagement and sustainable expansion of the delegate roster and working cohesion. There is also an opportunity to improve the community onboarding process through a structured, tiered Discord Role system. Look out for comms on these topics in the upcoming months.

Conclusion

The July 2024 report highlights significant changes to Moonwell governance systems and community excitement for future activations in other ecosystems. Voter turnout has significantly increased compared to previous months and social metrics generally continue to rise across the board.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, August 1st at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

8

August 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for August 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. New LRT/LST markets: In late July, the forums saw increased activity from Liquid Staking Token (LST)/Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) providers looking to add markets for their LRTs to Moonwell. Kelp DAO sought to add a wrsETH market, Renzo sought to add an ezETH Market, and EtherFi sought to add a weETH Market; all proposals concerned Moonwell’s Base and/or Optimism deployments. In early August, Gauntlet gave their initial parameter recommendations for the proposed EtherFi weETH market before MIPs for Base and Optimism were successfully passed. In late August, the original poster of the wrsETH proposal created a revamped proposal to include Chainlink details, Optimism details, and other feedback. The proposal then moved to a Snapshot vote on August 28-31.
  2. Delegation Pitch In August, prospective Moonwell delegate @0xMims updated his delegation pitch. For anyone interested in delegating their voting power to another user like 0xMims, be sure to conduct due diligence, read up on their pitch, check their links, and consider delegating your tokens here.
  3. New Stablecoin Markets: In mid-August, 0xMims created a forum proposal to add a EURC market to Moonwell’s Base deployment. EURC is a euro-backed stablecoin developed by Circle, the issuer of USDC. He covered the benefits to the Moonwell community, social metrics, market risk, decentralization, smart contract risk, and more as per the proposal template. To read more about the details and to discuss the prop’s merits, visit the forum post above. On August 28th, the proposal progressed to a successful Snapshot vote.
  4. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet published four MIPs at the beginning of August to adjust asset risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. In the first week of the month, the monthly automated reward speed proposals went up for an onchain vote. They aimed to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver. Warden Finance managed Aerodrome rewards in their final month of contributing to Moonwell. Notably, this month also included an ongoing updated risk profile on WBTC in response to speculations surrounding BitGo’s joint venture with BiTGlobal and unclear regulatory frameworks for the asset.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Exclusive Moonwell Merch: On the first day of the month, Moonwell announced that their branded Moonwel merch was available as a part of the “Onchain Summer” event from Coinbase. Onchain Summer is a celebration of onchain art, music, culture, gaming, and more; it lets users earn points from minting their favorite drops, redeem prizes, and buy merch onchain.
  • August Monthly Governance Participant Galxe campaign: The third and final iteration of the three-month Moonwell Governance Galxe campaign was published on the first of the month.
  • SuperFest Rewards: On August 7th, Phase 2 of SuperFest Rewards began for Morpho on Base. Users could deposit into the Moonwell Flagship ETH and USDC Vaults to earn OP rewards and optimized, risk-adjusted returns.
  • Borrowing and Rewards on Optimism Markets, Optimism Safety Module, and New Markets: In mid-August, rewards for Moonwell’s new Optimism deployment were enabled in a few different forms. OP and WELL rewards first went live across all Moonwell Core Markets on Optimism. Shortly after, it was announced that staking rewards were also enabled for the Safety Module on the Optimism deployment. On August 12th, borrowing on Moonwell Optimism Core Markets was enabled. Later that day, a market for VELO was activated on the deployment and markets for Ether.Fi’s weETH were activated on the Base and Optimism deployments. With the launch of the weETH markets, the Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) became the first token of its kind to be available on Moonwell.
  • WELL on Velodrome: In mid-August, the WELL token became available on Velodrome on Optimism. The asset launched with a VELO-incentivized WETH/WELL liquidity pool on the AMM.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in August:

  • 16 onchain proposals
  • 2 Snapshot proposals
  • 19 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 98, with a minimum of 7 and a maximum of 220.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-M35 220
MIP-R22 7
MIP-B23 127
MIP-O02 157
MIP-B24 172
MIP-M36 177
MIP-O03 185
MIP-R23 15
MIP-O04 84
MIP-O05 82
MIP-B25 91
MIP-R24 9
MIP-O06 50
MIP-O07 58
MIP-B26 66
MIP-M37 65

This month, there were two Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
[Temp Check] Add wrsETH Markets to Moonwell on Base and Optimism 21
[Temp Check] Add EURC on Base 33

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in April when a proposal from Gauntlet to Add AERO Market to Moonwell on Base managed to attract 86 voters.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in August witnessed a 100% success rate. Note: there was a single canceled proposal that was resubmitted this month; voter data from the original MIP-O04 was not included in this report.
  • Offchain: The offchain proposals in August witnessed a 50% success rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

This month, there was a significant increase in the number of novel, community-led discussions. Some topics that were first proposed or commented on this month included adding MFAM to Optimism, creating structural demand for the WELL token, upgrading the staking module, and integrating iBTC as an alternative to WBTC. Discussions like these, whether or not they progress to onchain votes, are integral to Moonwell. Watching other ecosystems and discussing new ideas help to create resiliency in Moonwell governance. Especially in choppy market conditions, this is a great opportunity to get involved with governance, share ideas, and give feedback to others. The community also consistently hit quorum despite August having the highest number of proposals out of any month since Boardroom began coverage of the ecosystem.

Opportunities

Last month, we mentioned that there was an opportunity to expand the delegate roster and shift focus toward long-term, sustainable growth of the governance participant body. Over the course of September and October, Boardroom plans on proposing a structured delegate onboarding pipeline, a community-centric onboarding pipeline, and a clarified Foundation Grants request process. With these new resources and templates in place, our goal is to increase the number of active delegates in Moonwell governance through the rest of Q3 and Q4 2024. Broadly, our focus this quarter is to establish stronger foundations on the operational side of governance to help facilitate easier growth in the future.

Conclusion

The August 2024 report highlights an increase in the number of new market proposals, technical progress on the Optimism deployment, a high amount of onchain/offchain proposals, and an uptick in the number of community-led forum discussions. Voter turnout has remained elevated above the baseline compared to previous months. Social metrics continue to rise across the board; the Discord and the Announcements Telegram saw the largest relative increases in members this month.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, September 5th at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

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9

September 2024 Update

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for September 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. New Moonwell Markets and Vaults: Early in the month, delegate @coolhorsegirl created a forum post (Add cbBTC Market to Moonwell on Base) and subsequent Snapshot proposal to potentially add a market for Coinbase’s alternative to WBTC. The Snapshot was successful, and the proposal progressed to an onchain vote after Gauntlet also updated their recommendations for the proposed market; the onchain proposal passed on September 9th. cbBTC on Moonwell later became trackable on a risk analytics IntoTheBlock dashboard. Block Analitica created a forum post announcing the submission of cbBTC as collateral on five different vaults across Ethereum Mainnet and Base. Also in September, @0xMims’ proposal to add a Circle EURC stablecoin market to Moonwell’s Base deployment moved to an onchain vote. @BlockAnalitica and B.Protocol created a proposal to take ownership of a Morpho Flagship EURC Vault on Base. Both EURC proposals successfully passed their onchain voting period. The Core Market and Flagship Vault went live on Base on September 16th. Shortly after, MIP-B31 was submitted to add support for EURC rewards on Moonwell’s Base deployment, enabling Core Market suppliers & borrowers to receive EURC rewards. Rewards went live on September 23rd. Next, a representative from Mountain Protocol took to the forums to propose adding a market to Moonwell on Optimism for wrapped USDM (wUSDM). Finally, Kelp DAO submitted a successful Snapshot to add markets for wrsETH (an LRT) to Moonwell on Base and Optimism.
  2. Delegate Structure Changes & the Moonwell Delegate Rush: In the first half of the month, Moonwell made two major announcements regarding protocol governance. First, Moonwell implemented a new, tiered Delegate system to onboard and compensate the DAO’s hard-working participants. The Delegate Roles onboarding pathway outlines a way for prospective delegates to progress through established tiers and become official Moonwell Delegates. Participants progress through each role provided they meet the minimum qualifications. The second component was the announcement of a 2-month Delegate Rush program where prospective delegates can apply and join Moonwell’s delegate roster on a fast track. Kimchiblock was the first to create a delegate pitch on the forums during the program. Throughout the month, community members began creating their applications.
  3. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet published four MIPs at the start of the month to adjust asset risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments. The second set of monthly recommendations was posted on September 25th to adjust October’s parameters. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. At the end of August, the monthly automated reward speed proposals successfully passed an onchain vote, aiming to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on the four deployments throughout September. The next set of reward speed proposals came on September 25th, setting incentives for the month of October.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Rewards on Base & Optimism for weETH Markets: At the beginning of the month, rewards officially went live on the Moonwell weETH core markets.
  • Token Terminal Dashboard: On September 4th, a Moonwell dashboard on Token Terminal was launched. With it, users can see standardized onchain financial metrics for Moonwell on Base and Optimism.
  • SuperFest Rewards: Early in the month, the Optimism SuperFest program wrapped up. Users who participated by supplying to the USDC core market or Flagship Vaults on Base in recent months were eligible to claim OP rewards that were accumulated.
  • Increasing Fees Generated: In the first week of September, Moonwell generated ~$151k in 7-day fees from organic borrowing demand.
  • Moonwell on Coinbase: At the end of the month, Moonwell announced that WELL was live on Coinbase.
  • Moonwell Flagship Vaults: By the end of the month, Moonwell’s Flagship Vaults powered by Morpho reached a record $60M in deposits.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in September:

  • 10 onchain proposals
  • 2 Snapshot proposal
  • 26 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 56, with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 85.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-O08 32
MIP-B27 44
MIP-M38 37
MIP-O09 39
MIP-B28 85
MIP-B29 78
MIP-B30 76
MIP-B31 81
MIP-X02 76
MIP-R25 10

This month, there were two Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
Add cbBTC Market to Moonwell on Base 27
Add wrsETH Markest to Moonwell on Base and Optimism 30

The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in April when a proposal from Gauntlet to Add AERO Market to Moonwell on Base managed to attract 86 voters.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in September witnessed a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: The Snapshot proposals for September successfully passed with a high degree of consensus opinion and a 100% success rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

Moonwell continues to be both forward-looking and supportive of Base’s mission of becoming a major hub for onchain finance through its integration of EURC. Expanding the protocol’s reach in DeFi by offering markets and vaults for both dollar- and euro-backed assets helps to make the protocol more financially inclusive and resilient from a diversity standpoint. In mid-September, Moonwell became the first lending app on Base to support the asset. This trend was further seen through the integration of Coinbase’s cbBTC, a Bitcoin derivative, as an alternative to WBTC. The community was also provided updates from Block Analitica and B.Protocol on Moonwell’s partnership with Morpho. Earlier in the month, the combined TVL of the WETH and USDC Vaults managed to reach $38M, comprising the largest Vaults on Base. Beyond adopting Base-related markets and its DeFi ecosystem, Moonwell continues to horizontally integrate with DeFi protocols across all of crypto. This month has seen proposals from KelpDAO and Mountain Protocol; the first is a liquid restaking protocol built on top of EigenLayer and the second is a protocol that offers a regulated, permissionless, and yield-bearing stablecoin, fully backed by US Treasuries. Whether or not proposed integrations like these are successful, it’s important for the community to continue to research protocols across crypto and bring forward discussions on activating markets for their assets. This forward-looking approach is also supported by this month’s voting data; the highest number of onchain votes came from adding new markets for cbBTC and EURC on Base and adding support for EURC rewards.

For the Moonwell Delegate Rush, the quality of applicants remains high. We have seen a variety of backgrounds; some applicants are long-time community members who are highly aware of Moonwell and its governance process, some are university organizations with experience across many crypto ecosystems, and some are professional governance groups who could bring valuable insights in helping to mature the protocol. Moonwell stands to benefit from multiple perspectives and team compositions; consider delegating to the applicants during or before the October 12th - November 9th Delegation Period of the program.

Opportunities

As of the end of September, we have seen five Delegate Rush applications. The goal is to conclude the program with around five total Moonwell delegates progressing through the Delegate Tiers, offering their unique insights and perspectives.

In tandem with our work to expand the delegate roster, there is an opportunity to improve the Moonwell grants process. Currently, you can find information on grants in the governance docs and section 7 of the Moonwell DAO Constitution. Boardroom has observed grants processes from other DeFi ecosystems; we plan to soon create a discussion around potentially adopting some new grants standards that will help clarify and direct users through the flow of requesting funding.

Conclusion

The September 2024 report highlights a community focus on DeFi integrations and Base-related expansions, steady voter turnout, an uptick in the number of prospective delegates, changes to the delegate structure, and increasing organic borrowing demand.

Social metrics generally continue to rise across the board; the largest increase this month once again came from the governance X account.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, October 3rd at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

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10

October 2024 Update

Key Insights

  • New Moonwell markets are being proposed. October saw a continuation of last month’s trend of new markets being added for LRTs (Liquid Restaking Tokens).
  • The average voter turnout for onchain proposals in October was 105, up 87.5% compared to last month.
  • Social metrics continue to rise across the board. The largest proportional increase in follower count this month came from the governance Twitter account, which grew 13.22%.
  • Gauntlet continues to manage risk across Moonwell’s four deployments. In October, Gauntlet published four MIPs to adjust asset risk parameters at the start of the month. The team also published weekly market updates and exercised their power as Cap Guardian to adjust Borrow/Supply caps for various assets.
  • Future-proofing Moonwell governance. Discussions were held in the forums throughout October about protecting Moonwell from governance attacks while also increasing voter turnout.

Primer

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for October 2024.

October saw a significant trend reversal in governance participation. Records were broken for both Snapshot and onchain voter turnout; forum discussions were more active than in the previous months.

Key Metrics

  • 13 onchain proposals
  • 1 Snapshot proposal
  • 26 forum posts

The number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 105, with a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 268.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-B32 45
MIP-O10 29
MIP-R26 8
MIP-M39 42
MIP-B33 75
MIP-X03 85
MIP-X05 247
MIP-X04 160
MIP-R27 8
MIP-M40 127
MIP-M41 268
MIP-O11 112
MIP-B34 156

This month, there was one Snapshot signal vote.

Proposal Offchain votes
Add Wrapped Super OETH market to Moonwell on Base 98

The voter turnout on the Wrapped Super OETH Snapshot proposal is the highest we’ve seen this year. The previous maximum number of Snapshot voters occurred in April when a proposal from Gauntlet to Add AERO Market to Moonwell on Base attracted 86 voters.

Success Insights

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in October had a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: The Snapshot proposal in October had a 0% success rate. While voter turnout was high, the proposal was defeated with 80.88% of the vote being “against” and 19.12% being “for.”

Browse all of the proposals here.

Other Governance Metrics

Metric Data
Delegates 2,739
Top-5 Wallets Voting Power 47%
Top-100 Wallets Voting Power 84%
Top-200 Wallets Voting Power 86%
Delegate Quorum Gage * 3
Nakamoto Coefficient ** 6
Early Voters 45%
Mid-Proposal Voters 23%
Late Voters 17%
End-of-Proposal Voters 16%
Top-1000 Delegates Active 18.76%
Top-1000 Delegates Inactive*** 26.74%
Top-1000 Delegates Ghost**** 54.50%

*Delegate Quorum Gauge: The number of delegates required to reach quorum.
**Nakamoto Coefficient: The number of delegates required to reach 50% of the total voting power.
***A delegate is considered inactive if they have not voted on any of the last 3 proposals but have voted on at least 1 proposal in the past.
****A delegate is considered a ghost if they have never voted on any proposal.

Nakamoto Coefficient

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From mid-September to the start of October, the Nakamoto Coefficient has dropped from seven to six delegates. With the current total voting power distribution among Moonwell’s delegates, it takes six wallets to comprise a majority of the protocol’s voting power. For decentralized networks, a higher Nakamoto Coefficient indicates a greater degree of decentralization.

Proposal Participation

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Let’s dive deeper into the timeline of Moonwell’s proposal participation. The first important event to point out is the June-to-August period which coincided with the WELL-incentivized Galxe voter campaigns. It can be assumed that those increased voter turnout values were due to a combination of higher community turnout and inorganic farming activity. In September and the first half of October, since the campaigns, we’ve seen a return to an organic maximum of 98 voters. The average turnout in that period, without any direct financial incentives, was 52 voters. However, proposal participation significantly increased in the second half of October. MIP-X05 was the first to break a record; 247 was the most votes received by any proposal this year, surpassing the Galxe campaigns. MIP-M41 then surpassed it with 268 votes, which is the highest voter turnout since April 2023.

Note that this chart includes data points from Snapshot and Moonriver proposals.

Main Governance Initiatives in October

New Market Proposals

In the first few days of the month, Puffer Finance created a forum post outlining a proposal to add a market for pufETH - a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) - to Moonwell on Base. A Snapshot proposal is expected to be published in the coming days. Origin Protocol proposed adding a Wrapped Super OETH market to Moonwell on Base. KelpDAO’s proposal to add wrsETH markets to Moonwell on Base and Optimism also progressed around that time when Gauntlet offered their recommendations regarding the risk profile for the asset. It later progressed to a multichain proposal, seeking to add the markets to Moonwell on Base and Optimism. It successfully passed. The markets were activated on October 19th and rewards went live on October 28th.

Risk and Rewards Speeds

Gauntlet published four MIPs at the start of the month to adjust asset risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments. The second set of monthly recommendations was created on October 23rd to adjust November’s parameters. On October 14th, MIP-B33: Initiating USDC rewards and Assigning Gauntlet as USDC Emissions Admin was published to initiate USDC incentives on Moonwell’s USDC market on Base. Secondarily, the proposal sought to assign Gauntlet as the USDC Emissions Admin to dynamically manage rewards without requiring further governance proposals. A similar proposal for USDC rewards for the cbBTC Core Market went live on the final day of October. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. Gauntlet used their role as Cap Guardian to adjust Borrow/Supply caps for assets including EURC, cbBTC, VELO, wstETH, cbETH, WETH, DAI, weETH, and rETH. At the end of last month, the monthly automated reward speed proposals successfully passed an onchain vote, aiming to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on the four deployments throughout October. The next set of reward speed proposals came on October 23rd, setting incentives for the month of November.

Future-proofing Moonwell Governance

Moonwell contributor Luke brought up the need to protect Moonwell from governance attacks, citing the successful “Golden Boys” attack on Compound earlier this year. One proposed solution entailed creating a system that would require users to vote once in the last 30 days in order to claim rewards from the Safety Module - increasing governance turnout as a byproduct. Throughout the month, other community members began offering their thoughts on the idea. MIP-X05 went up for an onchain vote on October 23rd. The proposal was successful. MIP-M41 was subsequently published to reduce the Safety Module cooldown period to 7 Days on Moonbeam, aligning it with periods established on Base and Optimism.

Potential Chain Expansions

Throughout October, new discussions began taking place in the forums around Superchain-related expansions that might benefit the protocol. @nomishow kicked off the discussion around potentially activating Moonwell on BOB network, a Bitcoin-related OP Stack Layer 2. Contributor Luke agreed with the need to explore this option and urged the community to make data-driven decisions on expanding to other new L2s that are aligned with the Superchain, including Unichain, SOON, and [REDACTED]. Delegate Rush applicant @kimchiblock then created a forum discussion on potentially activating Moonwell on Soneium, an upcoming general-purpose OP Stack Layer 2 built by Sony Block Solutions Labs.

Additional Developments

  • New Wallet Integrations: In early October, Moonwell announced that the OKX wallet was integrated into the Moonwell app. It joined Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, Rabby, and other wallets to be usable inside the Moonwell app. In mid-October, following Phantom wallet launching support for Base, Phantom was also integrated into the Moonwell app.
  • Increasing Protocol Adoption across the Superchain: Token Terminal noted in mid-October that active loans on OP Mainnet are trending up and to the right. Since mid-August, active loans on the network have increased to ~$23.5M
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  • Total Market Size Hit $500M: In Mid-October, Moonwell hit a significant market milestone. With a total supplied value of over $355M and a total borrowed value of over $158M, Moonwell’s total market size has grown to over $500M.
  • Moonwell Joined the Circle Alliance Program: The program is meant to grow and build a network of organizations who help further stablecoin innovation. The program’s goals align with Moonwell’s, expanding financial inclusion for billions of people around the world.
  • USDC Rewards: Following the passing of MIP-B33, $50K in USDC incentives became available for the USDC Core Market on Base on October 19th.

Community Overview

Social Channel Data
Main X account 42.1K Followers (+7.40%)
Governance X account 702 Followers (+13.22%)
Discord 8549 Members (+9.52%)
Announcements Telegram 781 Members (-15.75%)
Chat Telegram​​ 7506 Members (+8.36%)

Community Trends

Based on governance turnout in October, the community appears to favor proposals related to activating rewards (MIP-B33) and activating new markets (MIP-X03). Looking at forum activity, the post with the highest engagement this month was Luke’s discussion on Increasing Governance Participation. The discussion had direct implications on how the Safety Module rewards might be claimed in the future. After that forum post was created, three sequential onchain proposals (MIP-X04, MIP-X05, and MIP-M41) received a combined 675 votes.

Taken together, it can be inferred that the community is most engaged with governance activity that has a direct or indirect impact on their financial status within Moonwell.

This month’s social media metrics reflect the trend seen in previous months: moderate growth on the largest communication channels (Discord, the main Moonwell Twitter account, and the chat Telegram channel), higher growth on the governance Twitter account, and negative growth on the announcement Telegram channel.

Closing Summary

October 2024 has been a period of increased activity across all facets of Moonwell governance: onchain proposal voter turnout, Snapshot voter turnout, the number of incoming delegates, social media presence, and forum activity. New ideas are regularly being discussed in the forums including new market proposals, expansions to new Layer 2s, and improvements to the governance process.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, November 7th at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

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11

November 2024 Update

Key Insights

  • Voter turnout remains elevated. Towards the end of last month, we saw a massive uptick in onchain voter turnout. This month continued to bring in record-breaking numbers, with four proposals significantly surpassing last month’s all-time high.
  • We saw the most number of Snapshot proposals and the highest Snapshot voter turnout all year. Five Snapshot proposals went live in November; one proposal surpassed last month’s previous record-high turnout by 259%.
  • Social metrics continue to increase across the board. The largest proportional increase in follower count came from the Governance X account (+15.53%), while Moonwell’s largest channels experienced respectable growth on the order of 4.99-6.88%.
  • Debates were had in the forum surrounding how Moonwell should handle OEV. In November, three separate teams proposed solutions for ways to deal with Oracle Extracted Value.

Primer

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for November 2024.

Following October’s significant trend reversal in governance participation, records continue to be broken for both Snapshot and onchain voter turnout in November.

Key Metrics

  • 6 onchain proposals
  • 5 Snapshot proposal
  • 25 forum posts

The number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 228, with a minimum of 18 and a maximum of 388.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-B35 279
MIP-B36 388
MIP-R28 18
MIP-X06 313
MIP-R29 20
MIP-X07 351

This month, there were five Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
Add wUSDM Market to Moonwell on Optimism 93
Add pufETH market to Moonwell on Base 173
Migrate Moonwell’s Bug Bounty Program Provider from Immunefi to Code4rena 254
Additional revenue stream for Moonwell ecosystem via OEV implementation 184
MIP-B38: Renewal of Moonwell Flagship Vaults Incentives Program 106

The voter turnout on the Code4rena Snapshot proposal is the highest we’ve seen this year. This comes after we previously broke the record last month - the Wrapped Super OETH Snapshot proposal attracted 98 voters. This month, that number was passed not once, but four times; the Code4rena proposal turnout surpassed last month’s all-time high by 259%.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in November had a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: The Snapshot proposals in November had a 100% success rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Other Governance Metrics

Metric Data
Delegates 2,739 (+0.00%)
Top-5 Wallets Voting Power 46% (-1.00%)
Top-100 Wallets Voting Power 83% (-1.00%)
Top-200 Wallets Voting Power 85% (-1.00%)
Delegate Quorum Gauge* 3 (+0.00%)
Nakamoto Coefficient** 6 (+0.00%)
Early Voters 45% (+0.00%)
Mid-Proposal Voters 23% (+0.00%)
Late Voters 17% (+0.00%)
End-of-Proposal Voters 16% (+0.00%)
Top-1000 Delegates Active 18.19% (-0.57%)
Top-1000 Delegates Inactive*** 25.21% (-1.53%)
Top-1000 Delegates Ghost**** 56.60% (+2.10%)

*Delegate Quorum Gauge: The number of delegates required to reach quorum.
**Nakamoto Coefficient: The number of delegates required to reach 50% of the total voting power.
***A delegate is considered inactive if they have not voted on any of the last 3 proposals but have voted on at least 1 proposal in the past.
****A delegate is considered a ghost if they have never voted on any proposal.

Proposal Participation

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In our last report, we covered the significant increase in proposal participation seen in the second half of November. MIP-X05 was the first to break a record with 247 votes, followed in quick succession by MIP-M41 which tied the previous #2 spot with 268 votes. Since then, MIP-B35 surpassed it, going on to receive 279 votes and becoming the new second-highest voter turnout in Moonwell’s history. MIP-B36 then received a staggering 388 votes, which eclipsed the previous all-time high, which was 282 votes in April 2023.

Top 1000 Delegates Participation

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This month, there was a slight decrease in the percentage of both active and inactive delegates (-0.57% and -1.53%, respectively) and a slight increase in “ghost” delegates (+2.10%). This changing composition of the delegates indicates that Moonwell is getting new top-1000 delegates who have never voted on a proposal. This can be explained by continuing userbase growth on Base and Optimism; as new users come in, it may take some time for them to familiarize themselves with how governance works and to cast their first vote.

Main Governance Initiatives in November

New Ideas in the Forums

Throughout the month, new and existing community members began creating and commenting on new ideas for the protocol and its governance. We had ideas on WELL token security, creating structural demand for WELL, an alternative method for requiring users to vote once in a 30-day period in order to claim rewards (entailing a 10% fee penalty), and feedback on an auctioned borrowing product idea. In addition to these community-led discussions, we also saw forum discussions that led to Snapshot proposals, including the bug bounty provider discussion and RedStone’s OEV implementation discussion. Block Analitica and B.Protocol provided their monthly update early in the month, where they shared an updated reallocation model for the Moonwell Flagship Vaults.

The Great OEV Debate

A trend began in November when RedStone Finance created a forum proposal detailing a third-party solution for capturing the value generated by liquidations through the team’s OEV (Oracle Extracted Value) technology. The discussion was elevated to a Snapshot vote on November 19th, aimed at limiting the technology initially to the AERO Core Market on Moonwell’s Base deployment. The Snapshot was successful. While that proposal was being voted on, API3 took to the forums to offer their solution, limited to the WETH Core Market on Moonwell on Optimism. The final voice in the debate came from Moonwell contributor Solidity Labs, who, on November 26th, recommended that Moonwell introduce a “MEV tax,” charging liquidators for priority access to update price feeds and execute liquidations.

Risk and Rewards Speeds

Gauntlet published four MIPs which were executed on the first day of the month adjust market risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, and Moonbeam deployments. The second set of monthly recommendations was created on November 20th to adjust next month’s parameters. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. Gauntlet used their role as Cap Guardian to adjust Borrow/Supply caps for assets including weETH and cbBTC on Base, weETH and rETH on Optimism, and more. November’s monthly reward speed proposals, MIP-X06 and MIP-R26, successfully passed an onchain vote on November 23rd, aiming to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on the four deployments.

Additional Developments

  • Vault rewards became claimable: In the second half of the month, Moonwell Flagship Vault rewards accrued until November 20th became claimable directly in the Moonwell app.
  • Record activity on Base: On the week of November 4th, events on Moonwell on Base (including deposits, borrows, repayments, and withdrawals) hit a new peak of over 80K in one week.
  • Increasing fee generation: In mid-November, $335K in fees was generated in a single week, which was greater than all other lending apps on Base combined.
  • New Isolated Markets: Three new Morpho Labs Isolated Markets for cbBTC went live on November 14th: cbBTC/USDC, cbBTC/EURC, and cbBTC/ETH.
  • In-app Performance Improvements: Mid-November, Moonwell contributors launched an enhanced app experience for users, improving speed and usability.

Community Overview

Social Channel Data
Main X account 44.2K Followers (+4.99%)
Governance X account 811 Followers (+15.53%)
Discord 9137 Members (+6.88%)
Announcements Telegram 765 Members (-2.05%)
Chat Telegram​​ 7938 Members (+5.76%)

Community Trends

Based on this month’s proposal participation metrics, the community appears to be eager to turn out to vote, regardless of proposal type. MIP-B36 enabled Public Allocator functionality for the Moonwell Flagship EURC vault, and it received the most amount of votes in Moonwell’s history by a wide margin. The second-highest was Gauntlet’s monthly recommendations proposal at 351 votes, and the third was an automated liquidity incentive proposal at 313 votes. Last month, we concluded that the community was most engaged with governance activity that had a direct or indirect impact on their financial status within Moonwell. This month, it’s safe to say that conclusion holds true, as voting at large is required in order to claim rewards. The top 4 proposals in November all surpassed last month’s previous all-time high turnout on MIP-M41, which gathered 268 votes.

The reduction in the number of proposals this month can, in part, be explained by the usage of MIP-X proposals which combine what would have previously been separate submissions for each Moonwell deployment. For example, Gauntlet’s monthly recommendations were implemented via MIP-X07, whereas last month, the team submitted separate proposals for each network.

This month’s social media metrics reflect the trend seen in previous months: moderate growth on the largest communication channels (Discord, the main Moonwell Twitter account, and the chat Telegram channel), highest growth on the governance Twitter account, and negative growth on the announcements Telegram channel.

Closing Summary

November 2024 has simultaneously had fewer total proposals than normal while also gathering record-high voter turnout, both onchain and offchain. Forum activity remains at typical levels while social media presence continues to grow following the same pattern seen in previous months. The Moonwell community was faced with a novel discussion regarding how to handle OEV, and the chosen solution will likely continue to be debated throughout December.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, December 5th at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

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12

December 2024 Update

Key Insights

  • New Moonwell Core Markets are being proposed. December’s governance activity was led by multiple proposals for new Moonwell Core Markets. Notably, Moonwell’s native governance token, WELL, was among the Core Markets proposed to be activated on Base.
  • The community debated OEV solutions and came to a consensus on how to move forward. Solidity Labs’ onchain solution, enabling Moonwell to capture 100% of OEV revenue from liquidation events while using existing Chainlink oracles, was overwhelmingly favored.
  • Onchain voter turnout broke new records. The community far surpassed November’s previous all-time-high voter participation on a single onchain proposal.

Primer

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for December 2024.

December maintained previous months’ trends of significantly elevated voter turnout despite a lower total number of proposals. The community largely remains supportive of launching new Core Markets and extending integrations and partnerships.

Key Metrics

  • 4 onchain proposals
  • 3 Snapshot proposal
  • 19 forum posts

The number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 280, with a minimum of 21 and a maximum of 620.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-X08 620
MIP-X09 201
MIP-X10 277
MIP-R30 21

This month, there were three Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
Add WELL to Moonwell Core Market on Base 237
Add LBTC to Moonwell Core Market on Base 77
Evaluating OEV Solutions for Moonwell: Community Temperature Check 111

Last month’s voter turnout on the Code4rena Snapshot proposal was the highest we’ve seen this year at 254 votes. This month’s proposal to add a WELL Core Market to Moonwell on Base came close, receiving the second highest amount of votes for a Snapshot proposal this year at 237.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in December had a 75% success rate. Moonriver’s liquidity incentive rebalancing proposal narrowly failed to reach quorum.
  • Offchain: The Snapshot proposals in December had a 100% success rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Other Governance Metrics

Metric Data
Voters 4,640 (+169.40%)
Top-5 Wallets Voting Power 50% (+4%)
Top-100 Wallets Voting Power 84% (+1%)
Top-200 Wallets Voting Power 86% (+1%)
Delegate Quorum Gauge* 3 (No change)
Nakamoto Coefficient** 5 (-16.67%)
Early Voters 45% (No change)
Mid-Proposal Voters 23% (No change)
Late Voters 17% (No change)
End-of-Proposal Voters 16% (No change)
Top-1000 Delegates Active 18.73% (+0.54%)
Top-1000 Delegates Inactive*** 21.87% (-3.34%)
Top-1000 Delegates Ghost**** 59.40% (+2.80%)

*Delegate Quorum Gauge: The number of delegates required to reach quorum.
**Nakamoto Coefficient: The number of delegates required to reach 50% of the total voting power.
***A delegate is considered inactive if they have not voted on any of the last three proposals but have voted on at least one proposal in the past.
****A delegate is considered a ghost if they have never voted on any proposal.

Proposal Participation

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While December had fewer total proposals than normal, the first onchain submission for the month, MIP-X08, broke the previous voter turnout record by a significant margin. As noted in the last report, MIP-X05, MIP-M41, and MIP-B35 each successively surpassed one another in hitting the #2 spot for all-time voter turnout. MIP-B36 then received 388 votes, eclipsing the previous all-time high of 282 votes in April 2023. MIP-X08 surpassed November’s new record, coming in at 620 voting wallets. This set of data may indicate that participants are eager to vote as early as possible during the month to meet the voting requirement established by MIP-X05, as subsequent onchain submissions for the month ranged from 201 to 277 for non-Moonriver proposals.

Nakamoto Coefficient

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In this context, the Nakamoto Coefficient is defined as the number of delegates required to reach 50% of the total voting power. For decentralized networks such as Moonwell’s governance system, a higher Nakamoto Coefficient indicates a greater degree of decentralization. This month, the number of delegates required to comprise a majority of the protocol’s voting power has decreased from six wallets to five wallets; the total voting power distribution among the protocol’s delegates is slightly more concentrated than last month’s. This comes after the Nakamoto Coefficient previously dropped from seven to six towards the end of September.

Main Governance Initiatives in December

New Moonwell Core Markets are going live

In early December, Moonwell Super Delegate 0xMims created a forum proposal to add WELL Core Markets to the protocol. A few of the factors that preceded this effort included the token’s liquidity on Aerodrome, its circulating market cap, and the Chainlink price feed for WELL on Base going live. Shortly after, the proposal progressed to a Snapshot proposal. Following the overwhelming support shown on that signal vote, an onchain vote is expected to go live in the New Year. Around that same time, Lombard Finance created a forum discussion and a subsequent Snapshot to add an LBTC Core Market to Moonwell on Base. LBTC is a yield-bearing, liquid-staked token built on Babylon, backed 1:1 by BTC. The Snapshot was also successful and should be followed by an onchain proposal in the near future. To cap off the month, a forum discussion was created to add a Core Market for Sky Protocol’s USDS to Moonwell on Base.

The community supports extending Moonwell’s integrations

Early in the month, Block Analitica and B.Protocol submitted an onchain proposal that sought to extend and optimize the Moonwell Morpho Vaults Incentives Program for an additional six-month period and to transfer ownership of a new Moonwell Frontier cbBTC Vault to the Moonwell DAO. The new vault was designed to capitalize on the growing demand for borrowing cbBTC within the Base ecosystem. The following Thursday, the proposal was successfully passed. The Moonwell Frontier cbBTC Vault went live on December 16th, curated by Block Analitica and B.Protocol. The new vault delivers optimized, risk-adjusted returns for cbBTC depositors.

Evaluating OEV Solutions

In mid-December, new Delegate @PGov created a forum post outlining the three proposals submitted by Solidity Labs, RedStone, and API3 to help the Moonwell community assess the best path forward for addressing Oracle Extractable Value (OEV). This came after the “Great OEV Debate,” which was also covered in our last Monthly Report. Three distinct proposals from the different teams aimed at optimizing OEV capture were posted to the forums over the last month. Each proposal offered a distinct approach to improving the way liquidations are handled and subsequent revenue is captured, with varying trade-offs in terms of implementation, complexity, and security. Shortly after the forum post was created, a Snapshot went up for a vote, the results of which indicated that the community favored the solution proposed by Solidity Labs.

Risk and Rewards Speeds

Gauntlet published a forum post to adjust market risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, and Moonbeam deployments. The onchain proposal was created on December 18th to adjust those parameters for the next 30 days. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. Gauntlet used their role as Cap Guardian to adjust Borrow/Supply caps for assets including cbETH on Optimism. The monthly reward speed proposals, MIP-X09 and MIP-R30, each went up for a vote in mid-December; they aimed to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on the four deployments. The former was successful and the latter failed to reach quorum.

Additional Developments

  • $1B Total Market Size: On the first day of the month, Moonwell hit a significant milestone. The total market size reached an all-time high of $1B, accounting for all Core Markets and Vaults.
  • The Moonwell Card: On December 9th, Moonwell announced a partnership with Cypher to launch the Moonwell Card, an advanced crypto debit card that enables users to seamlessly spend their crypto. The card is accepted at 44+ million merchants worldwide and it leverages Circle Mint for offramps; users borrow USDC against their assets on Moonwell and spend anywhere VISA is accepted.
  • Moonwell Frontier cbBTC Vault Traction: By December 17th, just 24 hours after WELL rewards went live, the Moonwell Frontier cbBTC Vault on Base reached $10M in total deposits.
  • New Isolated Market: On December 23rd, a new PT-LBTC-29MAY2025 / cbBTC Isolated Market was launched on Moonwell. The asset is Pendle Finance’s Principal Token (PT) for Lombard Finance’s Bitcoin liquid staking token, LBTC, which matures on May 29th, 2025.

Delegate Digest

Moonwell’s delegate-base is classified into three categories. Here is an explanation of what each role does and how each type of delegate can progress to the next role.

:large_blue_circle: Super Delegates

Delegate Delegation Pitch Delegation Page Delegated Amount Proposals Created Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month?
0xMims Link Link 7.2M WELL 4 Yes
Coolhorsegirl Link Link 1.6M WELL 19 Yes

:yellow_circle: Mid-Tier Delegates

Delegate Delegation Pitch Delegation Page Delegated Amount Proposals Created Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month?
Kimchiblock Link Link 303K WELL 0 Yes
PGov Link Link 201K WELL 1 Yes

:green_circle: Junior Delegates

Delegate Delegation Pitch Delegation Page Delegated Amount Proposals Created Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month?

Delegate Highlights

Community Overview

Social Channel Data
Main X account 47.4K Followers (+7.24%)
Governance X account 896 Followers (+10.48%)
Discord 9732 Members (+6.51%)
Announcements Telegram 731 Members (-4.44%)
Chat Telegram​​ 8019 Members (+1.02%)

Community Trends

December saw fewer total onchain proposals than last month but simultaneously had record-setting voter turnout. Last month, we reported that November continued to bring in massive voting numbers, with four proposals meeting or significantly succeeding October’s previous all-time high. This month, MIP-X08’s 620 participating wallets surpassed November’s record by 159.79%. The Snapshot proposals this month also received among the highest number of offchain voters ever for Moonwell, ranging from 77 to 237, although they did not quite reach last month’s heights.

The trends in Moonwell’s social media presence seen in previous months have largely continued this month: highest follower count growth on the governance X account, moderate growth across the main X account, Discord channel, and chat Telegram, and negative growth on the announcement Telegram.

Closing Summary

December 2024 broke new records in onchain voter turnout and maintained a high level of Snapshot participation. Social metrics continue to grow across Moonwell’s primary accounts and channels. The community remains supportive of new Core Market activations and expansions of Moonwell’s partnerships. The delegate-base voting power is changing slightly, and the community has debated and decided on which OEV solution to move forward with.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, January 9th at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

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13

January 2024 Update

Key Insights

  • Proposals for New Core Markets are Advancing. In January, the majority of the onchain submissions were related to progressing various Core Market proposals, continuing a trend from last month.
  • Snapshot Voter Turnout Hit All-Time-Highs. While last month displayed new records in onchain voter turnout, January brought a new record for voting addresses participating in offchain signal proposals.
  • Solidity Labs’ OEV Solution Has Begun its Onchain Rollout. After the community overwhelmingly voted to support Solidity Labs’ OEV solution through Snapshot, the team began rolling out the proposal’s onchain voting phase, beginning with the ETH Core Market on Optimism.

Primer

The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for January 2024.

While no single onchain proposal managed to reach last month’s all-time high, January largely maintained previous months’ elevated average voter turnout. Most of the governance activity centered around activating new Moonwell Core Markets and the community signalled support for all of the proposals.

Key Metrics

  • Eight onchain proposals
  • Three Snapshot proposals
  • 26 forum posts

The number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 255, with a minimum of 147 and a maximum of 396.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-B37 396
MIP-X11 359
MIP-O12 246
MIP-X12 195
MIP-B38 147
MIP-B39 173
MIP-B40 271
MIP-B41 TBD

This month, there were three Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
Add USDS to Moonwell Core Market on Base 310
Add tBTC to Moonwell Core Market on Base 131
Add VIRTUAL to Moonwell Core Market on Base 63

The USDS proposal this month has gone on to receive the highest number of votes for a Moonwell Snapshot proposal this year.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in January had a 100% success rate.
  • Offchain: The Snapshot proposals in January had a 100% success rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Other Governance Metrics

Metric Data
Voters 5,173 (+11.49%)
Top-5 Wallets Voting Power 52% (+2%)
Top-100 Wallets Voting Power 84% (No change)
Top-200 Wallets Voting Power 85% (-1%)
Delegate Quorum Gauge* 3 (No change)
Nakamoto Coefficient** 5 (No change)
Early Voters 45% (No change)
Mid-Proposal Voters 23% (No change)
Late Voters 17% (No change)
End-of-Proposal Voters 16% (No change)
Top-1000 Delegates Active 16.81% (-1.92%)
Top-1000 Delegates Inactive*** 21.52% (-0.35%)
Top-1000 Delegates Ghost**** 61.68% (+2.28%)

*Delegate Quorum Gauge: The number of delegates required to reach quorum.
**Nakamoto Coefficient: The number of delegates required to reach 50% of the total voting power.
***A delegate is considered inactive if they have not voted on any of the last 3 proposals but have voted on at least 1 proposal in the past.
****A delegate is considered a ghost if they have never voted on any proposal.

Top 1000 Delegates Participation

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Compared to last month, we’ve seen a slight shift in the composition of delegate voting participation. The percentage of active delegates has decreased slightly from last month’s 18.73%. The proportion of delegates who are Inactive has remained relatively steady (December’s value was 21.87%), but the percentage of Ghost delegates has increased slightly (December’s value was 59.40%). A “Ghost” delegate is one who has never voted on any Moonwell proposal; an “Inactive” delegate is one who has voted at least once in the past, but not on any of the last three proposals. This shift continues a trend seen during the last few months and it likely can be attributed to the voting requirement established by MIP-X05. As first-time delegates (i.e. voters) get involved with Moonwell governance, it will take some time for them to shift into the “Active” delegate category.

Main Governance Initiatives in January

New Core Markets Are Being Added

Moonwell Super Delegate @0xMims kicked off the month with a Snapshot proposal to add a Core Market for USDS - Sky Protocol’s Sky Dollar - to Moonwell on Base. The signal vote was successful and Gauntlet then added their recommendations for the market. It progressed to an onchain vote on January 23rd. Around that same time, a forum post was created by Threshold Network that centered around adding a tBTC Core Market. The proposal progressed to a Snapshot vote, which was successful, before Gauntlet published their tBTC recommendations. Last month, 0xMims also spearheaded the effort to activate a WELL Core Market on Base by submitting a Snapshot proposal. This month, Gauntlet offered risk recommendations for the proposed Core Market before an onchain proposal was submitted. MIP-B37 was successful and the Core Market went live on January 13th.

Following last month’s successful Snapshot, Block Analitica offered their risk analysis for Lombard Finance’s proposed LBTC Core Market on Base, which was followed by Gauntlet’s market recommendations. LBTC, tBTC, and USDS all progressed to onchain votes on the same day and all proposals were successful. Core Markets for LBTC, tBTC, and USDS all went live on January 29th.

In mid-January, 0xMims proposed adding VIRTUAL, the governance and utility token of Virtuals Protocol, to Moonwell. It progressed to a Snapshot vote, which was successful; Gauntlet offered recommendations for the VIRTUAL Core Market before it moved to an onchain vote on January 29th.

Contributors are Implementing Technical Improvements

In December, Moonwell’s governance call was focused on “The Great OEV Debate.” Following a recap forum post created by @PGov, the community overwhelmingly chose to proceed with Solidity Labs’ proposal in a Snapshot signal vote. The team’s solution seeks to improve how liquidations occur on Moonwell, ensuring a more efficient capture of revenue from liquidation events. It entails introducing an “MEV tax”, charging liquidators for priority access to update price feeds and execute liquidations. After some development time, Solidity Labs began rolling out the OEV solution. On January 14th, MIP-O12 was submitted, which sought to test the technology solely on the ETH Core Market on Optimism. The proposal was successful.

Ideas for Increasing Governance Participation and Rewarding Voters

Towards the tail end of the month, contributor Luke Youngblood created a forum discussion that’s acting as a follow-up to October’s “Increasing Governance Participation” proposal. He first brought up the protocol’s status as a top revenue generator in DeFi before proposing that excess revenue should be used to reward Safety Module stakers. It would be auctioned off for WELL and used to bolster the Safety Module Ecosystem Reserve. The post is currently being discussed, and should the community choose to move forward, it will move to a Snapshot vote in early February and an onchain vote in mid-February.

Risk, Rewards Speeds, and Vaults

Gauntlet published a forum post to adjust market risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, and Moonbeam deployments. The onchain proposal was created on January 22nd to adjust parameters for the next month. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. Gauntlet used their role as Cap Guardian to adjust Borrow/Supply caps for assets including WELL on Base. January’s monthly reward speed proposal, MIP-X11, successfully passed an onchain vote on January 18th, aiming to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on the four deployments. Block Analitica and B.Protocol posted their monthly recap for Moonwell’s Flagship Vaults in late January. The teams previously launched the Moonwell Frontier cbBTC vault and the community voted to extend the WELL token reward program for another six months. The recap also highlights the automated reallocations and parameter adjustments which were executed for growth and security reasons.

Additional Developments

  • Growth on Optimism: In early January, Moonwell announced the generation of record fees on Optimism, hitting an all-time-high of $616.7K.
  • Bitcoin-backed loans on Coinbase: In mid-January, Coinbase announced that Bitcoin-backed loans were live on the platform, powered by Morpho. The Moonwell Flagship USDC Vault on Base provides 80% of all USDC that can be borrowed against cbBTC on Coinbase.
  • Physical Moonwell Cards: On January 22nd, physical Moonwell cards were launched. The Visa cards enable Moonwell users to shop, dine, and travel globally while keeping their assets onchain and it is accepted at 44+ million merchants worldwide.
  • New Isolated Market: On January 23rd, a new Morpho Labs LBTC/cbBTC Isolate Market was integrated into the Moonwell app.
  • New Code4rena Bug Bounty Program: Following November’s Snapshot proposal, the new $250K Bug Bounty Program from Code4rena was kicked off on January 24th.

Delegate Digest

:large_blue_circle: Super Delegates

Delegate Delegation Pitch Delegation Page Delegated Amount Proposals Created Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month?
0xMims Link Link 7.5M WELL 6 Yes
Coolhorsegirl Link Link 1.6M WELL 18 Yes

:yellow_circle: Mid-Tier Delegates

Delegate Delegation Pitch Delegation Page Delegated Amount Proposals Created Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month?
Kimchiblock Link Link 305K WELL 0 Yes
PGov Link Link 201K WELL 1 Yes

:green_circle: Junior Delegates

Delegate Delegation Pitch Delegation Page Delegated Amount Proposals Created Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month?

You can read more about the requirements to join each delegate tier and each tier’s contribution minimums here.

Delegate Highlights

  • 0xMims created a Snapshot that sought feedback on potentially adding a Core Market for Sky Protocol’s USDS to Moonwell on Base. Its corresponding onchain proposal, MIP-B38, was later submitted onchain and it was successful. His previous WELL Snapshot also progressed to an onchain vote this month. 0xMims additionally submitted the first iteration of a VIRTUAL Core Market proposal to Snapshot in mid-January. Its onchain counterpart is currently live.

Community Overview

Social Channel Data
Main X account 50.4K Followers (+6.33%)
Governance X account 965 Followers (+7.70%)
Discord 10,152 Members (+4.32%)
Announcements Telegram 712 Members (-2.60%)
Chat Telegram​​ 7,908 Members (-1.38%)

Community Trends

Last month, we reported that a new record in onchain voter turnout was set. MIP-X08’s 620 participating wallets surpassed November’s previous all-time high by 159.79%. While onchain voter turnout this month didn’t quite reach last month’s highs, we’ve seen more of an even distribution among the proposals. The average number of onchain voters last month was 280; this month, that figure is slightly lower at 255. For reference, the average for November was 228 and October’s was 105, so this month falls well within the expected turnout range.

Snapshot indicates a different story. Typically, Snapshot turnout is significantly lower than onchain turnout. This month, the USDS Snapshot voting numbers significantly passed the average onchain voter numbers with a record-setting 310 offchain signal votes. The previous record was set in November, when the Code4rena Snapshot proposal gathered 254 votes, equating to a 22% increase. The community appeared to be highly activated by the idea of supporting Sky.money’s growth across Ethereum Layer 2s, attracting users from the Sky Protocol ecosystem and expanding Moonwell’s stablecoin offerings.

At 11, this month has had a greater number of proposals compared to last month’s seven (including offchain and onchain). This is a return to form; it’s comparable to November and October.

Moonwell’s primary social channels continue to grow at a healthy pace: the main X account, the governance X account, and Discord have continued to grow at a relatively linear rate. Both Telegram channels have shown slightly decreased membership this month.

Closing Summary

January 2024 can largely be summed up as a month of progressing several Core Market proposals, high Snapshot voter turnout, and relatively steady social growth metrics.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, February 6th at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

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