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
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
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
- 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.