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.
This month, there were five Snapshot signal votes.
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
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
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.