May 2025 Update
Key Insights
- New Core Market Activations. As with previous months, May continued a trend of new Core Market proposals advancing through the governance process. This month, Tether’s USDT0 was the primary focus.
- New Partnerships. Anthias Labs took to the forums to propose working with Moonwell as a risk partner on Base’s Core Markets.
- Reserve Auctions. May’s automated liquidity incentives proposal passed an onchain vote. Included in that proposal were ~$113K of excess market reserves to auction off.
Primer
The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for May 2025.
Note: May’s report will have less governance data/metrics to analyze; we’ll look at Moonwell’s governance activity primarily from a qualitative view. We are working on a solution and will hopefully have an expanded report next month!
Key Metrics
- Three onchain proposals
- Two Snapshot proposals
- 17 forum posts
| Proposal |
|---|
| MIP-O14 Add USDT0 Market to Moonwell on Optimism |
| MIP-X21 Automated Liquidity Incentive Proposal |
| MIP-X22 Gauntlet’s Monthly Recommendations |
This month, there were two Snapshot signal votes.
| Proposal | Offchain votes |
|---|---|
| Add USDT0 market to Moonwell on OP Mainnet | 159 |
| Anthias Labs to Join Moonwell as Risk Partner on Base Markets | 161 |
At 310 voters, the USDS proposal in January received the highest number of votes for a Moonwell Snapshot proposal.
Success Insights:
- Onchain: The onchain proposals in May had a 100% success rate.
- Offchain: The Snapshot proposals in May had a 100% success rate.
Browse all of the proposals here.
Main Governance Initiatives in May
New Core Market Activations
In late April, 0xMims submitted a forum post to add a USDT0 Core Market on Optimism. USDT0 is the multichain variant of Tether’s USDT, powered by LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard. The Snapshot passed on the first day of May. Shortly after it passed, Gauntlet recommended onboarding the asset and provided risk parameter recommendations. MIP-O14 was submitted on May 8th, and it was successful. The USDT0 Core Market went live on May 13th. In mid-May, Moonwell contributor Luke Youngblood created a forum discussion surrounding new upcoming Coinbase collateral assets. Four new blue chip collateral assets will be supported by Coinbase: cbXRP (Coinbase wrapped XRP/Ripple), cbDOGE (Coinbase wrapped DOGE), cbADA (Coinbase wrapped ADA/Cardano), and cbLTC (Coinbase wrapped LTC/Litecoin). Like cbBTC, Luke mentioned that they represent an opportunity for Moonwell support assets that have Coinbase’s unique blend of security and fungibility properties.
New Partnerships
In mid-May, Anthias Labs proposed to serve as a risk partner for Moonwell’s Base markets. Anthias Labs is an onchain advisory firm focused on DeFi risk management and system design; their listed partners include Felix Protocol, Arbitrum DAO, and Uniswap. They shared hypothetical risk recommendations for Moonwell for April. On May 19th, the proposal was submitted for a Snapshot vote. It was successful.
Risk, Reward Speeds, and Vaults
Gauntlet published a forum post to adjust market risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments. The onchain proposal was created on May 20th 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 WETH on Optimism. May’s monthly automated liquidity incentive proposal, MIP-X21, successfully passed an onchain vote on May 15th, aiming to rebalance liquidity incentives on three Moonwell deployments. It additionally sought to auction off ~$113K of excess market reserves.
Additional Developments
- WELL and OP Rewards on Moonwell Flagship USDC Vault on Optimism Mainnet: In mid-May, WELL and OP rewards went live on the OP Mainnet Flagship USDC Vault.
- USDT0 Caps Raised: On May 18th, Gauntlet used Cap Guardian to increase USDT0’s caps to a 5M supply cap and a 4.5M borrow cap. A few days later, caps were raised again; supply cap was set at 15M and borrow cap was set at 13.5M.
- Optimism Retro Funding: Moonwell was awarded over 115K OP in the latest round of Optimism Retro Funding, to be completely distributed as liquidity incentives.
- MAMO Airdrop: On May 23rd, WELL holders and Safety Module stakers were able to claim a MAMO airdrop. Learn more about the MAMO agent here.
Delegate Digest
Super Delegates
| Delegate | Delegation Pitch | Delegation Page | Delegated Amount | Proposals Created | Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0xMims | Link | Link | 14K WELL | 12 | Yes |
| Coolhorsegirl | Link | Link | 16K WELL | 20 | Yes |
Mid-Tier Delegates
| Delegate | Delegation Pitch | Delegation Page | Delegated Amount | Proposals Created | Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kimchiblock | Link | Link | 419K WELL | 0 | Yes |
| PGov | Link | Link | 1K WELL | 1 | Yes |
| DAOplomats | Link | Link | 183 WELL | 0 | Yes |
| Maylosan | Link | Link | 45K WELL | 0 | Yes |
| FranklinDAO | Link | Link | 508 WELL | 0 | Yes |
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 forum discussion about adding a new Core Market for USDS, and a forum discussion and subsequent Snapshot to add a WELL Core Market to Moonwell on Base. He also submitted the Snapshot on behalf of Anthias Labs later in the month.
Community Overview
| Social Channel | Data |
|---|---|
| Main X account | 53.7K Followers (+0.94%) |
| Governance X account | 1116 Followers (+5.08%) |
| Discord | 10,705 Members (+0.99%) |
| Announcements Telegram | 678 Members (-1.60%) |
| Chat Telegram | 7,650 Members (+0.10%) |
Community Trends
While May had fewer onchain proposals than average, the community consistently turned out to help every proposal reach quorum. The Anthias Labs Snapshot in particular rapidly reached quorum. Community members are also surfacing new ideas and discussions in the forums, including Solana and BNB support, a bill pay feature, supporting the USDC OP Vault, and listing Mamo.
Moonwell’s social channels trended in similar patterns seen in previous months: the governance X account had the largest growth - 5.08% month-over-month growth is among the highest rates that we’ve seen recently. The main X account, Discord, and chat Telegram experienced moderate growth, while the announcements Telegram experienced slightly negative growth.
Closing Summary
May 2025 was a lighter month in terms of net governance activity, but the trends largely remain the same: a focus on new Core Markets, increasing or strengthening partnerships, and social channels growing at rates we’ve come to expect.
Look for the next Monthly Governance Call on X on the last Thursday of each month. The next call will be on June 26th at 17:00 UTC.