August 2025 Update
Key Insights
- Updates to the DAO’s operations. Kicking off governance activities for the month, 0xMims created a forum proposal to update the Code of Conduct and require transparent conflict of interest (COI) disclosures for all voting delegates.
- Remediation through the governance process. After the Base Safety Module experienced a minor bug that led to a small number of users claiming excess rewards, Moonwell contributors proposed making affected users whole for the rewards they were owed before the bug was triggered.
- Risk Updates. Throughout the month, Anthias published weekly updates and monthly risk parameter adjustments.
- High voter turnout. Moonwell’s onchain voter turnout broke records not once, but twice during the month of August.
Primer
The monthly governance recap serves as a compendium of key governance updates for the preceding month. This update covers Moonwell governance activities for August 2025.
August had simultaneously fewer total proposals than average and extremely high voter turnout. The proposals this month were also relatively high-impact.
Key Metrics
- Three onchain proposals
- Zero Snapshot proposal
- 24 forum posts
The number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 719, with a minimum of 565 and a maximum of 902.
This month, there were no Snapshot signal votes.
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 August had a 100% success rate.
- Offchain: N/A.
Browse all of the proposals here.
Other Governance Metrics
| Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Voters | 6,918 (+5.49%) |
| Top-5 Wallets Voting Power | 45% (-11%) |
| Top-100 Wallets Voting Power | 67% (-14%) |
| Top-200 Wallets Voting Power | 70% (-12%) |
| Delegate Quorum Gauge* | 20 (+566%) |
| Nakamoto Coefficient** | 8 (+60%) |
| 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 | 13.63% (+6.83%) |
| Top-1000 Delegates Inactive*** | 49.48% (+24.29%) |
| Top-1000 Delegates Ghost**** | 36.49% (-31.51%) |
*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
Proposals in August broke through previous all-time highs in terms of onchain voter turnout. First, at 691 votes, MIP-X28 broke the previous all-time high by 11.45% (MIP-X08 in December 2024 gathered 620 votes). Notably, this was a routine automated liquidity incentive proposal. It was also the first proposal of the month, which aligns with a pattern that we’ve seen after MIP-X05 added a voting requirement to claim rewards: the first proposal of the month usually saw a large influx of voters. However, the subsequent proposal went on to break that new record by a further 30.54%. MIP-X29 gathered 902 votes. This anomaly is highlighted by the fact that MIP-X29 was also a routine proposal (Anthias Labs Monthly Recommendations for the month of August).
Main Governance Initiatives in August
Code of Conduct & DAO Operations Updates
On the final day of July, 0xMims created a forum post outlining an upcoming proposal seeking to update two aspects of the DAO’s operations: (1) adding enforceable punitive measures to the Code of Conduct; and (2) requiring transparent conflict of interest (COI) disclosures for all voting delegates. The proposal is expected to be edited and put up for a Snapshot vote shortly.
Governance-Initiated Remediation
In August, the Base Safety Module experienced a minor bug that led to a small number of users claiming MIP-X28’s full reward budget, resulting in an estimated loss of ~$285K in WELL. In a forum post, Moonwell contributors propose making affected users whole for the rewards they were owed before the bug was triggered. A snapshot, verification data, and the list of addresses that claimed excessive rewards will be published before setting up the claim process. Next steps included getting DAO approval for a WELL grant from the Moonwell Foundation (Snapshot & onchain vote), streaming rewards to affected users via Sablier or Angle Protocol, with claim costs covered by the DAO, and continued work with Halborn to ensure this issue cannot reoccur. MIP-B45: Remediation of Base Safety Module Rewards (Phase 1) was the first of two proposals to be submitted. It sought to reimburse stkWELL stakers on Base who lost rewards by creating a Merkl airdrop campaign to fully refund affected users for their pre-bug rewards (via Angle Protocol, see more here), setting Base Safety Module emissions to zero going forward, and transitioning reward distribution to Merkl claims. A future governance proposal will address post-bug rewards using a time-weighted distribution.
Risk, Reward Speeds, and Vaults
Throughout the month, Anthias published weekly updates to report on week-over-week changes in borrows, supplies, utilization, liquidations, and more. In early August, Anthias published a forum post to adjust risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base and Optimism Mainnet deployments. The onchain proposal was created on August 11th, which proceeded to pass its governance vote.
Delegate Digest
Super Delegates
| Delegate | Delegation Pitch | Delegation Page | Delegated Amount | Proposals Created | Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolhorsegirl | Link | Link | 17K WELL | 20 | Yes |
| PGov | Link | Link | 1M WELL | 1 | Yes |
Mid-Tier Delegates
| Delegate | Delegation Pitch | Delegation Page | Delegated Amount | Proposals Created | Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jor-el | Link | Link | 200K WELL | 0 | Yes |
| Kimchiblock | Link | Link | 437K WELL | 0 | Yes |
| DAOplomats | Link | Link | 233 WELL | 0 | Yes |
| Maylosan | Link | Link | 46.8K WELL | 0 | Yes |
| FranklinDAO | Link | Link | 214 WELL | 0 | Yes |
Junior Delegates
| Delegate | Delegation Pitch | Delegation Page | Delegated Amount | Proposals Created | Completed their role’s minimum requirements this month? |
|---|
Delegate Voting Rate
| Delegate | Number of Proposals Voted On | This Month’s Voting Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Coolhorsegirl | 1/3 | 33% |
| PGov | 2/3 | 66% |
| Jor-El | 1/3 | 33% |
| Kimchiblock | 2/3 | 66% |
| DAOplomats | 3/3 | 100% |
| Maylosan | 0/3 | 0% |
| FranklinDAO | 0/3 | 0% |
You can read more about the requirements to join each delegate tier and each tier’s contribution minimums here.
Boardroom’s monthly delegation initiative update for August can be found here.
View August’s Delegate Tracker here.
Delegate Highlights
- PGov and DAOplomats both updated their delegate pitches with rationales for their voting behavior.
Community Overview
| Social Channel | Data |
|---|---|
| Main X account | 55.1K Followers (+0.55%) |
| Governance X account | 1228 Followers (+5.32%) |
| Discord | 11,148 Members (+1.72%) |
| Announcements Telegram | 683 Members (+2.4%) |
| Chat Telegram | 7,659 Members (+1.23%) |
Community Trends
Moonwell’s social channels grew across the board. In previous months, we usually saw the largest positive growth for the governance X account, moderate growth on the main X account and Discord, and a slight reduction in the Telegram channels. August marks a unique month where every social channel had positive membership growth, but the same relative growth trends continue.
Closing Summary
At three onchain proposals and no Snapshot proposals, formal governance activity this month was relatively muted. However, we’ve had multiple new delegate pitches on the forums, including Chidi and Jor-El. At the same time, the community and core contributors demonstrated quick response times with MIP-B45’s remediation process to recover from a minor bug, and per-proposal voter turnout reached all-time-highs twice this month.
Look for the next Monthly Governance Call on X on the last Thursday of each month. The next call will be on September 25th at 17:00 UTC.