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:
- Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
- Voting Insights & Observations
- Community Strengths
- Opportunities
- Conclusion & Links
Proposals and Updates
Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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:
- Main X account: 36.2K Followers (+0.55%)
- Governance X account: 477 Followers (+15.50%)
- Discord: 6372 Members (+7.78%)
- Announcements Telegram: 719 Members (-1.9%)
- Chat Telegram: 5531 Members (+8.15%)
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.