Monthly Governance Reports

Announcements & Updates Updates
8

August 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 August 2024.

This update includes:

  1. Proposals, Updates, & Milestones
  2. Voting Insights & Observations
  3. Community Strengths
  4. Opportunities
  5. Conclusion & Links

Proposals and Updates

Moonwell’s primary governance initiatives for this period included:

  1. New LRT/LST markets: In late July, the forums saw increased activity from Liquid Staking Token (LST)/Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) providers looking to add markets for their LRTs to Moonwell. Kelp DAO sought to add a wrsETH market, Renzo sought to add an ezETH Market, and EtherFi sought to add a weETH Market; all proposals concerned Moonwell’s Base and/or Optimism deployments. In early August, Gauntlet gave their initial parameter recommendations for the proposed EtherFi weETH market before MIPs for Base and Optimism were successfully passed. In late August, the original poster of the wrsETH proposal created a revamped proposal to include Chainlink details, Optimism details, and other feedback. The proposal then moved to a Snapshot vote on August 28-31.
  2. Delegation Pitch In August, prospective Moonwell delegate @0xMims updated his delegation pitch. For anyone interested in delegating their voting power to another user like 0xMims, be sure to conduct due diligence, read up on their pitch, check their links, and consider delegating your tokens here.
  3. New Stablecoin Markets: In mid-August, 0xMims created a forum proposal to add a EURC market to Moonwell’s Base deployment. EURC is a euro-backed stablecoin developed by Circle, the issuer of USDC. He covered the benefits to the Moonwell community, social metrics, market risk, decentralization, smart contract risk, and more as per the proposal template. To read more about the details and to discuss the prop’s merits, visit the forum post above. On August 28th, the proposal progressed to a successful Snapshot vote.
  4. Risk Management and Parameter Adjustments: Gauntlet published four MIPs at the beginning of August to adjust asset risk parameters for Moonwell’s Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver deployments. Throughout the month, Gauntlet also published weekly updates to give an overview of asset utilization, liquidations, protocol growth, and more. In the first week of the month, the monthly automated reward speed proposals went up for an onchain vote. They aimed to rebalance liquidity incentives and maintain healthy levels of rewards on Base, Optimism, Moonbeam, and Moonriver. Warden Finance managed Aerodrome rewards in their final month of contributing to Moonwell. Notably, this month also included an ongoing updated risk profile on WBTC in response to speculations surrounding BitGo’s joint venture with BiTGlobal and unclear regulatory frameworks for the asset.

Major Milestones Achieved:

  • Exclusive Moonwell Merch: On the first day of the month, Moonwell announced that their branded Moonwel merch was available as a part of the “Onchain Summer” event from Coinbase. Onchain Summer is a celebration of onchain art, music, culture, gaming, and more; it lets users earn points from minting their favorite drops, redeem prizes, and buy merch onchain.
  • August Monthly Governance Participant Galxe campaign: The third and final iteration of the three-month Moonwell Governance Galxe campaign was published on the first of the month.
  • SuperFest Rewards: On August 7th, Phase 2 of SuperFest Rewards began for Morpho on Base. Users could deposit into the Moonwell Flagship ETH and USDC Vaults to earn OP rewards and optimized, risk-adjusted returns.
  • Borrowing and Rewards on Optimism Markets, Optimism Safety Module, and New Markets: In mid-August, rewards for Moonwell’s new Optimism deployment were enabled in a few different forms. OP and WELL rewards first went live across all Moonwell Core Markets on Optimism. Shortly after, it was announced that staking rewards were also enabled for the Safety Module on the Optimism deployment. On August 12th, borrowing on Moonwell Optimism Core Markets was enabled. Later that day, a market for VELO was activated on the deployment and markets for Ether.Fi’s weETH were activated on the Base and Optimism deployments. With the launch of the weETH markets, the Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) became the first token of its kind to be available on Moonwell.
  • WELL on Velodrome: In mid-August, the WELL token became available on Velodrome on Optimism. The asset launched with a VELO-incentivized WETH/WELL liquidity pool on the AMM.

Voting Insights and Observations

Summary of governance participation trends in August:

  • 16 onchain proposals
  • 2 Snapshot proposals
  • 19 forum posts

For the observed period, the number of active voters for onchain proposals averaged 98, with a minimum of 7 and a maximum of 220.

Proposal Onchain votes
MIP-M35 220
MIP-R22 7
MIP-B23 127
MIP-O02 157
MIP-B24 172
MIP-M36 177
MIP-O03 185
MIP-R23 15
MIP-O04 84
MIP-O05 82
MIP-B25 91
MIP-R24 9
MIP-O06 50
MIP-O07 58
MIP-B26 66
MIP-M37 65

This month, there were two Snapshot signal votes.

Proposal Offchain votes
[Temp Check] Add wrsETH Markets to Moonwell on Base and Optimism 21
[Temp Check] Add EURC on Base 33

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.

Success Insights:

  • Onchain: The onchain proposals in August witnessed a 100% success rate. Note: there was a single canceled proposal that was resubmitted this month; voter data from the original MIP-O04 was not included in this report.
  • Offchain: The offchain proposals in August witnessed a 50% success rate.

Browse all of the proposals here.

Community:

Community Strengths

This month, there was a significant increase in the number of novel, community-led discussions. Some topics that were first proposed or commented on this month included adding MFAM to Optimism, creating structural demand for the WELL token, upgrading the staking module, and integrating iBTC as an alternative to WBTC. Discussions like these, whether or not they progress to onchain votes, are integral to Moonwell. Watching other ecosystems and discussing new ideas help to create resiliency in Moonwell governance. Especially in choppy market conditions, this is a great opportunity to get involved with governance, share ideas, and give feedback to others. The community also consistently hit quorum despite August having the highest number of proposals out of any month since Boardroom began coverage of the ecosystem.

Opportunities

Last month, we mentioned that there was an opportunity to expand the delegate roster and shift focus toward long-term, sustainable growth of the governance participant body. Over the course of September and October, Boardroom plans on proposing a structured delegate onboarding pipeline, a community-centric onboarding pipeline, and a clarified Foundation Grants request process. With these new resources and templates in place, our goal is to increase the number of active delegates in Moonwell governance through the rest of Q3 and Q4 2024. Broadly, our focus this quarter is to establish stronger foundations on the operational side of governance to help facilitate easier growth in the future.

Conclusion

The August 2024 report highlights an increase in the number of new market proposals, technical progress on the Optimism deployment, a high amount of onchain/offchain proposals, and an uptick in the number of community-led forum discussions. Voter turnout has remained elevated above the baseline compared to previous months. Social metrics continue to rise across the board; the Discord and the Announcements Telegram saw the largest relative increases in members this month.

Be sure to attend the upcoming governance community call on Thursday, September 5th at 17:00 UTC in Discord. Add it to your calendar here.

Links

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