Maker Governance Review: October 2020

November 4, 2020

The Maker Governance Review is a monthly recap of all Governance activity, from polling/voting history and Governance Cycle progress to new Governance-related blog posts. Each review is intended to keep the Maker community informed of Governance developments.

Top Governance News

Big October governance news includes the launch of the redesigned Maker Voting Portal, which features several upgrades intended to make voting easier than ever. The change should increase community participation and move the DAO closer to complete decentralization. 

Other top developments include:

October’s Governance Polls and Executive Votes

Governance Cycle Updates

Key Outcomes of the Sixth Governance Cycle

The Sixth Governance Cycle, which began on October 5 and ended on October 30, included a number of measures intended to increase the decentralization of MakerDAO’s collateral assets, structures, and processes, as well as provide new tools to help manage Dai’s soft peg to the US Dollar.

Maker Improvement Proposals (MIPs)

The October 2020 MIPs Executive Vote, which was published on Monday, October 26, passed the following day, and was executed on Wednesday, October 28. Five proposals and three subproposals were bundled in the vote:

MIPs

Notably, MIP14 defines a generic process for transferring Dai from the Maker Protocol to a target Ethereum address. This allows Maker governance to directly incentivize actions that benefit the Protocol.

Subproposals

MIPs In Progress

The nine proposals (including three subproposals) listed below are currently in the Request for Comments (RFC) phase. This means it is now time for the Maker community to provide feedback on each or request changes from the Proposal Authors. 

MIPs

Subproposals

There are also two new discussions at the pre-MIP stage:

Collateral Onboarding Community Greenlight Polls 

Community Greenlight Polls are Governance polls that are specific to gauging community sentiment for collateral onboarding. Specifically, Greenlight Polls allow MKR token holders to inform the Domain Teams (Risk, Smart Contracts, and Oracles) of their preferences for collateral types that have been proposed through Collateral Onboarding Applications. These polls run for a period of two weeks, starting the third week of the Governance Cycle. 

October’s Collateral Onboarding Community Polls ended on November 2, with the following results: 

Eleven collateral types were considered, eight of which were greenlit by the community, with another three deferred:

New Collateral Onboarding Prioritization Framework Released

Going forward, a new approach will be used to prioritize collateral types proposed to be added to the Protocol. The Collateral Onboarding Framework attempts to objectively compare proposed collateral types, enabling more informed and transparent discussions around onboarding. Decisions will be made based on the highest scores in the Collateral Framework spreadsheet and on other factors, such as domain team bandwidth. 

Additional resources:

What’s Ahead?

The seventh Governance Cycle began on November 2, signaling the start of the Formal Submission period for new MIPs, Subproposals, and Collateral Applications. The formal submission period ends today. Proposals will be approved or denied by Governance Facilitators on the weekly (Thursday) Governance call. If approved, proposals will then enter the Governance Cycle in week two of the November Cycle, when they are placed in the Inclusion Polls on November 9. 

Keep an eye out for the Weekly MIPs Update, typically posted in the Maker Forum on Sundays or Mondays. The update summarizes the most recent events in the world of MIPs, the previous week’s activity, what to expect from the current week, and what’s on the agenda for the next week. It also covers updates with respect to Governance polls and votes, collateral onboarding, and rate adjustments.

Resources

To stay current on Governance, risk, and community issues, bookmark the MakerDAO Public Events Calendar. Newcomers to Maker might want to review our series of posts on the MakerDAO Governance Risk Framework.

Also, remember to review the Maker Improvement Proposals category in the Maker Forum and visit the #mips rocket.chat channel to discuss topics related to MIPs, the Self-Sustaining MakerDAO Initiative, and long-run Governance. 

To learn more about the Governance activities that occur during the Monthly Governance Cycle, see MIP3 for a week-by-week breakdown. 

For the most current MIP-related activity, see the official MIPs GitHub page.

About Maker Improvement Proposals

MIPs support the organic growth that further expands MakerDAO’s self-sustainability by providing the Maker community and all stakeholders with a standard approach to proposing improvements, specifications, and process and state changes to the Maker Protocol and MakerDAO. 

November 4, 2020

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