- Compound Finance has allegedly develop into the sufferer of a governance assault.
- The alleged assault has sparked scrutiny of the governance fashions of DAOs.
- Some argue that Compound’s issues transcend a defective governance mannequin.
For all their promise to create extra clear and community-driven organizations, DAOs face important governance hurdles. In maybe the most recent occasion highlighting these challenges, a whale has prevailed in opposition to neighborhood issues to cross a Compound Finance proposal to divert a considerable proportion of the protocol’s treasury to a little-known yield-bearing mission.
Third Time’s the Appeal? Questionable Compound Finance Proposal Passes
Compound Finance has allegedly develop into the sufferer of a governance assault. On Sunday, July 28, a proposal to allocate 5% of the protocol’s treasury, about 499,000 COMP value over $23.4 million on the time of writing, to a yield-bearing protocol referred to as goldCOMP run by a bunch referred to as Golden Boys handed with 682,191 votes to 633,636.
A number of neighborhood members have labeled the proposal’s passing as an assault because the entities behind the proposal had allegedly acquired about 325,333 COMP, solely 74,667 COMP lower than the 400,000 COMP governance quorum threshold, to govern the votes.
The supposed assault led by a whale recognized aptly as “Humpy” had begun over two months in the past and seen two failed makes an attempt to cross the proposal, with the preliminary effort approaching Could 6. This first proposal, nonetheless, had instantly raised purple flags.
Compound Finance DAO Safety Advisor Michael Lewellen had highlighted the suspicious COMP delegations previous the proposal, which sought to place a considerable quantity of the COMP treasury in a multi-sig pockets out of the DAO’s management whereas noting that it had not been put up for dialogue on neighborhood boards as is the same old follow. The ensuing backlash pressured Humpy to cancel the proposal days later.
Humpy will attempt once more with another proposal on July 15 after offering extra particulars concerning the multisig on GitHub. This second proposal, nonetheless, failed to succeed in the quorum.
With the latest passing of the proposal on the third try regardless of obvious purple flags, a number of questions have been requested of the governance mechanisms of DAOs, primarily as Humpy had employed an analogous tactic on Balancer two years prior.
The Results of a Defective Governance Mannequin?
As with many different DeFi protocols, Compound Finance DAO and Balancer DAO function a governance mannequin the place voting energy is decided by the variety of tokens a delegate holds. This technique is extensively adopted due to its simplicity and alignment with token utility. Nevertheless, as highlighted by the actions of Humpy, this mannequin is definitely exploited by customers with important capital.
Reacting to the alleged Compound Finance assault, Curve Founder Michael Egorov touted Curve’s vote escrow tokenomics, ve-tokenomics, which requires DAO voters to lock up tokens for 4 years in trade for voting energy, with a excessive quorum requirement as the higher method. Egorov asserted that the alleged Compound Finance assault couldn’t be replicated on Curve.
Nevertheless, not everybody agreed with Egorov’s view that the ve-tokenomics mannequin alone was the reply. As Progrmd Capital investor Sonya Kim highlighted, these with important capital nonetheless preserve an higher hand within the ve-tokenomics mannequin. Kim tipped adopting a twin governance system involving a trusted committee as a final line of protection and clearly outlined DAO roles as potential fixes for higher governance.
Amid these questions round Compound Finance DAO’s governance mechanism, nonetheless, some have prompt that the actual offender is apathy from the Compound Finance workforce and neighborhood members. Summing up this view, outstanding DeFi researcher Ignas wrote:
“Solely 57 addresses forged their votes for the goldCOMP proposal. The place was everybody else? It appears no person cares. Barely ~20 addresses sometimes take part in DAO votes.”
On the Flipside
- Humpy has maintained that his actions have been mischaracterized and don’t equate to theft.
- One other Compound delegate has submitted a proposal to implement a “timelock” to delay the execution of handed governance proposals by two days to permit the neighborhood to intervene if related incidents happen.
Why This Issues
DeFi protocols and the DAOs that handle them usually management hundreds of thousands and generally billions of {dollars} in funds. How these funds are managed instantly impacts the progress of those protocols and the fortune of their customers. The governance mechanism of most DAOs, nonetheless, leaves a lot to be desired.
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