foreign
[Music]
I'm the head of sales of chain security
and this is estadio the core unit
facilitator of makerdale Data Insights
he should find the shorter job title so
um today I'm going to be talking we're
gonna be talking about uh statistics on
maker Dao vote delegation
um and you might be wondering why me
from chain Securities and not from
makerdale why am I talking about this
um so chain security we're a smart
contract Auditors and we work with many
large D5 protocols including maker Dao
with whom we've had a very close
partnership for quite some time and as
head of sales of chain security I've had
more and more to you know deal with
dials and kind of go through a process
that almost looks like an RFP you know
like a public tender to sell something
to a state
um and I was kind of wondering
um what exactly is the difference you
know when you talk to some people and it
seems like a decision is made and then
oh yeah it's the Dao but sometimes it
doesn't feel that different so I was
kind of wondering okay how exactly uh is
the community represented in those
doubts
um and uh two look at that helped me a
lot
um because we looked at vote delegation
in maker so that was introduced uh in
the summer of 2021 and uh so what I
wanted to do was to look okay since it's
been introduced what has changed what
were the effects of uh voting delegation
so just you know kind of some data to to
kind of put things in perspective
um holders of maker tokens vote one
maker token equals one vote so and there
are approximately one million maker
tokens in circulation and that has been
the same in 2021 and 2022 so the whole
period studied let's say it's
approximately one million maker in
circulation
all right so you can vote as a maker
token holder but the problem is that
voting takes time and money hence the
introduction of Delegation basically
allowing maker token holders to entrust
someone a third party with their voting
power so
um meaning it's kind of like a
politician in the end you know that you
trust with your vote you vote for them
and then they can take decisions for you
and they're going to be involved in this
process you know of reading on the
potential decisions the potential
changes that are going to be implemented
um one thing that is kind of interesting
is that as opposed to a politician where
you have a fixed term four years or
whatever here you can undelegate at any
point so if at some point the so you as
a delegator you delegate your tokens but
you can undelegate at any point so
basically firing them you know if you
want
um and so there are two types of
delegates you have the shadow delegates
so it's permissionless is as if I was
saying all right I know you know
everything you know about maker I trust
you to take decisions for me and it's
kind of just peer-to-peer between him
and me but they are also recognized
delegates which are monitored uh by the
governance core units
um and there we can see some information
about them and so this is an example of
the two biggest uh delegates in maker
Dao so here you can see you know how
much they participate in votes how much
they communicate on the forums you can
see how much uh you know how many tokens
are delegated to them and so on so there
is kind of this transparency and this
this oversight from an authority that is
the the governance core unit
um okay so now that we know what it is
let's look at you know kind of How It's
impacted uh the community and the
governance
here we can see so this is from a
beginning of the month um we can see
that there were uh uh took 115 delegates
and among these 23 are recognized
delegates and what's very interesting I
find is that almost 15 percent of
Homemaker tokens are delegated so we can
see that you know it has really had
traction it's not something that is just
a small and on the side
but now it's interesting in these 15
what does it look like you know who
delegates to who and this is something
that we can see thanks to the amazing
work of the data Career Unit
um so here you can see on the left this
is the largest delegator and you can see
on the right who he delegated to why do
I say he because probably it's ruined
the founder right
um and you can see here really who he
delegated to
um and what's very interesting is that
he delegated to people that he knows and
publicly supports but he also delegated
to people that he publicly disagrees
with he also delegated to University
clubs you know blockchain University
clubs and so that's kind of one of the
big points that I want to make in this
presentation
um sometimes we think that the idea of
Delegation is that small token holders
can kind of you know get together and
become more powerful and so on but
actually one thing that we see most is
that it's the opposite it's huge you
know it's whales who decentralize a bit
of their power and so we can see
um these are also like the other five or
these are also kind of big uh big token
holders it's like in Dresden Horowitz
and and other kind of whales and then we
have not even 8K not even 8 000 maker
tokens delegated from all the rests
um so you can see that you know this is
a much smaller right amount and so all
the rest delegates to all these uh all
these delegates
so now that we know kind of the
structure of Delegation we can look at
Q2 2021 so which is the quarter right
before delegation was introduced in the
summer so like in July August uh 2021 it
was introduced
um and then we compare it here with Q2
2022 so one year later
um and what is really interesting to me
um is that you have in terms of the
median poll participation in terms of
the number of maker tokens you can see
that there's an increase of 540 percent
so what does that mean there are way
more maker tokens which are put in on
average you know in every vote so that
means it is way harder to commit to
governance attack you know so if you
want to I don't know do something kind
of shady with the protocol to borrow
tokens and kind of have this voting
power to do something uh nefarious well
it's much more difficult when there are
92 000 maker tokens then when there are
14 in a vote
so that's kind of the the very
interesting takeaway there so takeaways
um whales delegate their mkr as a way to
decentralize themselves and we see again
like I said before a very significant
increase in the number of maker tokens
uh that are um used in votes
um and so now some questions that you
know I don't have time because it's a
very short presentation
um you know I I think it's interesting
to think about okay what is the optimal
level of oversight you know on these
delegates um so the you know the core
unit that takes care of governance how
much should they monitor them and and
and you know kind of have this uh
relationship
um also uh looking at the compensation
of delegates it's kind of interesting if
you have
um ten thousand to maker delegated to
you so that's approximately uh you know
almost nine million dollars you have a
yearly salary of a hundred twenty
thousand US Dollars approximately so
that's a salary that you can live on
um and so that's that's a cap so is this
an appropriate compensation this is also
I think a very interesting question
um another thing so now we incentivize
delegates right but should we maybe
incentivize voters should we incentive
device delegators maybe this would make
sense there is also something that we've
seen is that some whales delegate to
themselves and it's kind of funny to
think you know that you're gonna get
paid to delegate to yourself but as we
discussed
um it's also some work that you know you
do even if it's for yourself if you
publish on the Forum if you do all this
research maybe this is also you know
something that you should be compensated
for even if it's your own tokens and
finally talking about whales
decentralizing themselves should we
maybe lock you know those tokens in a
delegation contract for a longer period
of time so that you know you cannot say
oh I'm decentralizing myself but the
second you do not exactly what I want
you to do I take my tokens back so maybe
it could be interesting to create this
type of this type of options
um so I just want to say a quick thanks
to those who helped me
um I focused here on maker but I also
want to say thanks to the compound team
to the pull together team and to reverie
for helping me prepare this presentation
and of course uh to tadeo who helped me
and have provided all the data thank you
sorry
you said there was uh
you know 24 official delegates and 92
unofficial delegates or something like
that
how do the 92 become an official
delegate I guess that's the 128k
compensation right
um so in terms of the onboarding to
become a recognized delegate right now
we're trying to keep it as easy as
possible and this is have a great work
from kawalfa and the governance teams
it's yeah you have to have a call uh you
have to present a platform uh present
yourself and basically you have a Public
Image again it can be a Anonymous person
that's totally okay on our side but you
basically need to have an open dialogue
with the community uh something that was
shown in the one of the first
screenshots coming from our voting
portal
um there we we actually the compositions
is
um is managed by the performance the
performance is uh basically easy
delegate voting on all the polls and all
the executives and are they giving a
reasoning for those votes