The community made a show of "removing" the MakerDAO content team, but it's not that simple behind it

This article comes fromdecrypt, original author: Jeff Benson

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content overview

In 2021, MakerDAO transitioned to a decentralized governance model, which means that the Maker protocol is now fully governed by those who hold MKR tokens. Shortly after the transition, in December last year, MKR token holders launched a proposal to “fire” the MakerDAO content team, and the results were clear: the MKR community won.

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MakerDAO content team fired

MakerDAO is a smart contract system on Ethereum that provides the first decentralized stablecoin Dai (Ether USD) and derivative financial products. Dai is issued as a guarantee of full collateralization of assets on the chain, and maintains a 1:1 anchor with the U.S. dollar. Individuals and businesses can obtain hedging assets and liquidity without centralization risks by exchanging Dai or mortgage Dai.

In July 2021, MakerDAO made a historic decision that the agreement will no longer be governed by the Maker Foundation and guide funds, but will be handed over to all MKR token holders. At the time, Maker Foundation CEO Rune Christensen wrote in a blog post:

"MakerDAO is now fully decentralized."

Subsequently, Rune Christensen announced the dissolution of the foundation organization it founded.

In fact, during this period of time, the members of the MakerDAO organization very much hoped that the project could "take it to the next level", but it seemed that the effect was far from their expectations. So after a slightly controversial discussion this week, MakerDAO narrowly voted to “fire” their content team—the Content Production Core Unit, the so-called “content production core department.”

In December 2021, the MakerDAO community initiated a proposal, in which community member Deimos believed that the MakerDAO team neither quickly responded to market changes to produce content, nor provided high-quality work results. In addition, Deimos also suggested promoting the MakerDAO community meme to generate greater Influence, he explained:

“So far, the MakerDAO content team has produced a total of two humble original videos, one introducing Wormhole and another explaining how to vote. The others are basically remixed and remixed in different styles (7) Named governance and risk meeting content."

In the end, the MakerDAO community agreed to dismiss the content team with a vote of "49.1% in favor vs. 47.3% against", which means that the team will not receive financial support from the MakerDAO treasury in the future.

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Dissatisfied? But facts speak louder than words

Frankly speaking, before the closure of the Maker Foundation, the content team under the agreement did not provide much support to the project, nor did it have a large lead in the market. Seth Goldfarb, Head of the Maker Foundation Content Team, previously freelanced in the MakerDAO community for nearly a year before turning full-time in May 2021 as the "Content Production Core" coordinator.

For such a voting result, Seth Goldfarb seems to be slightly dissatisfied.

In fact, during the voting process, Seth Goldfarb stated that he was never employed by the Maker Foundation before turning full-time, explaining:

“We participated in several conference calls coordinated by former MakerDAO product manager and project lead Tim Black in an attempt to communicate with the Maker Foundation-owned MarComms team, but were unable to share anything substantive at all due to legal restrictions.”

It is reported that some people in the Maker Foundation pointed out that their original intention was to have the content team work with a marketing team composed of foundation veterans, but this wish did not materialize, resulting in a lot of work and burden on the content team.

Tim Black himself actually took some responsibility, but he believes that because the Maker Foundation wants to "decentralize" and promote decentralized governance, the so-called "content production core department" has been set up from the beginning. Indeed, while Tim Black's statement is a bit confusing, during the transition from the Maker Foundation to decentralized governance, some employees did remain in the MakerDAO project in new roles, while some community members joined the "full-time staff" " ranks.

On the other hand, Tim Black believes that MakerDAO's content department needs to work hard to increase its popularity, and he also urged community members to give more support to "a team that worked from the ground up." Tim Black said——

In the community, who dares to say that it has given actionable feedback to the content team?

In the community, who dares to say that they have seriously subscribed to the content released by the content team?

In the community, who dares to share the "crazy idea" of the content team?

Seth Goldfarb does not think he owes MakerDAO, "I am proud of the work the content team has done, and the way we have handled this situation," he said.

What assets can be used as collateral?

Should interest rates rise or fall?

But now, it’s all collectively decided by those who own the protocol’s MKR governance token.

MKR itself is an investment asset, and the Maker protocol buys and burns MKR tokens to add deflationary pressure.

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Is voting to dismiss the content team a community expression of displeasure with the project?

Although the performance of the MakerDAO content team is not satisfactory, we can see from the whole thing that running a DeFi protocol and related cryptocurrency is not as easy as it seems. On the other hand, the voting results of "49.1% in favor vs. 47.3% against" can also be seen that there is not much difference in the number of community members who are in favor of removing the MakerDAO content team and those who oppose the removal of the MakerDAO content team.

Many people believe that the results of this vote actually reflect that the community is very dissatisfied with the current status of the Maker protocol in the DeFi field.

In May 2021, the price of MKR soared above $6,000 and hit an all-time high. But now, according to data from CoinMarketCap, MKR has fallen into the $1,700 range, which represents a drop of up to 73%. In comparison, ETH is down just 27% over the same period. Although MKR's market value (less than $10 billion) is still the top five DeFi tokens, it has already been surpassed by other competitors (such as Terra's market value has risen to $24 billion).

The performance of the stablecoin DAI also seems to have displeased the community, and while DAI’s transaction volume is comparable to that of Terra’s decentralized stablecoin, it still lags behind other centralized stablecoin competitors such as USDC and BUSD — not to mention The "big boss" of stablecoins is Tether.