According to the proposal’s official forum page, MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization governing the Dai (DAI) stablecoin, has adopted a new proposed “constitution” designed to standardize the governance process and help prevent hostile actors from taking over the protocol. According to the text of the proposal, a constitution is needed because the Maker protocol "depends on the governance decisions of humans and institutions holding MKR tokens," which could "expose weaknesses and vulnerabilities that could lead to the failure of the Maker protocol or the loss of user funds." "
To avoid such failures, the Maker charter employs "alignment engineering" to "lock in the core commitments of the Maker community," the document says.
Governance documents create several classes of actors with different powers and responsibilities. For example, the Guardians of the Constitution (CCs) are tasked with "promoting and protecting the Maker governance process" by ensuring that other actors abide by the Constitution. A CC can be a Constitutional Voters Council Member (CVCM) or a Constitutional Delegate (CD).
CVCM develops position papers for voters to consider, and CDs run smart contracts that allow MKR holders to delegate their MKR without losing custody of the tokens. Each office has the power to remove the list of officers from the front end of the application if they believe the officer is unconstitutional. For example, a CD can ban a CVC from the front end if it is deemed to be deceiving the voters entrusted to it.
The Maker constitution proposal passed with 76.04% of the MKR vote. Less than a quarter (23.95%) of MKR voted against the proposal, with 0.01% abstaining.
Despite the yes vote, some Maker users publicly criticized the constitution as authoritarian. For example, anonymous Twitter user PaperImperium claimed that because of the restrictions it imposed on communications from constitutional representatives, it forced users to be “muted and prohibited from communicating about Maker with anyone in or around Maker.” Maker's charter is a step in the process of creating what Maker founder Rune Christensen calls the protocol's "endgame plan," which he believes will transform MakerDAO into a decentralized organization that keeps DAI stable as it potentially becomes. The world's reserve currency. A16z criticized Endgame for doing too much too quickly, and VCs backed changes to the protocol in a more piecemeal fashion.
DAI is an algorithmic stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. It temporarily lost its peg on March 11 due to the fallout from the U.S. banking panic, but restored it after MakerDAO passed emergency measures to limit users’ ability to mint DAI using U.S. dollar coin (USDC).
