Evolution of the DAO
The following recounts the tale of our DAO. From humble beginnings, QiDao has grown to be one of the oldest and most active DAOs. Dedicated community members, partner protocols, foundations, and team
Chapter 1: Establishing Governance Powers (2021)
Three years ago, specific governance powers were set for QI holders. These limited the power of the DAO over QiDao’s smart contracts and accrued tokens.
The aim of these powers was to decentralize the decision making of the protocol. To encourage distribution, 90% of QI tokens were reserved for community and partner distribution. This has allowed QiDao to form a DAO that is not controlled solely by an internal team, but by an engaged community.
Governance powers have bounds. Notably, the DAO cannot vote to manage or handle users assets. The protocol does not have control over user deposits. Since the formation of the protocol, no user has had their deposits into QiDao vaults stolen.
Below is a list of what DAO members can propose and vote on.
Approve collateral types
Fee distributions
Price oracle changes
Risk parameters (i.e. collateral ratio, liquidation bonus, etc.)
Change fee structures
Support for new systems
Qi community treasury decisions
For further documentation on QI see here: https://docs.mai.finance/tokenomics-1/qi-token
Chapter 2: Boosting Voting Power - QiPowah (2021)
Escrowed QI was established via QIP007 as a way for loyal community members to boost their governance power over the protocol. A few years later, this was upgraded to incorporate liquidity provisioning for QI on Balancer via Advanced voting escrowed QI, or aveQI.
Today, users that lock QI-ETH on Balancer Ethereum are able to boost their voting power over QiDao as well as their share of weekly fee distributions from the DAO. A user’s voting power and distribution share will be a function of how much QI-ETH they lock and for how long. A minimum of 28 days is needed for new locks, with a maximum of 4 years.
Chapter 3: QiDao Guardians (2023)
Modeled after the Aave Guardians standard, the QiDao Guardians are a group of community-selected individuals who take part in a 4/6 multisig that has certain roles as mandated by the QiDao community. Original DAO vote to activate the Guardians can be found here.
The QiDao Guardian multisig currently holds the authority to:
Protect QiDao Protocol against potential governance attacks.
Manage the minting and burning of MAI to handle debt ceilings for collateral vaults
Manage bridge diversification allocations for both MAI and QI.
Act as a failsafe emergency actor if necessary
Furthermore, Guardians are also expected to:
Engage actively in multisig operations by being alert, responsive, and swift in action when necessary.
Uphold the protocol's best interest, promptly disclosing any potential conflict of interests.
Current community Guardians
Marc Zeller (Aave Chan Initiative & Aave community)
Hamzah Khan (3poch Labs, ex-Polygon DeFi Lead)
Weso (Beefy Finance)
0xNacho (QiDao community)
Benjamin.lens (QiDao)
Pablo the Penguin (QiDao)
Chapter 4: Community Governance Page (2023)
A community Governance Page was introduced by QiDao members to organize discussions around proposals. Posting to this page is available to everyone. Filtering is done for proposals to limit spam, inflammatory language, and false information. While not a requirement for QI holder proposals, posting on the governance forum allows authors to gather feedback from DAO members that are active on Discord.
The governance page is an important tool in QiDao’s governance system to gauge support from other DAO members. Ultimately, only a DAO vote can ratify the DAO’s position on a matter.
Several external teams have used this governance page to communicate directly with our community. Recent proposals by other teams include Frax Finance, UMA Protocol, Meta Pool, and Messari. Community members have also approached the DAO with their own proposals, with three such proposals passing within the first 2 months of 2024.
To post a proposal on the Governance Page, see the links below.
Link to Governance Page: https://gov.mai.finance/
How-to guide for posting proposals: https://qidao.notion.site/Introducing-QiDao-s-Governance-Page-cf07d2aea12c48d88582cf3284c0a0c8
Chapter 5: Direct Governance Proposal Posting (2024)
The next step in QiDao’s decentralization journey involves the QiDao snapshot page. This page is where all proposals go to be decided upon by token lockers (aveQI). Since the start of the DAO, 231 proposals have been submitted for community approval. This ranks QiDao as one of the most active DAOs in crypto.
Historically, proposal drafts were first discussed on the Discord forum, where active community members would provide feedback and approve which proposals were voted on. This step was crucial in allowing community members without a significant amount of voting power the ability to have a say in proposals. It also helped established the culture of the community and its values. However, the final say has always been had by QI holders.
As QiDao established its culture and processes over the years, the next step was ushured in: opening the snapshot page for direct proposal posting. This evolution will allow any aveQI holder with enough voting power to post proposals.
Proposal details
The threshold to post proposals is 150,000 aveQI, roughly 2.5% of the total vote. This limit protects the DAO page from spam proposals and ensures the alignment of proposers to the DAO.
There is a voting delay of 24 hours for proposals to be assessed by voters, and a set period of 72 hours for voting. Quorum for proposals is 600,000 aveQI, approximately 10% of the total voting power.
Below is a step-by-step guide on posting proposals to the Snapshot page.
Press “New Proposal” on the top right
Fill out the proposal. Please use the proposal templates provided in the Governance Page. Please note that there is a separate General QIP Template and New Asset Template.
Post proposal
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