A version of this article appeared in our The decentralized newsletter on July 30. Sign up here.

General manager, Tim here.

Here’s what caught my attention recently in DeFi:

• Compound DAO reaches a truce with its attacker.
• Cardano starts its Chang hard fork.
• MakerDAO’s rebranding is just a few weeks away.

Compound lost attack

Compound DAO has reached a truce with the group of pirate-like DeFi players who seized control of $25 million worth of COMP tokens on Sunday.

The group, called the Goldenboys, used a DAO vote to award themselves 499,000 COMP tokens from the Compound DAO treasury.

After a tense 48-hour period, Humpy, a pseudonym for Goldenboys, returned the tokens.

In return, Bryan Colligan, Head of Growth at Compound Protocol, proposed sharing the fees with COMP token holders.

He described the plan in a post on the Compound Governance Forum.

“I totally agree with this message,” Humpy said in response.

Compound is run by a DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization.

This means that holders of the protocol’s COMP token govern the protocol by voting on proposed changes and on the use of The DAO’s $96 million treasury.

Many feared that if Compound had not struck a deal with the Goldenboys, the group would be able to use their management power to implement changes that benefited them at the expense of everyone else.

Compound manages user deposits worth $2.3 billion.

This is not the first time that Humpy has caused a stir within the DAO board.

In 2022, Humpy agreed to a so-called peace treaty with decentralized exchange Balancer after attempting to gain control of the protocol.

The Big Upgrade of Cardano

Cardano’s Chang hardfork has finally begun.

Stake pool operators on the network are upgrading their nodes to new software. The hard fork will occur once at least 70% of all operators have been upgraded.

At that point, Cardano will enter the so-called Voltaire era.

Voltaire will transfer some control over the Cardano blockchain to his community.

ADA token holders are granted governance rights and can propose and vote on changes to the blockchain.

Since its inception in 2017, Cardano’s development has been the responsibility of the Cardano Foundation, EMURGO, and Input Output Global.

EMURGO is the official commercial arm of Cardano and Input Output Global is Hoskinson’s blockchain development company.

So far, 38% of all operators are running the new software, according to data from Cardano staking dashboard PoolTool.

MakerDAO’s ‘Endgame’ is Near

Maker co-founder Rune Christensen’s ambitious and controversial Endgame plan is being rolled out in stages over the next few weeks.

Endgame was first unveiled in 2022 and will feature a complete rebranding, new tokens, new ways to earn yield, so-called subDAOs, and artificial intelligence.

It’s all to popularize Maker and its stablecoin.

Christensen said the goal is to increase the DAI supply to “100 billion and beyond” — just under the $114 billion of leading stablecoin Tether.

Investors seem to like the plan.

The MakerDAO governance token, MKR, has outperformed this year, rising over 60% while the value of the entire crypto ecosystem has increased by 34%.

Maker is a suite of protocols surrounding the DAI stablecoin.

Users can deposit volatile crypto assets like Ethereum into Maker and receive DAI in return.

Maker’s Spark protocol offers users 7% per annum on DAI deposits.

Data of the week

Coinbase protocol specialist Viktor Bunin breaks down the numbers for Ethereum versus Solana trading.

He found that trading on Solana is more capital efficient and allows for more trading volume per dollar on decentralized exchanges than on Ethereum.

But there is one caveat: a large portion of Solana trading volume involves fraudulent tokens.

This Week in DeFi Governance

VOTE: Stargate Will Add Sei Network to Its Crypto Bridge

PROPOSAL: Jupiter aggregator votes on 30% reduction of JUP token supply

VOTE: CoW DAO Extends Test Period for Revenue Model

Message of the week

Crypto Twitter reminds us that in a culture of anonymity, you’re never entirely sure who you’re talking to.

What we look at

Cryptobridge Wormhole will distribute over $170 million worth of W tokens on August 3.

This equates to 33% of the circulating supply.

Do you have a tip about DeFi? Contact us via [email protected].