Title page 1

Contents 1

Abstract 2

Non-technical summary 3

1. Introduction 4

2. Governance and associated risks in the DeFi ecosystem 8

2.1. Key governance features of DeFi protocols and DAOs 8

2.2. DeFi governance benefits and vulnerabilities 12

2.3. Current debate on legal and regulatory coverage of DeFi protocols and DAOs 15

3. Methodology, data and summary statistics 18

3.1. Methodology and general data generation 18

3.2. Data and summary statistics 21

3.2.1. Choice of protocols and tokens 21

3.2.2. Data sources and detailed data extraction 22

4. Results 26

4.1. Top governance token holders 26

4.2. Governance proposals 29

4.3. Top voters on governance proposals 30

5. Discussion of the results 34

6. Conclusion 37

Annex 38

References 39

Acknowledgements 42

Tables 22

Table 1. TVL and main characteristics of the selected set of protocols (as of May 2023) 22

Table 2. Overview of total and selected proposals per protocol 25

Table 3. Distribution of governance tokens - Shares of top 100 token holders 26

Table 4. Top voters per protocol 31

Table 5. Voting statistics 32

Boxes 11

Box 1. Issuance and supply control of selected DAOs governance tokens 11

Box 2. SVB Collapse Sparked Stablecoin Turmoil: MakerDAO's Emergency Measures Amid USD Coin (USDC) Crisis 14

Box 3. Delegation and voting in Defi protocols studied 20

Charts 9

Chart 1. Crypto-assets deposited in DeFi protocols (TVL) and the market capitalisation of the top DeFi governance tokens 9

Chart 2. Share of Defi TVL by chain (as of May 2023) 19

Chart 3. Voting power of the top 100 token holders 27

Chart 4. Governance token holdings by DeFi protocols and centralised and decentralised trading platforms 28

Chart 5. Governance token holdings by centralised trading platforms (as a percentage of total supply) 29

Chart 6. Distribution of proposal categories 30

Chart 7. Share of top voters category 32

Annex Tables 38

Table A. Proposal categories 38