Voter Coalitions and democracy in Decentralized Finance: Evidence from MakerDAO

Abstract: Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) provides a decentralized governance solution through blockchain, where decision-making process relies on on-chain voting and follows majority rule. This paper focuses on MakerDAO, and we find three voter coalitions after applying clustering algorithm to voting history. The emergence of a dominant voter coalition is a signal of governance centralization in DAO, and voter coalitions have complicated influence on Maker protocol, which is governed by MakerDAO. This paper presents empirical evidence of multicoalition democracy in DAO and further contributes to the contemporary debate on whether decentralized governance is possible.