governance

According to on-chain researcher Spreek, the DeFi protocol Hifi Finance has encountered a DAO governance takeover. The attacker gained control through four last-minute votes funded by Tornado Cash, subsequently minting 25 million governance tokens and transferring users' staked assets, with a total value of approximately 1 million dollars, most of which were RWA tokens.

According to on-chain researcher Spreek, the DeFi lending protocol Hifi Finance is suspected of experiencing a DAO governance attack. An address funded by Tornado Cash cast 4 votes just before the governance vote was about to end, taking control of the protocol's governance.This address subsequently minted 25 million HIFI tokens and transferred all user collateral assets within the protocol, valued at approximately 1 million dollars, most of which were RWA tokens.

According to BlockSec monitoring, a suspicious transaction by X100 Global on Ethereum resulted in a loss of approximately 4.75 million USD, with the related attack stemming from a vulnerability in the governance mechanism design: the attacker used a flash loan to borrow funds to purchase X tokens, allocated the tokens to two controlled contracts, and then deposited them into the Freezer, thereby controlling 2 out of 3 senator seats in the same transaction, and subsequently immediately passed and executed a malicious treasury proposal.Specifically, the attacker first created and provided liquidity to the X-USDT trading pool on PancakeSwap V3, then used the obtained majority governance seats to approve the exchange of 400,000 X tokens into that trading pool, setting the minimum output amount to 0, ultimately receiving only about 35.68 USDT. Subsequently, the attacker withdrew liquidity, sold part of the recovered X tokens through the existing Uniswap V3 X-USDT trading pool, and repaid the flash loan.

JUST announced an upgrade to the buyback and destruction mechanism for JST. After completing the fifth round of buyback and destruction, the mechanism officially enters a new phase: governance will be unified by the JUST DAO, and a reserve fund of no less than 50 million USD will be established for risk mitigation, emergency redemptions, and liquidity support, to enhance the mechanism's risk resistance and execution stability.On the buyback side, it will shift to being executed based on the quarterly sustainable income of the JUST ecosystem, forming a normalized arrangement of long-term buybacks and regular destructions, making the scale of buybacks more closely tied to the actual income of the ecosystem.In addition, the remaining surplus funds above the reserve threshold, approximately 20.34 million USD, will be released in four phases starting from Q4 2026 to supplement the buyback, ensuring long-term deflation and stability of the mechanism. The complete announcement and implementation details can be found through official channels.

The privacy Layer 2 network Aztec, based on zero-knowledge proofs, announced that its V6 upgrade proposal has been approved, but the governance panel currently still shows that voting is open, with the execution date listed on the panel as October 26.According to disclosures, the upgrade will enhance the messaging speed between Ethereum and Aztec, and will provide 30 days of operational funding for the V5 version during the migration period.

The decentralized trading protocol of PancakeSwap, The Flip proposal, has entered the governance voting phase, accompanied by CAKE supply conditions. This proposal aims to allocate 88% of the trading fees from v3 and Infinity pools to liquidity providers, with the remaining 12% going to the protocol treasury, while the fee structure for v2 remains unchanged.In terms of token issuance, the proposal plans to reduce the daily CAKE issuance from 22,500 tokens to 7,000 tokens, a decrease of about 69%, equivalent to approximately 5.66 million newly minted tokens per year. The remaining 7,000 tokens per day will be allocated to an ecological growth fund named Pantry, which will be flexibly used by The Kitchen team for marketing, partnerships, and initial liquidity for new pools.If the vote passes, implementation will begin within two weeks after approval, lasting from November 2026 to the end of January 2027, completing in about three months and being announced chain by chain. This proposal is built upon the Tokenomics 3 framework passed in April 2025, aiming to reduce the supply by approximately 20% by 2030. PancakeSwap states that the supply has decreased by 11.5% over the past 18 months.

The NEAR ecosystem governance proposal HSP-029 has entered the voting stage, proposing to gradually reduce the maximum annual issuance rate of NEAR tokens from 2.5% to 1.6%. This proposal was put forward by SVRN CEO Sal Ternullo, planning to linearly decrease by approximately 3.75 basis points per epoch over 24 months, while maintaining a 90/10 allocation ratio between stakers and the treasury. After the vote passes, there will be a 90-day grace period before the reduction officially begins.The proposal's calculations indicate that this plan is expected to reduce the issuance of approximately 11.8 million NEAR tokens over two years, with a cumulative reduction of about 66.1 million tokens over six years, equivalent to a 4.36% decrease in supply compared to the current situation. The annualized staking yield will gradually decrease from the current 5.268% to 3.372%. The author points out that this move aims to reduce the degree of dilution for non-staking holders and responds to discussions regarding the protocol's discretion risk following the withdrawal of the previous Sovereign Fund proposal.This proposal must go through a dual process to take effect: after passing the House of Stake vote, validators must also independently adopt it through the standard protocol upgrade process. The proposal cites Solana's SGP-0002, which was passed in August 2026 with a staking weight approval of 67.001% for a similar issuance reduction, as a precedent. Currently, the NEAR network has a total of 406 active validators, with a staking rate of 42.71%.

The blockchain security research organization Asymmetric Research disclosed that there was a vulnerability in the governance program svmgov on the Solana chain: when validators did not participate in voting, independent votes submitted early by their delegators might not be counted in the final results. This vulnerability was reported to the Solana Foundation on July 10 and was fixed on the mainnet on August 3, ahead of the governance vote on August 24.Asymmetric Research estimated based on on-chain data that if the vulnerability had not been fixed, the approval rate of the SGP-0002 proposal, which aims to accelerate the decline of SOL inflation, could have dropped from the actual 67% to 66.65%, below the passing threshold of 66.67%. This vulnerability was fixed before the voting, and did not actually change the outcome of the proposal.

According to the summary from the Arbitrum Foundation governance forum, the Arbitrum DAO currently has 4 temperature check votes ending on October 22, involving the Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade adaptation, L1 governance recovery mechanism, treasury ETH transfer, and USDG strategic plan.Among them, the Entropy proposal suggests setting USDG as one of the core strategic plans of the Arbitrum DAO and additionally allocating 100 million ARB from the DAO treasury to the DRIP budget, while adjusting the project cycle and allowed uses. Furthermore, it is proposed to direct the net fees from AEP into ATMC and convert them into USDG to support the growth of USDG on Arbitrum.

Stan Kladko, co-founder of SKALE Labs, announced on X to the SKALE community that he has stepped down from his position as Chief Technology Officer and board member of SKALE Labs, which he co-founded in 2017, but he will continue to serve as a member of the SKALE Foundation board. He expressed the desire to clarify the actions he is requesting from the foundation and believes the community should be involved in the discussion.Stan Kladko stated: SKALE is a protocol that relies on a small team of engineers who are responsible for developing, debugging, and maintaining the network online over the long term. These individuals have the best understanding of the boundaries of what is technically feasible and infeasible, but currently, there are no builders on the foundation's board. He believes that a protocol foundation without builders involved will make decisions on matters such as the roadmap, funding, and network economics, but will lack the necessary people to implement those decisions. He mentioned that successful protocols, from Ethereum to Cosmos, always involve engineers in discussions about long-term direction.The proposal put forward by Stan Kladko is to expand the foundation's board by three seats, to be filled by individuals with a strong background in software and protocol engineering. He stated that this proposal has been formally submitted to the foundation, and updates will be shared as they can be disclosed. He called for those who agree that building SKALE should participate in governance, and validators, delegators, application teams, and token holders can publicly express their stance, stating that he will continue to build SKALE.

On-chain derivatives protocol Derive has released a new proposal in its governance forum, aiming to expand its business into the regulated derivatives market in the United States. Community members can review the proposal and participate in the discussion.Derive is an on-chain derivatives protocol aimed at professional traders, offering trading products such as options and perpetual contracts, and employs an off-chain matching and on-chain settlement architecture. The proposal is currently in the community discussion phase, and the specific regulatory path, partners, and timeline will be based on the content of the forum proposal.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted a call for more small-scale governance experiments at the federal level or the establishment of innovation sandboxes. He believes that putting every reform up for nationwide debate unnecessarily increases the costs of learning and trial and error, slowing down the process.Armstrong stated, "Competition is the best consumer protection mechanism in history, and the government is the only sector structurally exempt from competition." He suggested that within specific areas, such as 10 square miles of federal land, faster permitting approvals, relaxed regulations, or different rules should be trialed, and then the implementation results should be re-evaluated, allowing successful practices to be gradually promoted.

According to The Defiant, the decentralized exchange Astroport announced the end of token holder governance on the Neutron and Terra networks.Thereafter, the protocol will be operated by contributors through the DAO DAO organization. vxASTRO holders can still unlock their tokens through the normal process, while the emission of ASTRO tokens will be reduced to zero.

Polkadot officially announced that the stablecoin dotUSD has officially launched on the Polkadot network. This stablecoin does not have a single issuing company or controlling entity, but is managed by the DOT DAO through the OpenGov on-chain governance mechanism.Polkadot stated that the goal of dotUSD is to become a native stablecoin governed by the network itself, thereby reducing reliance on centralized issuing institutions.

On September 29, the Orca community released a token holder proposal to adjust the protocol fee distribution to 10% flowing into the xORCA pool, 10% allocated to the team's buyback account, and 80% for team operations. The proposal also plans to transfer approximately 14.2 million ORCA from the community treasury and about 70,000 SOL from the fee treasury to a team-controlled account, and to dissolve the council, shifting to pure token holder governance.The original distribution was 20% xORCA, 30% fee treasury, and 50% team, later adjusted to 40% / 10% / 50%. The team stated that they have negotiated the acquisition of a leading Solana DeFi protocol, which is expected to bring about a 50% increase in TVL. Voting requires 3 million yes votes, with a voting period of 5 days, and the council can veto with 4 votes. Risks include concentration of control and reduced xORCA yields, with the team committing to disclose buyback and strategic account deployment status every six months.

Billionaire Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund led a $5 million purchase of governance tokens ANVL for the DeFi collateral protocol Anvil, with participation from Pantera Capital, Theta Blockchain Ventures, Bullish, and Protoscale Capital. The specific terms and valuation of the transaction have not been disclosed. Anvil stated that the purchased tokens come from the project's existing treasury and are not newly issued.Anvil is based on Ethereum and aims to use digital assets as collateral for financial commitments such as payments and credit. Its development company, Anvil Research Labs, has simultaneously launched an SDK to help businesses and financial institutions integrate the protocol without the need to write blockchain code. Consensus, Bitcoin.com, and payment company Flexa have been listed as partners.Currently, the total supply of ANVL is 10 billion tokens, with a circulating supply of about 8 billion tokens. The Anvil network's TVL is approximately $14 million. Unlike traditional DeFi lending protocols, Anvil primarily provides guarantees for financial commitments through on-chain collateral assets rather than allowing users to borrow and pay interest.

Anvl protocol completes a $5 million governance token purchase, led by Founders Fund, with participation from institutions like Pantera Capital.The funds come from Anvil's existing treasury, not from newly issued tokens.

The decentralized lending protocol Compound is currently conducting a governance vote on Proposal 612. This proposal aims to extend the delay time for treasury operations from 2 days to 10 days and grants the governance mechanism the power to cancel treasury operations.According to The Defiant, a wallet associated with Humpy has cast 1.75 million COMP tokens in support of this proposal.

Aptos governance proposal #206 is currently voting, proposing to enable the ChunkyDKG V1 full mode and the encrypted_transactions feature. This mechanism will support encrypted transactions through distributed key generation, hiding their content before the transactions enter consensus ordering, and then collaboratively decrypting by validators, which helps reduce front-running and MEV risks.The proposal voting will end on October 6, and currently, the approval rate is close to 100%, but the voter turnout is only 2.69%, which has not yet reached the quorum requirement of 24.8%.