MakerDAO poll backed a four-point Dai fee increase as peg pressure persisted

MakerDAO’s governance poll closed on March 21, 2019 with MKR-weighted voters favoring the largest proposed increase in the Dai Stability Fee: four percentage points, which would raise the annualized charge from 3.5% to 7.5%. The result was a policy signal, not an implemented parameter change. A separate executive vote scheduled for March 22 was required before the higher fee could take effect in the Ethereum-based system.

The distinction mattered. Maker governance was attempting to correct persistent pressure on Dai’s intended $1 exchange-rate target, but the March 21 poll did not guarantee either implementation or a restored peg. It showed that participating MKR holders were prepared to impose a substantially higher cost on users carrying Dai debt after smaller increases had not produced what Maker’s contemporaneous governance materials considered a sufficient response.

What the poll decided

The poll opened on March 18 and presented three choices: leave the Stability Fee at 3.5%, raise it by two percentage points to 5.5%, or raise it by four percentage points to 7.5%. The maximum increase prevailed when voting concluded on March 21.

In Maker’s Single-Collateral Dai design, users created Dai against locked ether through collateralized debt positions. The Stability Fee was an annualized protocol charge associated with that debt. Raising it was intended to make outstanding positions more expensive to maintain and encourage repayment, which would remove Dai from circulation. Governance participants expected that contracting supply could help when Dai traded below its $1 target.

That mechanism was an economic hypothesis rather than a guaranteed market outcome. Dai traded across multiple venues without a single official closing price, and the surviving poll coverage does not provide a consistent venue, timestamp or calculation window from which Coinburn can reconstruct an independent event-day price series. This archive therefore does not repeat a precise Dai price or claim that the poll caused an immediate market move.

Why the vote mattered

The result offered an early, visible test of token-weighted monetary governance. Instead of a company changing a product price through an internal decision, holders of Maker’s governance token were signaling how an Ethereum protocol should alter a parameter affecting borrowers and the supply incentives around a dollar-targeted cryptoasset.

It also exposed the limits of describing such systems as fully automatic. Smart contracts enforced the parameter once an authorized change passed, but people still assessed market conditions, proposed alternatives and voted with unequal token balances. The March 21 result therefore demonstrated both programmable execution and the continuing importance of governance participation, concentration and incentives.

For borrowers, moving from 3.5% to 7.5% represented a four-percentage-point increase and an approximately 114% increase relative to the existing annualized rate. That second figure is a calculation—4 divided by 3.5—not a quoted MakerDAO statistic. Actual costs depended on each position’s debt and duration.

What remained unresolved

The governance poll established the preferred direction; it did not modify the Stability Fee by itself. As of March 21, the executive stage remained outstanding, and its result should be treated as a separate dated event. Nor did the poll prove that a 7.5% fee would restore Dai to its target, reduce supply by a particular amount or remain in place for a defined period.

The central record is consequently narrow but significant: on March 21, 2019, MakerDAO voters selected the maximum proposed response to contemporaneously reported peg pressure. The next verification point was the scheduled March 22 executive vote and the resulting on-chain parameter state—not later market performance projected backward onto the poll.