OAK — OnChain Attack Knowledge

Worked example · 2024-11

MakerDAO / Sky brand-retention poll — vote dominated by four entities — Ethereum — 2024-11

Loss
structural — no direct dollar extraction. The documented issue is governance concentration: in the November 2024 poll on whether to keep the Sky brand for the backend protocol, nearly 80% of the vote share favoured keeping it, and four entities (each with roughly 20% of the vote) accounted for almost all of that support, out of about 20 voting entities (The Block, 2024-11-07).
OAK Techniques observed
OAK-T16.004 (Snapshot / Off-chain Voting Exploitation — retained as filed, but the fit is weak: the sources describe a MakerDAO governance poll, not a Snapshot vote, and do not report any exploit, voter-eligibility dispute, or binding-vs-signal controversy; it is better read as a vote-concentration observation).
Attribution
unattributed — structural / governance-design-level. No attacker is involved.
Corrected 2026-10-11
Removed the unsupported claim that a Snapshot signal-vote was treated as binding for a multi-billion-dollar Endgame restructuring and the voter-eligibility dispute; the documented Nov 2024 event is a poll to keep the Sky brand that passed with ~80% and was dominated by four entities.
Key teaching point
A governance poll can show a lopsided result while resting on very few voters. In the Sky brand-retention poll, a handful of large holders delivered nearly all of the support, so the headline percentage said little about broad community consensus. Evaluators of DAO governance should report voter counts and top-holder shares alongside outcome percentages.

Summary

In September 2024 MakerDAO rebranded its backend protocol toward Sky. After community backlash, a poll in November 2024 asked whether to keep "the Sky brand as the backend protocol brand." The Block reported on 2024-11-07 (updated 2024-11-08) that nearly 80% of the vote share favoured keeping the brand, that roughly 20 entities voted, and that four entities each held about 20% of the vote and accounted for almost all the support; one large entity opposed. MakerDAO voted to maintain the rebrand. Founder Rune Christensen said the focus would be growing USDS adoption, and proposed making SKY deflationary; there were no plans to permanently deprecate DAI or MKR. The sources reviewed do not state whether the poll was binding.

Earlier versions of this file described a Snapshot signal-vote treated as binding for the multi-billion-dollar Endgame restructuring, with a voter-eligibility dispute. None of the sources reviewed support that framing, and it has been removed.

Timeline (UTC)

When Event OAK ref
2024-09 MakerDAO rebrand toward Sky voted through (context)
2024-11 Poll on keeping the Sky brand; ~80% in favour, ~20 voting entities, four entities supply nearly all support T16.004 (concentration; weak fit)
2024-11-07 The Block reports the vote concentration (disclosure)

What defenders observed

  • Concentration is visible on-chain. The four-entity dominance was reported from public voting data, so voter-count and top-holder metrics are cheap monitoring signals for any DAO poll.
  • Outcome percentage alone misleads. An ~80% result from about 20 voters, four of whom decide the outcome, is a governance-capture signal rather than evidence of consensus.

What this example tells contributors writing future Technique pages

  • Do not file ordinary governance polls as Snapshot exploitation without evidence of manipulation. This case documents concentration, not an attack.
  • Source the voting venue. Confirm whether a vote ran on Snapshot or on the protocol's own governance system before applying T16.004.

Public references

Discussion

This example is retained as a low-confidence T16.004 anchor: it shows vote concentration in a high-profile DAO poll, but it is not evidence of a Snapshot-specific exploit or a binding-status dispute.

Techniques demonstrated (1)