Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is very popular in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications as it provides a decentralized governance solution through blockchain. We analyze the governance characteristics in the Maker protocol, its stablecoin DAI and governance token Maker (MKR). To achieve that, we establish several measurements of centralized governance. Our empirical analysis investigates the effect of centralized governance over a series of factors related to MKR and DAI, such as financial, transaction, network and twitter sentiment indicators. Our results show that governance centralization influences both the Maker protocol, and the distribution of voting power matters. The main implication of this study is that centralized governance in MakerDAO very much exists, while DeFi investors face a trade-off between decentralization and performance of a DeFi protocol. This further contributes to the contemporary debate on whether DeFi can be truly decentralized. centralized governance in MakerDAO very much exists, while DeFi investors face a trade-off between efficiency and decentralization. This further contributes to the contemporary debate on whether DeFi can be truly decentralized.

翻译：去中心化自治组织（DAO）在去中心化金融（DeFi）应用中非常流行，因为它通过区块链提供了一种去中心化的治理解决方案。我们分析了Maker协议、其稳定币DAI以及治理代币Maker（MKR）中的治理特征。为此，我们建立了若干衡量中心化治理的指标。我们的实证分析研究了中心化治理对一系列与MKR和DAI相关的因素（如金融、交易、网络和推特情绪指标）的影响。结果表明，治理中心化对Maker协议及其投票权分布均有显著影响。本研究的主要含义是，MakerDAO中确实存在中心化治理，而DeFi投资者面临去中心化与协议性能之间的权衡。这进一步促进了关于DeFi能否真正实现去中心化的当代辩论。MakerDAO中确实存在中心化治理，而DeFi投资者面临效率与去中心化之间的权衡。这进一步促进了关于DeFi能否真正实现去中心化的当代辩论。