ECB Study Raises Concerns About DeFi DAO Concentration

A new working paper from the European Central Bank (ECB) is sparking debate about the true level of decentralization in major decentralized finance (DeFi) DAOs.

The study analyzed four leading DeFi protocols – Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap – and discovered high concentration in governance. The top 100 token holders control more than 80% of the supply in each protocol, with Binance identified as the largest centralized holder across all four.

The authors found that voting power is largely concentrated among delegates who receive voting rights from smaller token holders. In some cases, these structures may represent disguised forms of concentration and governance risks that resemble those seen in traditional finance.