TRON DAO Reserve, which purports to govern the so-called reserves for the so-called decentralized stablecoin USDD, has no decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
Historically, there has been a governance portal that has allowed users to vote on USDD changes, but strangely, it has only been used once in the several-year-long history of the protocol. The page for those votes has since been taken down.
Although this governance ability seems to have been removed, the documentation for USDD still openly claims that “the governance framework of the USDD ecosystem is designed to be community-driven and decentralized.”
It goes even further, claiming that “governance empowers stakeholders to make critical decisions regarding the protocol’s future.”
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Elsewhere on the USDD website, the project claims that “USDD is governed by a decentralized community where users actively participate in the protocol’s decision-making process.” On the front page, it also proclaims that it has “Decentralized Governance” and insists that it is “constantly evolving through community proposals and voting.”
However, historically, USDD has not been governed by a decentralized community. The launch of USDD 2.0 was decided without the input of the community. The removal of bitcoin from the collateral for USDD and the elimination of the governance portal for USDD were decided without community input.
Only one vote has ever been held, and that vote was to authorize “burned” funds to be used by the project. This suggests that besides not understanding what a DAO is, the project doesn’t understand what “burned” means.
It’s not clear why USDD is misrepresenting TRON DAO Reserve as a DAO and falsely claiming decentralized governance.
Protos reached out to USDD’s X account and email for clarification on these apparent discrepancies in the description of governance but it did not immediately respond.
