On November 6th, for the first time ever, 100 million DAI (or SAI) were in circulation. This was the ceiling for outstanding DAI and Maker had to respond by initiating a vote to raise the capacity.
Within a day, around 59,000 Maker tokens were in favor for raising the ceiling, totaling to about $37 million in voting power.
Maker themselves warned of potential consequences of hitting the debt ceiling.
“This is not an immediate threat to the stability of the system. However, if the ceiling is not lifted it may cause a supply and demand imbalance of Dai by allowing demand to outpace the limited supply.” - MakerDAO
It is an easy enough update to implement, but with only 10 days remaining until DAI holders will be required to switch to MCD, it might not have been necessary.
A few weeks ago, interests rates were lowered by one very powerful Maker holder who moved 41,000 DAI. This time around the largest whale consisted of 35% of the vote. Even with a vote as important as this, there still seems to be a lack of participation as the same voter who changed the interest rates could have had a monopoly in this decision as well.