‘End of an era?’ Mixed views as Maker rebrands to Sky

• Maker has rebranded to Sky with a dual stablecoin offering and new SKY governance tokens. 
• MKR has tanked double-digits after the rebrand; what’s next? 

Maker [MKR], founded in 2014 and one of the pioneers of lending in the DeFi space running on the Ethereum [ETH] chain, has rebranded to ‘Sky’ to boost usage.

Its native MKR token has been the governance token, while its decentralized stablecoin Dai [DAI] enhances Maker’s ecosystem as a medium of exchange. 

The two tokens have been widely used for about a decade. However, the rebrand comes with key upgrades, including a new stablecoin (USDS) and governance token (SKY). 

‘Existing DAI and MKR tokens will remain unchanged and holders will be able to exchange DAI tokens 1:1 for USDS, and one MKR token can be swapped for 28,000 SKY tokens. SKY and USDS will be available to trade on September 18th. What an interesting move on their part.’ 

Am ‘end of an era’ for Maker?

Reacting to the rebranding, Uniswap [UNI] founder Hayden Adams termed the move as an ‘end of an era.’ He said, 

‘End of an era. MKR and DAI were two of the very first tokens to get traction on Uniswap v1’

However, other market commentators saw the move as the ‘end of an era’ and death for Maker’s dominance. One commentator, Millie, said the move was Maker’s ‘descension to irrelevance.’

‘By the time any of it plays out DAI will have lost its entire moat and will be entirely replaced by much more reliable alternatives (even things like USDC are better in this case). The end of an era of dominance.’

For context, most contention has been linked to the new stablecoin USDS, designed with a freeze function like centralized stablecoins USDC and USDT. In short, USDS users can be censored. 

Another user claimed the rebranding was death for DAI. 

‘DAI is now migrating to USDS, a censorable stablecoin that goes against its original vision. RIP DAI, 2017-2024.’

However, Rune Christensen, Maker co-founder, clarified that upgrading from DAI to USDS will be optional and that only the latter has a freeze function. 

‘This is misleading, as Dai will continue to function just as before, and can still be used. Upgrading to USDS is optional, and it is only USDS that will have a freeze function. Dai is an immutable smart contract and cannot be altered.’

For context, Maker proposed this dual stablecoin approach in May to ensure mass adoption and regulatory compliance. However, the end goal was eventually to retire DAI after the mass adoption of USDS and ‘PureDai’. Part of the May update read,

‘Eventually, after multiple years, it is expected that Dai will be fully deprecated as all users and integrations migrate to either NewStable (USDS) or PureDai. The timeline for when this happens will depend on how quickly the ecosystem adopts NewStable (USDS) and PureDai’

MKR drops double-digits

Source: MKR/USDT, TradingView

After the rebrand on Wednesday, MKR tanked 12%, from $2.1k to $1.9k at the time of writing. The drop could also have been triggered by Bitcoin [BTC] losses.

However, it remains to be seen how MKR’s price will react to the rebrand in the short term.