Maker's Stability Fee Drops to 5.5% After Multi-Collateral Dai Announcement
According to the CEO of the Maker Foundation, Rune Christensen, Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) will launch on November 18. On October 28, Maker’s stability fee was reduced by a ‘whale’ with roughly 94% of the voting power.
Also Read: French Ministry of Education Publishes Bitcoin Resource Guide for Educators
Maker’s Multi-Collateral Dai Will Launch November 18
Decentralized finance project Makerdao is responsible for creating the cryptocurrency-backed stablecoin called dai. Initially, the project used ETH as a form of collateral in order to issue dai but the project revealed that in the future a variety of other digital assets could be used. Announced at the Devcon 5 conference in Osaka, MCD will bring new features like the dai savings rate (DSR) and a collateralized debt position (CDP) will be known as a “vault.” Collateral types first evaluated include coins like augur (REP), digixdao (DGD), golem (GNT), omisego (OMG), ether (ETH), and 0x (ZRX). This means that there will be two types of coins produced by the community: single collateral dai (what dai is today) will be called ‘sai,’ while MCD created coins will be called dai.
In March, news.Bitcoin.com took an in-depth look at the Ethereum-based Makerdao and dai stablecoin. The report explained that a CDP now known as a vault required 150% of the loan amount in dai that’s paid for with ETH. Moreover, there’s a stability fee (interest rate) that accrues during the life of dai loans. Since the project’s launch, the coin has maintained a fairly stable existence despite a few hiccups along the way. In mid-April, the Makerdao community voted multiple times to raise the stability fee because dai tokens were struggling to hold the $1 peg. The issues upset dai borrowers when the stability fee skyrocketed from 0.5% to 19.5%. The interest rate increases had also made dai’s price jump above the $1 peg and many exchanges saw dai sold for more than $1.05 per coin.
Natural Centralization?
On October 28, Daniel Onggunhao, a software engineer at Binance, revealed that the dai stability fee was reduced to 5.5%. “A single whale (with 97% of voting power) made the decision — Went from 2,489 votes a few hours ago, to 44,539 votes,” Onggunhao tweeted. “I say this normatively, as neither good nor bad. In a perfect world, it’d be great if we had a distributed voter pool for a move this big.” Onggunhao added:
The pragmatic reality is that as an early stage, hard-to-understand technology, decision making tends to naturally centralize.
A number of cryptocurrency community members discussed the whale vote after Onggunhao’s tweet. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) was quick to quip: “Welcome to ‘decentralization,’ where anything is possible, and not under anyone’s control, even some re-centralization.” Not everyone thought the ‘re-centralization’ concept was a good idea for Makerdao’s claimed ‘decentralized’ governance system. “Stake-based systems [Proof-of-Stake (PoS)] centralise much faster than alternatives because there’s no maintenance cost, and in the early stages, bulk stake acquisition is always going to be easier than buying hardware in any real quantity,” Monero’s Riccardo Spagni replied during the conversation.
One person disagreed with Onggunhao’s initial tweet and said that he didn’t think there was a “single ‘whale’ with 97% voting power.” “There could be a voter that represents 97% of this particular vote — This is still an issue, but it’s about governance not control.” Onggunhao agreed and further stressed:
That’s true, I apologize for dashing off the tweet. I also made an error in the amount (94.7% instead of 97%).
Collateralized Multi-Coin Options and a Fee Reduction Will Likely Add More Growth to the Makerdao System
The Makerdao project has been a favorite among the cryptocurrency community because the stablecoin dais are backed by digital currency and a decentralized autonomous organization. The stablecoin is not without its critics, and the Maker protocol is still a very young network. However, with added coins stemming from the MCD launch and Maker’s stability fee reduction, it’s likely the dai ecosystem will grow much larger. At present, roughly 2.2% of all the ETH in existence is locked into the Maker system.
What do you think about the Makerdao project’s latest MCD announcement and the recent vote to drop the stability fee? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Makerdao, Dai, Medium, Daniel Onggunhao, and Pixabay.
Do you need a reliable Bitcoin mobile wallet to send, receive, and store your coins? Download one for free from us and then head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can quickly buy Bitcoin with a credit card.
