The institution underneath
MakerDAO is DeFi’s longest-running credit machine: it issues an overcollateralized stablecoin, charges borrowers for the privilege, and — distinctively — deployed reserves into real-world Treasury exposure, giving the protocol genuine, external revenue few tokens can claim. The token (formerly MKR) backstops the system and captures fees through buybacks — a real job-description token, senior in every sense.
The rebrand as a structural event
The 2024 rename — Maker to Sky, MKR to SKY at a redenominated ratio, DAI joined by USDS — swapped a decade of brand equity for a fresh start aimed at scale. Redenomination changes nothing economically and everything psychologically: price memory, unit bias and recognition all reset, an unusually pure experiment in whether a ticker itself carries value.
Endgame complexity as a risk class
Sky’s multi-phase “Endgame” roadmap — subDAOs, new tokens, staged migrations — makes the protocol’s own architecture its event tape, like SNX’s perpetual redesigns at larger scale. Each phase is a repricing; complexity itself is the bear case.
Reading it
Stablecoin supply and reserve revenue are the fundamentals; roadmap phases the event tape; funding the crowd. Judge it as a bank that keeps renovating its own lobby: the deposits matter more than the sign.