Vitalik Sells MKR after MakerDAO Eyes Solana's Codebase

Diego Almada Lopez

Sep. 4, 2023

MakerDAO’s founder says Solana is “the most promising codebase” for its upcoming chain.

Vitalik Sells MKR after MakerDAO Eyes Solana's Codebase

Key Takeaways

Vitalik Buterin sold his MKR tokens following MakerDAO's interest in Solana's codebase for NewChain.
MakerDAO's NewChain aims to support higher transaction volumes and diversify beyond the DAI stablecoin.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, sold all of his MKR tokens for approximately $580,000 in ETH. The sale came shortly after MakerDAO’s co-founder Rune Christensen suggested using Solana’s codebase for their upcoming standalone chain, NewChain.

The proposed NewChain project would be able to handle a much larger volume of transactions than the current MakerDAO system. This new blockchain would enable MakerDAO to expand its offerings beyond its current stablecoin, DAI.

After holding the tokens for two years, Buterin’s decision to sell suggests a loss of confidence in MakerDAO.

“MakerDAO is torpedoing itself in weird directions,” wrote Buterin.

Christensen explained his reasons for considering alternatives to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM):

“EVM is still the most important when it comes to building stuff for users, since that’s where the users are. But for a specialized backend for Maker’s specific needs it is not ideal, and solutions like Solana or something like Sei are a much better fit.”

Additionally, Christensen said that Solana or Sei are a better fit because they are “a lot more efficient, meaning you can get cheaper transactions with the same hardware”

Apart from championing Solana, Christensen highlighted Cosmos due to its vast talent pool and track record of successful appchains using its stack. According to Christensen, unlike Solana, Cosmos isn’t designed for efficiency, which might result in higher maintenance and performance costs.

Once a leader in the decentralized finance movement, MakerDAO now appears to be moving away from its foundational belief in decentralization. Over 95% of all MKR tokens are concentrated in the hands of the top 1% of addresses, according to Glassnode data.

Additionally, Solana, which Christensen indicated as “the most promising codebase”, is marketed as decentralized but is exclusively developed by Solana Labs and had five outages in 2022.

Over the past week, MakerDAO is up at 8.2% while Solana has dropped 5.4%, according to CoinGecko.

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