Ben Solomon Photo LLC for Blockworks| Ben Solomon Photo LLC for Blockworks
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USDS has been doing very well. The SKY governance token, however…not so much.
After announcing the rebranding of Maker’s to Sky about two months ago, the team now considers a U turn.
Maker revealed the rebranding to Sky at the end of August, and it went live on September 24. Holders of MKR tokens were to be able to exchange them for the new SKY token at a 1:24,400 rate.
Only about 10.7% MKR token owners have converted to the SKY governance token since it went live.
USDS usage has been viewed positively, with its market cap growing to $1.26 Billion.
Rune Christensen is the co-founder of Maker. “It is also now more clear than ever just how much the DeFi community loves and trusts the Maker brand…there is a lot of commitment to holding the MKR token versus upgrading to SKY.”
As Christensen explains, on October 28 the Maker team has three voting options:
- Sky will remain the core brand.
- Turn back to Maker’s original identity.
- Re-brand Maker using the original logo, but with a slight update “to better align it with USDS and the StarDAOs.”
Many people viewed the redenomination of MKR into SKY as a positive psychological catalyst, which plays on what’s commonly referred as “the SKY effect”. “unit bias.”
The idea here is that investors may find MKR less appealing due to its high price — over $1,000 per MKR — while the significantly lower price of SKY, at a few cents (due to its higher total token supply) makes it more psychologically attractive for retail investors to hold compared to fractional amounts of MKR.
Christensen confirmed yesterday, on a X space, that the redenomination is a strategy. “clearly did not work out at all” After the SKY token was not listed on centralized exchanges.
Sky had planned to offer incentives for this conversion. “seal rewards” You can also find out more about the following: “activation rewards” for token holders who chose to stake SKY — features that Christensen now points to as “hard to follow” A swathe new features are based on feedback from the community.
The critics on X wasted no time in pointing the finger at Maker, who spent $50 million on a failed rebrand.
Christensen admitted on yesterday’s X space, that the criticisms had been unfair. “funny meme” He doesn’t know what he is doing. “blame people for using that as a dunk,” The entire amount of money spent on the purchase was not exclusively for “rebranding.”
Christensen went on to explain that the USDS Stablecoin was a valuable product and its adoption had been very successful.
Since Sky’s rebranding in 2016, the team has been involved in a number high-profile launches. These include the integration of USDS into Aave and Sky Aave Force and the launch USDS on Solana as well as other Ethereum L2s.
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