Vitalik Buterin sold approximately $580,000 worth of MKR tokens
The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has sold approximately $580,000 worth of MKR tokens from MakerDAO in an effort to exert influence on MakerDAO. This decision was prompted by MakerDAO’s intentions to launch a new project on the Solana network, a traditional rival of Ethereum.
In a Discord channel on the competing stablecoin issuance platform Reflexer Finance, Buterin offered suggestions on how to compete with and complement MakerDAO if it veers in unexpected directions.
MakerDAO, the issuer of the stablecoin DAI, is currently in the process of reviewing its protocol, known as “Endgame.” Rune Christensen, the co-founder of MakerDAO, has been advocating for the launch of a native blockchain for Maker, codenamed NewChain, which is built on the Solana codebase.
Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder of Solana, clarified that the proposed new Maker chain “has no affiliation with the Solana mainnet” or the ongoing debate between Ethereum and Solana.
However, Buterin appears unsatisfied with the decision made by Maker’s co-founder and chose to sell his MKR holdings, which he had held since 2020, just one day after Christensen’s tweet.
Buterin sold 500 MKR for 353.4 ETH, equivalent to approximately $579,000, using the CoW Protocol, as per Etherscan data.
Vitalik Buterin’s Recommendations:
Ethereum’s co-founder also participated in the Discord channel of the stablecoin competitor, Reflexer Finance, where he encouraged the community to broaden their collateral options to include liquidity staking derivatives on Ethereum.
Reflexer allows the creation of the stablecoin RAI using only Ethereum as collateral. RAI’s value is not pegged to a specific index like the USD-indexed DAI. Instead, it is determined by the price of ETH and the demand for RAI.
Liquidity staking derivatives (LSDs) are tokens representing the amount of ETH staked in the Ethereum proof-of-stake validation contract.
Buterin stressed the importance of active community governance to offer more support for “ETH at stake.” He suggested that the community should ideally begin with “only non-dominant forms of ETH at stake (excluding Lido).”
