Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On September 18, the established DeFi leader Maker officially completed its brand upgrade and relaunch, changing its name to Sky while initiating the token migration from 'MKR to SKY' and 'DAI to USDS'.
More than a month later, perhaps due to the original brand Maker being deeply ingrained in people's minds, and the original tokens MKR and DAI having already accumulated a wide range of application scenarios, the transition process to the new brand and new token seems to be quite challenging.
According to Dune data, as of the time of writing, approximately 900 million DAI have completed the migration to USDS, accounting for about 15.5% of the current total DAI supply (5.8 billion); approximately 91,880 MKR have completed the migration to SKY, accounting for 10.6% of the current circulating supply of MKR (868,478).
Meanwhile, many users have expressed confusion within the community regarding the utility of the new token under the new brand (such as Seal), its function (such as Activation), supply situation (such as Early Bird airdrop), and ecological positioning (such as the relationship with other Stars like Spark), believing that the brand relaunch has instead blurred the protocol's positioning and negatively impacted community consensus.
Odaily Note: The above concepts can be referenced (Founder’s own words: After Maker becomes Sky, what’s the next step?).
From the price trends, the market is also not enthusiastic about the upgrade of Maker, especially considering that established DeFi protocols like Aave and Uniswap have had notable performances recently, while the price of MKR (which has a fixed exchange rate with SKY and therefore reflects the protocol's market value) has been declining.
Last night, perhaps realizing the brand relaunch was not successful enough, Maker founder Rune Christensen posted a long article on personal social media discussing the possibility of reverting the brand back to Maker...
When discussing the 'information confusion' in the community, Rune stated: 'Using Sky as the name for the protocol, token, and frontend has indeed added some confusion. We are now clearer than ever about the DeFi community's love for the Maker brand. Users still trust this brand and the stability and security it represents... Many still commit to holding MKR rather than upgrading to SKY.'
In this regard, Rune briefly outlined his preliminary ideas on restarting the Maker brand. In short, Rune hopes to position Maker as a decentralized protocol on the backend, while positioning Sky as a frontend DeFi product based on Maker, under this framework:
Maker will continue to serve as a decentralized protocol on the backend supporting USDS, DAI, and various StarDAOs, with MKR remaining the sole governance token of Maker. The community can decide whether to maintain the original image of the Maker brand or redesign it.
Sky will serve as the frontend directly catering to DeFi users. Sky will be positioned alongside Spark, both being frontend applications based on the Maker protocol, but with different focuses — Sky focuses solely on the minting/redemption of the USDS stablecoin, while Spark is a lending market that requires collateral management.
Within this framework, USDS will not change and will continue to be governed by Maker and MKR.
It can be seen that Rune now wants to retain the new brand Sky while not willing to give up the influence accumulated by the Maker brand in the past... In this conception, the only aspect not mentioned by Rune seems to be the new governance token SKY, as it appears Rune wants to use MKR to replace the utility of SKY.
After outlining his ideas, Rune also mentioned the hope for the community to vote on the potential to restart the Maker brand, with several options proposed at that time:
Option 1: Continue to use Sky as the core brand, adhering to the latest brand upgrade strategy.
Option 2: Restart Maker as the core brand with its original image, restoring MKR as the sole governance token of the DAO.
Option 3: Reactivate the Maker brand with a new image, maintaining the classic design of the original brand but making slight modifications to better 'align' with USDS and various Stars.
Rune finally emphasized that restoring the Maker brand is currently only in the preliminary conceptual stage, and it will still require some time for the community to fully discuss, with plans for a community conference call on October 25. After the community conference call, Rune will integrate all feedback and advance this topic to a community vote (which requires multiple rounds), with voting planned to start on October 28. If approved, a multi-choice vote will be conducted in the week starting November 4.
Looking at the development history of the cryptocurrency industry, brand relaunches are not uncommon, but the operation of 'first completely abandoning an already highly reputed original brand, then wanting to revert back' like Maker is indeed rare... Odaily Planet Daily will continue to monitor the latest developments of this event and report in a timely manner.
