MakerDAO to Become Fully Decentralized

The Maker Foundation is making good on its promise of decentralization, and has started turning over the protocol’s operations to its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) MakerDAO, the foundation said in a blog post on 20 July.

The foundation’s CEO, Rune Christensen, wrote in the blog post that MakeDAO was “fully self-sufficient”, with its community now being “responsible for every aspect of the Maker protocol”. While he didn’t give any specific timeline, Christensen stated that the Make Foundation was going to be formally dissolved within the next few months. He wrote:

“Complete decentralization of Maker means that future development and operation of the Protocol and the DAO will be determined by thousands or perhaps millions of engaged, enthusiastic community members, all determined to extend the benefits of digital currency to people across the globe.”

Founded in September 2018, the Maker Foundation was reportedly created on the request of early investors — and was tasked with overseeing and managing the project’s development — with the intention of being dissolved in the next two to three years. Under the Foundation’s stewardship the protocol has shown great progress, and was often seen at the top of the total value locked DeFi rankings. The MakeDAO is best known for the creation of the DAI stablecoin, which can be minted against a variety of digital assets approved by the Maker governance.

Back in March 2020, the Maker Foundation began taking steps to reinstate the project’s decentralized governance by transferring the MKR token contract to the community governance. In March of this year, MakerDAO approved the “Core Units framework”, which are essentially committees that would do the work instead of the Foundation once its gone.