MakerDAO Now Earns 80% Of Its Fee Revenue From Real-World Assets

Nearly 80% of the fee revenue for MakerDAO, the third-largest DeFi protocol by total value locked, was generated from real-world assets over the past year.

MakerDAO’s RWA exposure drove 79% of fee revenue, or $13.5M for the protocol’s treasury, over the past 12 months, according to data MakerDAO shared with The Defiant. That’s 39% of Maker’s lifetime stability fees.

The figure highlights RWA’s growing importance for MakerDAO, even as participants in the protocol are seeking to distance themselves from the asset type. RWAs are on-chain versions of assets that exist in the physical world or in traditional finance, and can include anything from real estate, to bonds and invoices.

Data from Dune Analytics shows that MakerDAO now boasts a $2.34B RWA portfolio, including $1.14B worth of U.S. treasury bonds and 500M USDC earning a yield from Coinbase Prime.

MakerDAO’s RWA allocations over time. Source: Dune Analytics.

Maker and RWAs

Despite the revenue rolling into Maker’s coffers, RWAs have proved a contentious subject within the protocol’s community.

Last August, MakerDAO’s founder, Rune Christensen, floated a 25% hard limit on the protocol’s real-world asset collateral including centralized stablecoins as part of its Endgame roadmap.

The discussion came after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash, a coin-mixing protocol, with Christensen fearing the Treasury Department may launch a broader campaign against digital assets in the future.

But Lucas Vogelsang, CEO and co-founder of Centrifuge, a protocol specializing in real-world assets that boasts several ongoing partnerships with MakerDAO, expects Endgame will facilitate growth in Maker’s RWA activities.

“While the Endgame plan has many constraints and risk mitigation approaches, we believe that it actually creates a significant opportunity to expand the scope of RWA operations within Maker,” Vogelsang told The Defiant. “We’re excited about the opportunity to support prospective RWA SubDAOs with our infrastructure and continue expanding DAIs reach in the RWA space.”

Maker Expands RWA Exposure in May

MakerDAO further ramped up its RWA exposure in May, allocating 500M USDC to Coinbase Prime and investing $560M into US Treasury bonds from its Monetalis Clydesdale vault.

BlockTower, an institutional investment firm, also drew an additional $6M to bring the debt ceiling of its Maker vault to 80M DAI. MakerDAO and BlockTower Credit launched the vault in December, partnering to deploy up to $220M on Centrifuge.

6s Capital Partners also took out a $5.2M loan after paying down a $1.35M debt, bringing its outstanding balance to $12.7M DAI.