Devcon Day 2: Date Set for Multi-Collateral Dai

Hello defiers! It was an eventful second day of Devcon. Here are my highlights:

MakerDAO Announces Launch Date for Multi-Collateral Dai

The biggest announcement of the day, especially for defiers, came from MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen, who said multi-collateral Dai is launching on Nov. 18.

Developers behind the biggest lending protocol in decentralized finance and issuer of the Dai stablecoin have been planning to expand the collateral behind Dai beyond just ether since the project first started in 2015. The community knew the date was approaching as Maker in July called for MKR holders to vote on which tokens they wanted to add as collateral. Now, finally, there’s a set date for the launch.

Multi-collateral matters because it will increase the liquidity for Dai and therefore, decentralized finance. Diversified collateral should also make Dai more stable and has the potential to increase the number of use cases for collateralized lending, especially if token holders decide to include tokenized assets like real estate and equity as collateral –though this is a controversial topic.

Rune said the Dai Savings Rate will launch on the same date, as part of the new multi-level Dai. The DSR is interest that Dai holders will earn by locking their tokens in a smart contract, which he said will be done in one click. MKR holders will determine the rate paid out. It will be interesting to see how this compares with the rate offered by Compound’s cDai, and also what DeFi applications will be built with interest-earning locked Dai.

The announcements were part of a broader talk, in which Rune said DeFi was at the point where it needed to cross the chasm between cool experiment, and actual chaining applications that improve people’s lives. To him, composability (the ability for projects to build on top of each other), tokenized real-world assets (which will increase liquidity) and synthetic assets (which will drive demand), will make this happen.

Mariano Conti on How Crypto Helps Him Protect Against 50% Inflation

One of the day’s favorite talks came from Mariano Conti, MakerDAO’s head of oracles.

Mariano, who is based in Buenos Aires, is an example of how crypto, and more specifically Dai and decentralized finance, can meaningfully improve people’s everyday lives, not just help traders make more money.

Mariano has been earning in crypto since 2014 to avoid having to convert dollar earnings from foreign clients into pesos at the official rate, which was much lower than the actual, black market rate. He started in Bitcoin, then ETH in 2016, and Dai last year. Now DeFi allows him to earn interest on his Dai.

Argentina periodically goes in and out of economic and currency crises as the government (no matter which one) has a tendency to either take on too much debt, overspend, or both, causing the peso to depreciate. The result? Spiraling inflation and currency controls. By earning in Dai, Mariano is able to protect against a devaluing peso, and he can put his money to work, which is hard to do with black-market dollars.

Libra is Getting Forked

Facebook’s Libra is getting forked into OpenLibra, a permissionless version of the blockchain, Lucas Geiger of Wireline announced at Devcon.

A group of developers and researchers from projects including Ethereum and Cosmos are leading the effort. OpenLibra will maintain Libra’s Move Language and use Libra’s stablecoin, but it will have open governance and economic decentralization.

Correction from OpenLibra: My previous writeup said Chainlink was involved in the project. It’s not. Lucas Geiger had included Chainlink in the website by mistake.

Other great talks:

Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan on ETH2: Ethereum 2.0 will have stateless execution environments, in which and Eth1 will live.

Ethereum researcher Vlad Zamfir on blockchains and law: Vlad argues Ethereum needs to acknowledge its legal and political obligations. Blockchain technology shouldn’t shy away from regulators to succeed.

My Best Pic of the Day:

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About the author: I’m Camila Russo, a financial journalist writing a book on Ethereum with Harper Collins. I was previously at Bloomberg News in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires covering markets. I’ve extensively covered crypto and finance, and now I’m diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.