There's Now 100 Million Dai and Growing

Hello defiers! I’m in Waterloo right now for ETHWaterloo, so come say hi if you’re planning on going to tonight’s opening ceremony. I’ll be interviewing Vitalik on stage about the ride it’s been since the first ETH Waterloo in 2017. Here’s what’s going on in DeFi:

• Dai debt ceiling raised after is crossed 100 million
• MarketingDAO, a.k.a anti-FUD machine, launched
• There’s now more Gods Unchained cards than CryptoKitties

There’s Now 100 Million Dai and Room for More

The amount of Dai issued surpassed the system’s self-imposed debt ceiling of 100 million on Wednesday, a sign the decentralized stablecoin continues to attract users.

MKR holders voted to raise the limit to 120 million to allow for more growth.

Image source: https://vote.makerdao.com/

Dai’s market capitalization of $100 million is smaller than that of most fiat-backed coins, with USDC’s at $460 million, Paxos at $240 million, and $4 billion for Tether. Only Gemini Dollar has a smaller market cap of almost $5 million.

While so-called “bank coins” have more liquidity, Dai rules in decentralized finance. 77 percent of loans in DeFi have been originated in MakerDAO’s stablecoin.

The 20 percent debt ceiling increase was conservative compared with the previous vote. The last time the limit was reached, in July 2018, MKR holders doubled it to 100 million from 50 million.

If the recent rate of issuance continues, the new ceiling would be breached in only one mont. But with Multi-Collateral Dai launching in 10 days, the new system takes over with new parameters of 153 million total debt, of which:

• 100 million are for Sai, expected during the migration. (It’s a bit confusing but the current Dai is now to be called Sai for single-collateral Dai. Users should migrate it to the new system.)
• 50 million are for ETH
• 3 million are for BAT

[Read MakerDAO’s most recent blog post on MCD details]

MKR holders also voted to lower the stability fee again, to 5 percent. The lower borrowing costs is what’s causing increased appetite to issue Dai and the new, lower rate should continue fueling demand.

[Read my post on what happens to DeFi’s value prop as interest rates drop]

Ethereans Launch MarketingDAO

Ethereum is a decentralized network and as such doesn’t have a marketing department. More than 50 Ethereum community members want to change that and they created a decentralized autonomous organization, based on MolochDAO, which anyone can join and donate to.

TheMarketingDAO seeks to respond to misinformation, create Ethereum positioning and establish a presence at key events. It’s the latest in at least 8 DAOs launched this year, which have raised more than $250 million, according to DAO Metrics. It will be interesting to see what results this new organization structure that was made for a more decentralized future yields.

Gods Unchained NFTs Surpass CryptoKitties

Here’s another nail on the coffin for the myth that the only killer use-case for Ethereum was CryptoKitties. Gods Unchained, a virtual cards game based on the network, has now issued more tokens than CryptoKitties has.

The Gods Unchained smart contract has issued 2,837,922 non-fungible tokens representing unique playing cards, while the CryptoKitties smart contract has issued 1,743,162 unique kitties. And Ethereum has been running without a glitch.

[Read here about why Gods Unchained surged after Blizzard banned users]

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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.