A Retrospective Review: MakerDAO's Disagreement with Vitalik, Solana's Selection - Why?

Sep 05, 2023

Author: GaryMa WuBlockchain

MakerDAO founder Rune expressed a preference for using the Solana codebase for its new, stand-alone blockchain (codename NewChain). The next day, Vitalik sold his $MKR holdings and stated in Reflexer’s DC channel that MakerDAO was “torpedoing itself in weird directions.” He encouraged Reflexer to be more active governance to support staked ETH, and try to gain a market share in the stablecoin subdivision that MakerDAO originally occupied. Is this Vitalik’s disdain for MakerDAO’s embrace of Solana or his preference for Reflexer, his ideal decentralized stablecoin project? In this article, we attempt to review and analyze the whole incident.

Building a stand-alone blockchain: Solana Codebase the Top Choice

On September 1st, MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen posted an article on the forum titled “Exploring a Fork of the Solana Codebase for NewChain.” The article pointed out that the 5th and final phase of Endgame is the complete reimplementation of the entire Maker Protocol built natively on a new, stand-alone blockchain (codename NewChain). The 5th phase is a major long term project, and will likely take at least 3 years, if not longer, before it is realized.

The most important reason for why NewChain is needed, is that it will allow the ecosystem to use hard forks to gracefully recover from the most severe form of governance attacks or technical failures. NewChain also allows the system to deal with the 8 years of technical debt in the protocol, and means all components of the protocol can be purposefully rebuilt for their exact role in the final, permanent Endgame technical design.

NewChain will mainly contain the backend of the Maker Protocol and the SubDAOs — all user facing products and systems will be untouched and will remain on Ethereum, L2s or other large blockchains, and will be connected to NewChain through advanced bridges kept secure by the Maker Protocol (called Two-Stage Gravity Bridges).

After researching all the different options that could serve as the underlying codebase for NewChain, Rune believed that, given the advantages of Solana’s code technology stack, the resilience of the ecosystem after the FTX collapse, and already exists examples of the Solana codebase being forked and adapted to act as appchains, Solana was the most promising codebase to explore further. While Cosmos was also an option, the biggest difference between Cosmos and Solana is that Cosmos doesn’t prioritize efficiency as much as Solana does. This means that the cost of maintaining and preserving performance will be higher for Cosmos. Moreover, Cosmos lacks a powerful foundation organization (perhaps considering the ability to iterate and update the codebase in the future).

Vitalik Sells $MKR

On September 2nd, Vitalik’s address (Vb 2) sold 500 MKR for 350 ETH through CoWswap. This was the first time in two years that this address had sold MKR.

Public Controversy and Rune’s Twitter Response

Q: Why not use an EVM-compatible chain or L2?

A: If you’re building something that’s directly user-facing or considering user acquisition, an EVM-compatible chain is still the most important because EVM has solidified the largest network effect. But Maker’s specific need is to build a dedicated backend, so codebases like Solana/Sei might be more suitable. They are more efficient and easier to hard fork, which L2 Rollups cannot do.

Q: For Maker users, they are more loyal to the Ethereum mainnet than the protocol itself, most likely?

A: For end users, there’s no change. Protocols like DAI/Spark will still be on the Ethereum mainnet. Having an efficient backend means we can offer a better DSR (DAI Savings Rate) on Ethereum, and being able to hard fork means we won’t be forced to shut down DAI due to attacks.

Rune eventually tweeted on September 2nd after facing community questions and multiple responses:

Vitalik’s Suggestions for RAI

On September 2nd, Vitalik discussed this topic in Reflexer’s DC. He seemed to disagree with MakerDAO’s NewChain strategy, considering it as “torpedoing itself in weird directions.” Vitalik previously categorized stablecoins into a three-part schema:

1. Centralized stablecoins like USDT, USDC, etc.

2. DAO-governed stablecoins with multiple collateral types (RAW, various types of cryptocurrencies, etc.), like DAI.

3. Governance-minimized stablecoins with relatively native and simple collateral, like RAI and LUSD.

Vitalik said that where MakerDAO is by far the leading project in the first niche, and so it makes strategic sense (both from RAI’s own perspective, and from the Ethereum ecosystem’s “what would be most valuable for RAI to be doing” perspective) for RAI to take on the minimalistic niche. But if MakerDAO is torpedoing itself in weird directions, then it makes natural sense for RAI to move somewhat closer to that middle category(gain a market share in the stablecoin subdivision that MakerDAO originally occupied).He encouraged Reflexer to be more active governance to support staked ETH,nd ideally intentionally accepting only non-dominant forms of staked ETH (so, not Lido).

It’s worth noting that RAI has always been Vitalik’s ideal decentralized stablecoin.

Is it a Conflict of Ideals or Different Interests?

In conclusion, let’s provide some perspective on Rune’s decision to “build an stand-alone blockchain and prefer the Solana codebase.”

From the perspective of MakerDAO’s goals, there’s nothing wrong with this decision.

Rune has emphasized many times that they need both “efficiency” and the ability to “hard fork (sovereignty).”

For L2 Rollups, they don’t have the ability to hard fork since L2 transactions eventually need to be batched and submitte to L1 for settlement. For L1, L2 Rollups are just a contract. Solana’s codebase is well-regarded in terms of performance efficiency as a stand-alone blockchain. Therefore, theoretically, choosing Solana’s codebase as the future dedicated sovereign application chain is entirely feasible. Concerns or opposition from the community may be more related to vested interests.

Vitalik’s lack of approval is more likely due to a clash of ideals. Vitalik probably wouldn’t be petty enough to criticize Rune for not choosing EVM and claim that it’s “torpedoing itself in weird directions.” It’s more likely that he disapproves of Rune’s pursuit of hard forking, which is the ability to address the most severe governance attacks or technical failures. Moreover, considering Vitalik’s affinity for RAI and recent discussions about Lido’s market share approaching 33%, he went a step further to suggest that RAI could support other niche ETH collateral tokens. This would help RAI compete with MakerDAO and promote decentralization in the ETH liquidity staking market.

Wu Blockchain

Discussion about this post