Maker wants to rebrand again

Maker co-founder Rune Christensen says the team will have three voting options on Oct. 28

article-image

MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen | Ben Solomon Photo LLC for Blockworks

share


This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


USDS is doing great. The SKY governance token, however…not so much.

About two months since Maker’s announced rebrand to Sky, the team is now contemplating a U-turn.

Maker first revealed its rebrand to Sky in late August and went live on Sept. 24. The rebrand was intended for holders of the original MKR governance token to convert to the new SKY governance token at a 1-to-24,000 exchange rate. 

Since going live, only about 10.7% of MKR token holders have converted to the new SKY governance token.

Source: Dune

Usage of USDS has had a relatively more positive reception, with its growth to a $1.26 billion market cap.

Source: Sky.money

Rune Christensen, Maker’s co-founder, tweeted: “It is also now more clear than ever just how much the DeFi community loves and trusts the Maker brand…there is a lot of commitment to holding the MKR token versus upgrading to SKY.”

As Christensen explained, the Maker team will have three voting options on Oct. 28: 

  1. Continue with Sky as the core brand.
  2. Make a full U-turn to Maker’s original brand identity.
  3. Return to Maker’s original branding, but lightly update it “to better align it with USDS and the StarDAOs.”

The redenomination into a higher token supply from MKR to SKY was widely perceived by many as a kind of positive psychological catalyst that plays on what is commonly referred to as “unit bias.”

The idea here is that investors may find MKR less appealing due to its high price — over $1,000 per MKR — while the significantly lower price of SKY, at a few cents (due to its higher total token supply) makes it more psychologically attractive for retail investors to hold compared to fractional amounts of MKR.

Christensen acknowledged on an X space yesterday that this redenomination strategy “clearly did not work out at all” after the SKY token failed to get listed on centralized exchanges.

To incentivize this conversion, Sky planned to offer “seal rewards” and “activation rewards” for token holders who chose to stake SKY — features that Christensen now points to as “hard to follow” amid a swathe of new features based on community feedback.

Source: Sky

Critics on X have wasted no time taking shots at Maker for wasting $50 million on a failed rebrand.

In response, Christensen acknowledged on yesterday’s X space that the criticism was a “funny meme” and while he doesn’t “blame people for using that as a dunk,” the entire sum of money was not spent exclusively on “rebranding.”

Christensen elaborated that the value of the rebrand was to drive demand for the USDS stablecoin and the importance of the product’s adoption, which has shown success thus far.

Loading Tweet..

Since the Sky rebrand, the team has embarked on a series of high-profile launches, such as an integration of USDS with Aave (dubbed the Sky Aave Force), and the launch of USDS to Solana and other Ethereum L2s.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Maple Finance has successfully navigated significant market challenges through its strategic pivot to secured lending (Maple v2) and the launch of its Syrup product. Syrup has become a primary growth driver, delivering sustainable, outperforming stablecoin yields and rapidly increasing TVL. The upcoming custody-first Bitcoin staking product (istBTC) presents another significant avenue for expansion. Crucially, Maple has achieved operational profitability, a key inflection point that, combined with a fully vested token and active buyback mechanism, strengthens its investment case. While valuation metrics suggest potential undervaluation relative to peers and growth, the primary forward-looking risk identified is the long-term sustainability of its current high-take-rate collateral staking revenue model.

article-image

Sponsored

Instead of endless wallet popups, users could connect once, set clear rules, and delegate permission to an app or to an AI agent.

article-image

Prediction markets show that people bet in anticipation of things happening far too often

article-image

The agency’s final deadline is in October

article-image

Higher inflation historically lags behind tariff implementation, so don’t celebrate just yet

article-image

VanEck launches its first tokenized fund after financial giants convene at SEC roundtable

article-image

The “GameFi” platform that began its development while part of Zynga is launching another NFT collection