MakerDAO co-founder floats using Solana’s code to build new chain

Rune Christensen’s latest MakerDAO proposal explores a Solana fork to launch a new blockchain

article-image

dRender/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Rune Christensen, MakerDAO’s co-founder, suggested that a forthcoming appchain dedicated to the DeFi lending protocol could be built using the codebase of Solana.

That new appchain is part of the so-called Endgame plan, as previously reported by Blockworks. The plan is intended to improve MakerDAO governance and ensure that the protocol itself becomes more self-sustainable. It’s been in the works since May 2022, with the “Maker Constitution” receiving approval earlier this year. 

Endgame itself is split into five phases. The final phase — Phase 5 — will deploy a new chain, now known as NewChain, as a hub for the backend tools supporting MakerDAO. 

Read more: Takeaways From MakerDAO’s 5-phase Endgame Update

“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,” Christensen wrote in an ecosystem discussion post on Friday

“After having researched all the different options available to act as the foundation for NewChain, I believe that the Solana stack is the most promising codebase to explore further,” Christensen went on to write. 

He argued that the code is “engineered well and benefits from being designed long after the bottlenecks and challenges of blockchains were already well understood.”

If the MakerDAO community voted in favor of the proposal, Christensen suggested that a “symbiotic relationship” be formed between MakerDAO and the existing Solana community. 

This could be achieved through maintaining an independent client or providing funding to the Solana ecosystem, he said.

“It would be strategically beneficial to ensure there is a Two-Stage Gravity Bridge from NewChain to Solana alongside the bridge from NewChain to Ethereum,” he wrote. “It would also provide a useful boost to the network effect of the entire multichain economy.” 

Aside from a Solana fork, Christensen argued that the only other contender for launching Maker’s new app chain would be the Cosmos SDK.

The downside, he said, is that the Cosmos ecosystem is not as efficient as Solana, which may make it more expensive to maintain over time. 

“Cosmos also doesn’t have a strong central foundation organization like Solana has, which could be either a good or bad thing,” Christensen wrote.


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.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The House on Thursday passed the CLARITY Act, a landmark cryptocurrency market structure bill

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro