- Maker has revealed plans to move its backend to a new chain, likely based on Solana.
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed opposition to Maker’s new trajectory.
- Despite Buterin’s misgivings, the plan intends to make the Maker protocol more resilient.
Maker appears to have fallen out of favor with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. After MakerDAO CEO Rune Christensen outlined plans for a Solana-integrated future, the Ethereum co-founder dumped his MKR holdings and questioned the project’s direction.
Buterin Slams Christensen’s Plan
In a MakerDAO forum post on Friday, September 1, Christensen outlined his vision for Maker’s Endgame’s fifth and final stage. The long-term plan will see the backend of the Maker Protocol move to a new blockchain dubbed NewChain, with Christensen suggesting the Solana stack as the codebase, a significant shift from Maker’s Ethereum roots.
The Maker chief’s plan appears to have rubbed Ethereum’s Buterin the wrong way. After Christensen released the forum post, Buterin dumped the last of his MKR holdings, exchanging 500 MKR for 353 ETH (approximately $580k) on Saturday, September 2.
Moreover, in a Discord message shared by Wu Blockchain on Sunday, September 3, Buterin bashed Maker’s planned trajectory as “weird.” Further, he appeared to champion Maker’s RAI over DAI due to minimized governance in light of Christensen’s new plans.
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"If MakerDAO is torpedoing itself in weird directions Then it makes natural sense for RAI to move somewhat closer to that middle category IMO not all the way; I think there is value in maintaining some kind of norm of 'ETH is the collateral'" Buterin argued.
With the Ethereum co-founder disavowing the Maker protocol, it becomes necessary to understand why Maker intends to move its backend to a separate chain and why Christensen has hailed Solana as a strong contender.
The Idea Behind NewChain
According to Christensen, with NewChain, the Maker protocol is expected to become more resilient to governance attacks and technical failures using hard forks. At the same time, the move will also allow developers more freedom to rebuild Maker components to serve better the purposes they were designed.
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To circumvent the complexities of building a blockchain from scratch, Maker intends to fork an existing Layer 1 chain, with Christensen tipping the Solana stack as “the most promising codebase.” The Maker co-founder cited three reasons for this choice: technical quality and optimization, the network’s resilience after the FTX collapse, and the success of existing Solana forks like the Pyth Network.
Aside from Solana, Christensen highlighted that Cosmos was a leading contender, touting the ecosystem’s large talent pool and multiple app chains. Nonetheless, he contended that Solana maintained the edge in efficiency, arguing that Cosmos chains required more capital to maintain.
On the Flipside
- Christensen’s plan remains in the proposal phase, and the Maker co-founder estimates that the project could take at least three years to finish.
- Maker’s front end will remain on Ethereum and Ethereum Layer 2 chains, connected to the backend through a bridge.
- Vitalik Buterin’s stance does not appear to have impacted the price of MKR. At the time of writing, the asset is trading for about $1,120, representing a negligible 0.51% decline in the past 24 hours per CoinMarketCap data.
Why This Matters
Maker is the second-largest protocol on the Ethereum blockchain by TVL, with $5.06 billion per Defi Llama data at the time of writing. Moves made by the protocol could have spillover effects on the leading blockchain.
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