Dai (DAI) news: from rebranding to new stablecoin
Plans of MakerDAO
In March 2023, the first plans for developing the MakerDAO ecosystem in accordance with the project's new roadmap, codenamed Endgame, became known. The first stage of development was the so-called "Launch Season," which aims to gradually increase the number of users and capitalization of the DAI stablecoin to $100 billion.
In addition, the founder of MakerDAO announced plans to launch a "fully decentralized stablecoin" called PureDai, which will be an alternative to DAI. Decentralized stablecoins suggest that the issuance (issue) and circulation of tokens are not controlled by any one organization or group; the entire process happens autonomously through smart contracts.
The PureDai stablecoin is expected to launch within the next few years, and the asset itself will initially be issued on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token. It is known that a blockchain oracle-based mechanism will provide the price peg, and it will be free. PureDai's stablecoin management will be decentralized (DAO), and ETH and liquid staking tokens such as stETH will be used as collateral.
However, the updates don't end there: in late August 2024, MakerDAO announced an updated version of the DAI stablecoin and the MKR management token. The updated DAI token is called NewStable (NST). DAI holders can seamlessly convert their tokens to NST at a 1-to-1 ratio and vice versa.
Both stablecoins will continue to coexist on the market. The MakerDAO team notes that while the tokens are very similar, they have different functions. While DAI focuses on cryptocurrency use cases, NST will concentrate on massively adopting digital assets.
The change will also affect the MakerDAO issuing organization, which the team plans to rename Sky. This was announced at the end of August 2024. In addition, the DAI stablecoin itself will be renamed USDS. The new name of the stablecoin is very symbolic, as Phoenix Labs and Spark Protocol CEO Sam McPherson warned users that the USDS token would have an address-freezing feature that well-known stablecoins with similar names, such as USDT and USDC, have. The MKR control token will be renamed SKY at a later date. The issuance of new tokens starts on September 18, but DAI will continue to exist in parallel with USDS; there will be no need to convert the stablecoins.
What's up with the DAI exchange rate?
DAI is categorized as a partially decentralized stablecoin: users can issue tokens through a smart contract if they contribute enough cryptocurrency for collateral, such as ETH or stETH.
DAI is among the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies in capitalization, which, as of August 2024, is about $5.3 billion. According to this indicator, it is in third place among all stablecoins after USDT and USDC.
DAI is one of the most stable assets in this category, something even USDC can't boast of: over the past year, its rate has never deviated by more than 0.03%, according to CoinMarketCap data. This says a lot about the effective work of the mechanism of pegging the rate to the US dollar embedded in the DAI stablecoin. However, DAI's market capitalization remained virtually unchanged over the same period, growing by only 20 million, indicating a lack of new investor inflows.
Perhaps rebranding and issuing new tokens will remedy the situation, which may also be related to investor caution after some other decentralized stablecoins, such as UST and USDN, collapsed. We can observe an increased interest in regulated tokens (USDT and USDC): their issuers' adherence to specific regulatory rules probably inspires investors with more confidence.
