Maker founder wants to change the name back after rebranding causes confusion

Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author: Azuma ( @azuma_eth )

On September 18, the veteran DeFi leader Maker officially completed its brand upgrade and reshaping. While changing its name to Sky, it also launched the token migration from MKR to SKY and from DAI to USDS.

After more than a month, perhaps because the original brand Maker has long been deeply rooted in peoples hearts, and the original tokens MKR and DAI have already accumulated a relatively wide range of application scenarios, the migration process of the protocol to the new brand and new token does not seem to be smooth.

Dune data shows that as of the time of writing, approximately 900 million DAI have completed migration to USDS, accounting for only about 15.5% of the current total supply of DAI (5.8 billion); approximately 91,880 MKR have completed migration to SKY, accounting for only 10.6% of the current MKR circulating supply (868,478).

At the same time, many users also expressed their confusion in the community about the utility (such as Seal), functions (such as Activation), supply (such as Early Bird airdrops), and ecological positioning (such as the relationship with various Stars such as Spark) of the new tokens under the new brand. They believed that the rebranding would blur the positioning of the protocol and have a negative impact on the cohesion of community consensus.

• Odaily Note: For the answers to the above concepts, please refer to Founders Personal Note: Whats Next After Maker Becomes Sky?

Judging from the price trend, the market is not interested in Makers upgrade, especially considering that old DeFi protocols such as Aave and Uniswap have had outstanding performances of varying lengths recently. The price of MKR (which has a fixed exchange ratio with SKY and can therefore still reflect the market value of the protocol) has been falling.

Last night, perhaps realizing that the brand remodeling was not successful enough, Maker founder Rune Christensen posted a long article on his personal social media, discussing the possibility of changing the brand back to Maker...

When talking about the information confusion in the community, Rune said: Using Sky as the name of the protocol, token, and front end does add some confusion. Now we know more than ever that the DeFi community loves the Maker brand. Users still trust this brand and the stability and security it represents... Many people are still committed to holding MKR instead of upgrading to SKY.

In this regard, Rune briefly outlined his initial idea for restarting the Maker brand. In short, Rune hopes to position Maker as a backend decentralized protocol and Sky as a frontend DeFi product based on Maker . Under this framework:

• Maker will continue to support USDS, DAI, and various StarDAOs as a backend decentralized protocol, and MKR will remain Makers only governance token. The community can decide whether to continue to maintain the original image of the Maker brand or redesign it.

• Sky will serve as a front-end that directly serves DeFi users. Sky will be positioned alongside Spark, both of which are front-end applications based on the Maker protocol, but their emphases are different - Sky only focuses on the minting/redemption of USDS stablecoins, while Spark is a lending market that requires collateral management.

• Under this framework, USDS will not change and will still be governed by Maker and MKR.

It can be seen that Rune now wants to retain the new brand Sky, but is unwilling to give up the influence that the Maker brand has accumulated in the past ... Under this assumption, the only thing that Rune has not mentioned seems to be the new governance token SKY. It seems that Rune wants to use MKR to replace the utility of SKY.

After explaining his vision, Rune also mentioned that he hoped the community would vote on the potential possibility of restarting the Maker brand. The options proposed that year were as follows:

• Option 1: Continue to use Sky as the core brand and stick to the latest brand upgrade strategy.

• Option 2: Restart Maker with its original image as the core brand and restore MKR as the only governance token of the DAO.

• Option 3: Reactivate the Maker brand with a new image, keeping the classic design of the original brand, but making minor modifications to better “align” USDS and individual Stars.

Rune finally emphasized that restoring the Maker brand is only in the initial stage of conception, and it will take some time for the community to fully discuss it, and then a community conference call is planned for October 25. After the community conference call, Rune will integrate all feedback and advance this issue to a community vote (requiring multiple rounds). The vote is scheduled to start on October 28. If approved, a multi-option vote will be implemented within the week starting on November 4.

Looking at the development history of the cryptocurrency industry, brand reshaping is not uncommon, but operations like Makers first completely abandoning an original brand that has accumulated a very high reputation, and then regretting and wanting to change it back are rare... Odaily Planet Daily will continue to pay attention to the latest developments of this incident and follow up with timely reports.