MakerDAO Considering Allocating Up to $600,000,000 in DAI in Arthur Hayes-Backed Stablecoin USDe

The decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Maker (MKR) is considering allocating up to $600 million worth of its stablecoin DAI into markets for Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe.

Last week, Maker deployed 100 million DAI to Spark’s sUSDe/DAI and USDe/DAI markets on Morpho Blue, a lending protocol on Ethereum (ETH).

The move enabled “overcollateralized scalable liquidity for users interested in increasing their exposure to Ethena’s assets,” according to Maker.

On Monday, a Maker forum contributor recommended that the protocol allocate an additional 500 million DAI into Morpho’s lending infrastructure in the staked USDe and USDe/DAI markets. The proposal, which was published by BA Labs, a member of MakerDAO’s Stability Scope Advisory Council, noted that the allocation could go up to 1 billion DAI in total.

Some members of the crypto community criticized Maker’s new Ethena DAI proposal as being overly risky. Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, and an Aave (AAVE) DAO delegate, called it “the definition of reckless.”

Ethena aims to provide a crypto-native solution for money not reliant on traditional banking system infrastructure via USDe. The protocol also offers a dollar-denominated savings instrument called “the Internet Bond.” Binance Launchpool rolled out support for the project’s native asset, ENA, last week.

Ethena raised $14 million in a seed extension round earlier this year. The funding round’s investors included BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, investment giant Franklin Templeton, digital asset manager Galaxy Digital, and Binance Labs.

Generated Image: Midjourney