MakerDAO : The Central Bank of De-Fi

Lifting the Lid on De-Fi’s Decentralized Stable Coin

The Need for a Stable Coin

Decentralized Finance(DeFi) is all about trading assets. So far, the value of many of the most popular assets have fluctuated widely over time. In the last two years, Bitcoin had its first major peak at close to $20,000 in late 2017 only to sink to a low around $3,200 just over a year later before reaching for new highs towards the end of 2020. Orderly trading in assets is easier if at least one of the assets is relatively stable.

The US dollar is the ideal choice for this. The currency has been around a long time. It is the national currency of a relatively stable democracy. It is managed by the Federal Reserve Bank — a body that operates with some independence from its political masters. Over decades, countries all over the world have looked to the currency as one of the most stable and are happy to engage in very large deals (e.g. large oil purchases) which are often denominated in dollars.

Tether — An Early Centralized Stable Coin

Unfortunately for the DeFi user, the US dollar is not a cryptocurrency and so it cannot readily be represented on a blockchain or moved about with the ease that cryptocurrencies can. This prompted a company called Tether Inc to be formed in 2014/2015 which launched a cryptocurrency on the Bitcoin blockchain called USDT¹ (or simply “Tether”) where each coin represents a single US dollar. While this was not the first so-called “stable coin”, it was certainly one of the most influential. Tether’s claim that a USDT was worth a dollar, is backed by the fact that the company maintained a bank account in Hong Kong which held a dollar for every USDT in circulation. This has been widely accepted by users and by mid-2021, there were more than $60bn issued USDT.

Users can buy Tether on cryptocurrency exchanges in return for US dollars. Once in that form, they can easily be moved from one user to another. Like any blockchain transfer, this takes place in minutes, if not seconds with no regard to country boundaries and is final and irreversible. Many of the initial users were speculating on cryptocurrencies like ETH and Bitcoin and appreciated the capability to move money to the sidelines by trading into USDT.

Tether is however a highly centralized stable coin and both the management of the coin and the trust in its value hinge on the actions of the people managing Tether Inc. Users worried that the shareholders in Tether Inc overlapped with those of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. There were calls for the company to be audited to assure users that a dollar was indeed on deposit for every USDT issued.

Since centralized systems are legal entities that are based-in or have operations in one or more countries, they are also subject to regulation in those countries. It is entirely possible that individual governments or financial regulators might decide that issuing private currencies is an undesirable activity and issue directives that freeze funds or disband the companies. This problem of trust and dependence on the issuing entity as well as worries about regulation are present in every Centralized Stable Coin.

This fear that a stable coin may not be fully backed can be seen in the exchange rate of a real US dollar against the coin. In the case of USDT, while it mostly trades at $1 per USDT, it has fallen as low as $0.84 at times of high fear. A more recent (2018) competing stable coin (USDC) operated by the Centre Consortium has dipped to $0.9968.

The Maker DAO — A Decentralized Dollar

The desire to have a decentralized stable coin drove Rune Christensen and a team of like-minded developers to prototype systems in 2014 culminating in 2017 with the release of the Maker DAO² . The primary goal of this system is to create a stable coin called a DAI whose value would be kept close to 1 US dollar. The peg of the DAI stable coin to the US dollar depends not on the actions of any centralized entity, but rather on a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) which is a group of people who interact with smart contracts on the blockchain to achieve some common purpose.

Like many DAOs, the membership is open. Anyone can become a member and a complex system of smart contracts and internal currencies are used to motivate the members to act in the best interests of the DAI currency. Collectively the members act as a Central Bank for the currency, decreasing the amount of DAI in circulation if its value falls and increasing it if the value starts to exceed 1 US dollar.

What is DAI?

The new currency is called DAI — a name which comes from the Chinese character 貸 of that same name³ and means to loan or borrow. They adopted the Unicode diamond symbol: ◈ to represent the currency and one can exchange say: ◈100 for $100 wherever such trading is possible.

DAI logo to be used on Websites etc.

Since its original launch in 2017, the system has undergone one major upgrade, but the same symbol is used for the original currency (now called Single-Collateral DAI or SAI) and the more recent and advanced Multi-Collateral DAI (MCD or simply DAI). When MCD is referred to, people tend to use the graphic symbol¹³ shown above

Using DAI

DAI is represented on the Ethereum blockchain using an ERC-20-compatible Smart Contract. This contract keeps track of the addresses of all users that own DAI and their respective amounts. As with any ERC-20 token, it is easy to write programs or Decentralized Applications (DApps) that can interact with that contract to transfer DAI from one user to another using a blockchain transaction. In addition, any cryptocurrency wallet that supports the ERC-20 standard (virtually all!) will support displaying DAI balances and initiating DAI transfers.

By far the simplest way to get involved with DAI is to go to a (centralized) cryptocurrency exchange and buy some in exchange for fiat money. If all is going well, it will cost very close to US$1 plus commission for each DAI purchased. At that point the exchange (Coinbase, Binance, Kraken etc) will be holding the DAI on your behalf. Withdrawing the DAI to an Ethereum address will give you complete control to transact with it using either a wallet or programmatically.

Holding DAI in your Ethereum account has all the confidentiality implications that exist in normal cryptocurrency. Anyone can use a blockchain explorer to inspect the DAI contract and see the balances and all of the transaction history associated with any address. As long as people cannot associate a real identity with any of the Ethereum addresses, it is confidential, but as soon as they can, it is anything but confidential.

Holding one’s wealth in the form of DAI has a few advantages. It is very quick and easy to move around without regard for country boundaries. This makes it a good choice for implementing foreign remittances. Assuming the MakerDAO system holds up, it will continue to be worth US$1 even as other fiat currencies make fluctuate in value. Those living in countries with rapidly fluctuating currencies may appreciate this and choose DAI to store their wealth. It is also very easy to trade against other blockchain-based currencies and thus is a good base for traders to work from.

Creating DAI

Up to now, we have described DAI as a stable currency, pegged to the dollar, and realized as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Many users may be happy to use and trust it without delving further into how it is created or how its value is maintained over time.

For those hungry for more knowledge, the first concept to master is the Collateralized Loan.

Collateralized Loans

If Alice loans money to Bob, she gets the benefit of interest payments on her capital but takes on the risk that Bob won’t pay it back. If she has never met Bob before and has no knowledge of his trustworthiness or financial means, then she would be very foolish to give out such a loan.

One way to reduce her risk is to ask Bob to pledge or stake collateral against the loan. If Bob owns some high-value asset (like a house) that he plans on hanging onto in the long term, they could come to an agreement that the deeds of the house would be lodged in a vault and if the loan was not paid off, the house could be sold at auction to recover the loan. Any money left over from the sale would revert to Bob.

Some assets are difficult to accurately value and they may also fluctuate as demand for the asset goes up and down. It would be unwise for Alice to loan $100,000 against a house that is currently valued at $100,000. Instead, she might be happy to issue a loan against the house of up to 50% of the value: $50,000. If the house was in an earth-quake zone she might reduce this maximum to 30%. If the housing market slumped after the loan was issued, Alice might change the terms of the loan and ask that Bob pay back some of the funds borrowed or add more collateral in order to be in line with the new ratio.

Borrowing/Creating DAI

The MakerDAO system allows people to take out a loan in DAI by pledging or staking an underlying asset as collateral for the loan. When MakerDAO was first launched, the only kind of collateral that was acceptable was the Ethereum currency (ETH). In early 2020, more assets were enabled and to distinguish the two systems, the first was referred to as Single Collateral DAI (SAI) and the newer one was called Multi-Collateral DAI (MCD).

Any acceptable collateral type has an associated set of risk parameters which include:

1. The Debt Ceiling
2. The Stability Fee
3. The Liquidation Ratio
4. The Liquidation Penalty

For example, ETH could be acceptable as collateral with the following risk parameters.

Sample ETH Risk Parameters

• Debt Ceiling:590 million DAI
• Stability Fee: 2%
• Liquidation Ratio: 150%
• Liquidation Penalty: 13%

Let’s imagine a MakerDAO user has assets of ETH 3 that he does not intend to dispose of for some extended period. He could pledge or stake this ETH by lodging it into a MakerDAO vault (a smart contract) and once locked inside, the system will allow him to borrow DAI against that collateral.

The MakerDAO system needs to know the current value of his collateral in US dollars. This is achieved using a Blockchain Oracle — a system designed to take data from the real world (e.g. the temperature in a given location, a stock price on a particular stock market) and make it available on the blockchain in a trusted fashion so that smart contracts can access it.

Let’s say that, at this moment, the price of one ETH is US$400 — that means his collateral is currently worth (3*400) US$1200 and thus 1200 DAI. The Liquidation Ratio of 150%, means that MakerDAO would be happy to issue a loan of 800 DAI against this — given that liquidating the collateral will thus yield 150% of the loan. The user does not have to take the full 800 though- he might instead be happier to take just 600 DAI giving him a liquidation ratio of 200%. When the user draws down the loan, new DAI is minted and issued to him and this DAI can be used in the same way as any DAI bought from a cryptocurrency exchange. This is the mechanism by which new DAI comes into existence.

Loans don’t come for free and the borrower is asked to pay an annual rate of interest specified by the stability fee (2% in this example). The proceeds of the stability fee are used to provide rewards for all the other entities that are needed to keep the MakerDAO system stable and thus preserve the 1 DAI = 1 US$ rate. There is no set time period for the loan, but the stability fee will continue to the charged until the loan is repaid.

If the user wants to recover the staked ETH at sometime in the future, he uses the smart contract to pay over the borrowed DAI and the accumulated stability fee. The ETH will be released from the vault and the repaid DAI is destroyed (often referred to as being burned). Thus the overall supply of DAI in circulation decreases.

It is important for confidence in the system that the loans of outstanding DAI continue to be backed by a sufficiently large amount of collateral. Lets say our user above had borrowed the maximum 800 DAI and a few days later the price of Ethereum drops dramatically to US$300 — now the collateral is only worth (3*300) US$900 and therefore the liquidation ratio has dropped to (900/800) 112.5%. In this case, the MakerDAO system of smart contracts will intervene and sell the collateral to recover the DAI that has been loaned.

Once the value of the asset falls causing the Liquidation Ratio to go below the threshold (150% in this case), the ETH locked in the vault is put up for auction on the blockchain and the funds raised are used to repay the DAI borrowed. In order to provide a strong disincentive to users to allow this to happen, the system also applies a Liquidation Penalty of 13% . Any of the assets remaining after the loan and penalty is paid off are returned to the user.

Users borrowing DAI in this way need to monitor their vaults keeping a cautious distance from the liquidation ratio threshold and either paying back DAI or lodging more collateral is their asset drops in value.

The MakerDAO Smart Contract Infrastructure

Figure 1 (taken from MakerDAO documentation⁴)shows the various smart contracts involved in implementing the MakerDAO system. Although the picture is quite complex, many users who buy their DAI from a cryptocurrency exchange may only interact with the DAI contract, using the transfer operation to move their DAI from person to person.

Because MakerDAO is intended to support very many diverse types of collateral in the future, much of the naming of the contracts and their methods is highly generic.

Assets (Like ETH, BAT etc) are referred to generally as Gems which are held in Urns and transferred to a Vat. Contracts like Flip, Flap and Flop look after arranging auctions to correct the system. These contracts and the users who invoke them act collectively in a game whose goal is to maintain the value of DAI at US$1

Figure 1 The Smart Contract Infrastructure that implements the MakerDAO

Maintaining the Dollar Peg

The fact that only way to create DAI is by backing it with collateral in the form of an asset such as ETH plays a strong part in keeping the DAI close to its target rate to the USD.

If the price of the underlying asset goes up — say the value of ETH in US dollars rises — this means that borrowers are suddenly able to borrow more DAI while keeping within the liquidation ratio rules. This increases the amount of DAI in circulation.

If the price of the underlying asset goes down — say ETH drops by 20%, then borrowers will worry that their collateral will be liquidated. This incentivizes them to pay back some of their DAI to make sure that they are not so close to the liquidation threshold and decreases the amount of DAI in circulation.

If they are inattentive to circumstances or they cannot pay back some of the DAI they borrowed, the Flip contract will be triggered to start auctioning off their collateral in exchange for DAI — thus decreasing the amount of DAI in circulation.

Liquidation Auctions

The intention is that any user can bid in these Liquidation Auctions, the goal of which is to ensure that all of the DAI issued remains fully collateralized in the face of falling prices of the underlying Asset.

In the Liquidations 1.2 system, which persisted up to May, 2021, these auctions took the form of a 2-phase English Auction. In the initial phase (called tend) bidders would bid increasing amounts of DAI for all of the collateral (say ETH) that was being offered for liquidation in that auction lot. Once the first phase is over, the amount of DAI being paid is set. The second phase of the auction (called dent) then bids decreasing amounts of the collateral asset to be exchanged for this fixed amount of DAI.

When the auction is complete, the winning bidder gets the collateral amount in exchange for the amount of DAI bid in phase 1. Any unsold collateral is returned to the original owner and the DAI goes into Maker’s.

The objective of the auctions is to attempt to get the DAI loan paid back in full, while at the same time auctioning off only the minimum collateral that is necessary to achieve this.

This auction interface becomes quite active whenever there is a significant fall in the value of cryptocurrencies that are used as collateral in MakerDAO. One particularly notable event occurred in March of 2020 that was dubbed “Black Thursday”⁵ when the value of Ethereum dropped from around $180 to $120. This triggered a large number of liquidation auctions for which there were an insufficient number of buyers. Opportunists made Zero-bids in the auction process and walked away with more than US$8 million in gains.

At the time of writing, the Liquidations 2.0 system⁶ has just been introduced. This is based on a Dutch auction that settles instantly and also allows the auction bidders to combine their bids with other De-Fi actions in a single transaction. This might, for example, allow a bidder to borrow DAI to pay for the collateral, sell the liberated collateral for DAI and repay the DAI loan all as part of a single transaction (Flash Loan).

Most of the time, the liquidation will ensure the the outstanding DAI is fully paid off. Indeed, if the liquidation penalty is counted, the event is net positive for the system as a whole. If, however, the crash in value of the collateral asset is rapid and severe, then it is possible that there is a shortfall. This is a loss of value to the MakerDAO system and is referred to as Protocol-Debt and this must be paid off using the System Surplus which is built up from the stability fees charged on all of the DAI loans that are issued.

The Peg Stabilization Module

Liquidation activity was exceptionally high during the famous Black Thursday event⁵. One of the factors that aggravated this was a shortage of DAI liquidity. The bidders taking part in the liquidation auctions could not get their hands on sufficient DAI quickly and this dampened the efficiency of the auctions. One solution to this was to allow one of the popular centralized stable coins (USDC) to be used as collateral in a vault¹⁴. This would mean that in a crisis, anyone with US dollars could purchase USDC, lock it in a MakerDAO vault and then use the DAI raised to participate in liquidation auctions. Thus it acted as an emergency source of DAI liquidity.

Initially, USDC was added as a collateral type, but since it’s stable value did not fit very well with Liquidation auctions with their minimum bid increments, the decision was taken to switch off liquidation for this asset type and a fairly low debt ceiling of US$ 20m was initially set.

After some further experimentation and experience, the solution arrived at was the creation of a new facility called the Peg Stability Module¹⁵. This module allows USDC stable coin to be deposited into a vault generating 1 DAI for each USDC deposited. There is no stability fee involved — just a small percentage (called tin — currently 0.1%) on the way in and on the way out (called tout — currently 0%). Unlike a collateralized loan, the USDC becomes the property of the MakerDAO system. Once the USDC is locked, anyone can withdraw it in exchange for DAI until the point where the stock runs out.

This effectively means that if DAI moves outside the range of $1— $1.001 then an immediate arbitrage opportunity is created where any user can buy under- valued DAI (obtained for <$1) and swap it for USDC or conversely swap USDC (obtained for $1) for the over-valued DAI using the Peg Stability Module.

The existence of the Peg Stability Module has been very effective and at the time of writing, over 2.6 billion DAI (out of a total of 5.1 billion issued) are backed by USDC stable coins held in the PSM. Inevitably this does mean that the fortunes of the decentralized DAI stable coin are somewhat intertwined with those of the USDC centralized stable coin and any other stable coins that are added to the PSM system in future.

The DAI Savings Rate

Another mechanism that the central bank of MakerDAO has to control the money supply is the DAI savings rate. Users who choose to hold their wealth in DAI can place this DAI on deposit with MakerDAO where it will earn a return determined by the current Dai Savings Rate. The funds are locked when on deposit and are therefore removed from circulation. By raising the DAI savings rate, the MakerDAO can depress the DAI supply in the market and by lowering it, it will cause more DAI to be withdrawn and come into circulation. The DAI savings rate should be lower than the typical stability fee charged when minting new DAI.

MKR — the Backstop Currency for DAI

When the MakerDAO project was created, in addition to DAI, a second token was created to help to run the system. This coin was called a MKR and an initial amount of 1 million of these were created. The individuals holding these coins govern the MakerDAO system and are entitled to vote on all changes to the system.

The identities of the major holders of MKR are not that easy to determine — this may be due to the fact that the MakerDAO’s designers wanted to preserve the privacy of the holders in case someone tried to round them up to force a vote to go a particular way. A comment by founder Rune Christensen⁸ sheds some light on the initial distribution:

40% was distributed as salaries for founding team members

60% was retained by the MakerDAO foundation — later 5–10% was sold for ETH

In September, 2018 venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (known as a16z) purchased 6% of MKR⁸ for USD $15m forming a relationship with MakerDAO where they assist with the running of the project in a variety of ways.

At the time of writing this, the MKR token was owned by around 80,000 distinct Ethereum addresses. Some of these are undoubtedly belonged to Cryptocurrency exchanges, so it is likely that the ownership is more diverse, but those who vote are still quite small in number

One of the functions that the holders of MKR serve is to act as a backstop for DAI. If a huge devaluation in the assets used as collateral takes place and the Liquidation auctions do not raise enough DAI, this will cause a rise in the Protocol Debt — an amount denominated in DAI which represents currency that is no longer sufficiently backed by suitable collateral. This triggers a Flopper auction where the MakerDAO system mints new MKR coins and auctions them off for DAI. This eliminates the Protocol Debt at the expense of diluting all the holders of MKR. Existing holders of MKR typically participate in these auctions acting as keepers of the system motivated by preserving the value of their existing MKR.

The MKR holders also absorb the surplus generated by the system. In the absence of any unusual events, the MakerDAO continuously accumulates stability fees on all outstanding DAI loans and also profits made from successful liquidation auctions. This builds up in the System Surplus buffer until it reaches a defined threshold (currently DAI 42.3m). At that point a Burn module is triggered which initiates a Flapper auction. This auctions off chunks of the System surplus in exchange for MKR. The MKR collected is burned thus reducing the supply of MKR and inflating the value of the coins in issue. This entire process can be viewed dynamically on https://makerburn.com.

Governance — Changing the Rules of the Game

The other reason for the existence of the MKR coin is as a tool to govern the MakerDAO. The holders of MKR act as members of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) making all significant decisions for the system as a whole. All of the parameters discussed above (including DAI Savings Rate, Stability Fees, Liquidation Penalty etc) can all be changed

While the ultimate goal of the MakerDAO was to be fully decentralized, it was extremely difficult to do this from the outset. Consequently, a MakerDAO Ecosystem Growth Foundation (MEGF)⁹ was established in the Cayman Islands which is a conglomerate of subsidiaries which own assets and run projects that are essential to the operation of the MakerDAO.

The intention is that these centralized entities will phase out by December, 2021 and we discuss the progress on this below.

Among the services currently being run by the foundation are various Internet services essential to the governance of MakerDAO including

chat.makerdao.com — a real-time chat room

forum.makerdao.com — discussion forums

vote.makerdao.com — Voting portal

Anyone can propose changes to the MakerDAO system. These can range for minor adjustments to system parameter values, through the allocation of funds to project activity up to the replacement of the smart contract logic that drives the system.

Typically items are proposed and discussed initially in chat rooms and discussion forums. Votes are typically of two types. The first of these are called Governance Polls where a proposition is put to the electorate to indicate if they are in favor of not. Often the outcome of these Governance polls leads to an Executive Vote. Here, the changes are codified in the form of an Ethereum smart contract called an Executive Spell. If the outcome of the Executive Vote is positive, then the Executive Spell gets executed on the blockchain with administrative privileges. This updates parameter values in place, calls contracts to effect changes, allocates funds to specified addresses and can even replace entire contracts within the MakerDAO ecosystem.

The votes are cast using the Governance Portal at vote.makerdao.com. Voters lock up an amount of MKR and then pledge it to a vote outcome. The MKR is returned once the vote is completed.

Governance — Emergency Shutdown

The MakerDAO is a complex system involving lots of different types of users, many different types of collateral and a set of price Oracles that feed outside information into the system to allow it to operate. There is a lot that could go wrong.

One of the things that MKR holders are allowed to vote on through the voter portal is to initiate an Emergency Shutdown of the system — This is sometimes referred to as a Global Settlement. It is understood that this is an extremely low probability event and the procedures and rules are largely present to assure users that there is a plan in the case of some catastrophic event that threatens to destroy the system.

Holders of MKR can invoke the Emergency Shutdown through vote.makerdao.com by pledging their MKR coins. Any coins pledged are immediately burned acting as a disincentive to malicious actors. Once the threshold (currently 75,000 MKR) is reached, then the shutdown is invoked. At current prices this means that MKR holders would need to collectively burn around US$240 million to trigger the mechanism though in a crisis situation, the dollar value of MKR might well be radically different.

Once the shutdown is triggered, most of the contracts are frozen as are all the exchange rates existing at shutdown. The intention is that all DAI holders will later be able to withdraw a mix of collateral from MakerDAO vaults that is equivalent to their DAI holding at the frozen exchange rates. Any excess above this amount will be available to the vault holders to withdraw. A blog posting¹¹ lays out more details of the post-shutdown actions and also outlines a scenario whereby the MakerDAO system could be restored using new contracts once the cause of the Emergency Shutdown has been determined and rectified.

Dissolving the MakerDAO foundation

A lot of the coordination of the MakerDAO since its inception was initiated and guided by the MakerDAO foundation. This is a centralized entity that could hire developers, initiate projects and it also held a substantial amount of MKR tokens allowing it to ensure that critical votes were cast.

From the beginning, the MakerDAO foundation’s existence was envisaged as temporary and lately¹² a deadline has been set to complete the dissolution of the foundation by December 31st, 2021. This has been accompanied by a series of actions intended to decentralize all of the activities that the foundation has been responsible for. On May 3rd, for example, they returned all of their MKR holdings (84,000MKR equivalent to US$447m at the time of transfer) to the control of the DAO¹⁰. Teams wishing to come together to improve aspects of the MakerDAO system can now propose those actions with an associated budget and have the proposals approved and funds allocated to them by Executive Vote of the MKR holders.

Some small aspects of the MakerDAO proved virtually impossible to decentralize. Ownership of MakerDAO trademarks and the intellectual property rights on the open-source software are examples. The solution to this was to setup a new entity called the DAI Foundation¹² which will be a not-for-profit foundation based in Denmark which will have strictly limited purposes.

MakerDAO’s Future

The MakerDAO has come a long way in 5 years. There are currently more than 5.3 billion DAI in existence backed by more than 30 different collateral types with a value of nearly US$8 billion locked up. The assets include many different cryptocurrencies beyond the original ETH as well as the USDC stablecoin. Experiments are underway to allow so called Real-World Assets (RWA) such as property, unpaid invoices etc. to be allowed as collateral for DAI loans.

The system has survived multiple major collapses in value of the collateral assets with very little deviation of the value of a DAI from its $1 target. It has acted sensibly as a partially decentralized entity and is taking definite and purposeful steps towards full decentralization. It continues to be a great experiment undergoing constant change as it expands. Every day that passes without major incident advances its credibility and importance and cements its role as a key tool in the blockchain universe.

This brief account of MakerDAO is intended to be current to mid-June, 2021. The system is changing rapidly though, so this snapshot will go out of date quickly. If you enjoyed reading this, please clap and if there are enough of these, I may update it in 6 months time to reflect the changes. Let me know about anything that is incorrect in the comments and I’ll try to fix it.

1. Dinkins, David, The Strange Story of Tether, the Digital Money that claims it is not money, CoinTelegraph, August 17, 2017, link
2. The Dai Stablecoin System, Original Whitepaper published on http://makerdao.com website, December, 2017, link
3. Christensen, Rune, DAI — Reddit Post explaining the origin of the DAI name, 2017, link
4. MakerDAO Documentation, The Maker Protocol Smart Contract Modules System, link, Accessed 8th January, 2020
5. Whiterabbit, Black Thursday for MakerDAO: $8.32 million was liquidated for 0 DAI, March 14th, 2020, https://medium.com/@whiterabbit_hq/black-thursday-for-makerdao-8-32-million-was-liquidated-for-0-dai-36b83cac56b6
6. The Maker Protocol’s Collateral Auction House (Liquidation System 2.0), https://docs.makerdao.com/smart-contract-modules/dog-and-clipper-detailed-documentation
7. Reddit post containing MakerDAO chat screenshot, https://preview.redd.it/i0oiabawvk531.png
8. MakerDao Medium Post, a16z crypto purchases 6% of MKR, backing Stablecoin Vanguard MakerDAO, https://medium.com/@MakerDAO/a16z-crypto-purchases-6-of-mkr-backing-stablecoin-vanguard-makerdao-ff410a692393
9. Introducing the Maker Ecosystem Growth Group, MakerDAO Blog Entry, February 11, 2019, https://blog.makerdao.com/introducing-the-maker-ecosystem-growth-group/
10. The Maker Foundation Returns Dev Fund Holdings to the DAO, Blog Entry May 3, 2021, https://blog.makerdao.com/the-maker-foundation-returns-dev-fund-holdings-to-the-dao/
11. Introduction to Emergency Shutdown in Multi-Collateral DAI, Blog Entry, August 12, 2019, https://blog.makerdao.com/introduction-to-emergency-shutdown-in-multi-collateral-dai/
12. The Maker Foundation Transfers Trademarks and Software IP to Independent Foundation , Blog Entry, December 31, 2019, https://blog.makerdao.com/the-maker-foundation-transfers-trademarks-and-software-ip-to-independent-dai-foundation/
13. Creating the Brand identity for the World’s First Unbiased Currency, Dai, Blog Entry, November 16, 2019, https://blog.makerdao.com/creating-the-brand-identity-for-the-worlds-first-unbiased-currency-dai/
14. USDC Approved by Maker Governance as the Third Collateral Type of the Maker Protocol, Blog Entry, March 17, 2020,https://blog.makerdao.com/usdc-approved-by-maker-governance-as-the-third-collateral-type-of-the-maker-protocol/
15. Maker Improvement Proposal 29, MIP29 Peg Stability Module, Proposed 9th November, 2020, https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip29-peg-stability-module/5071