Crypto Lending Platform MakerDAO Approves ‘Constitution’, Moves Ahead With Major Overhaul Called ‘Endgame’ Plan

MakerDAO’s community on Monday approved a comprehensive set of rules outlining how the $7 billion Maker lending platform will operate and make decisions in the future.

The approved proposals include Maker’s guiding principles called the “Constitution”, authored by Maker founder Rune Christensen, and lay a new foundation for the protocol’s management, development and investment of the reserves.

About 76% of voters supported the proposal, according to Maker’s governance page.

Maker is a lending platform that issues the $5.3 billion stablecoin DAI, backing its value with digital assets from borrowers, and increasingly with real-world assets such as liabilities from traditional financial institutions such as banks.

The platform is managed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called MakerDAO which manages the platform through proposals, community discussions and voting. Investors holding the platform’s governance token maker (MKR) can participate in polls, and their choices are weighted by the amount of tokens they own.

The approval marks a step forward in Maker’s major overhaul called “Endgame”, strengthened by the platform’s founder Rune Christensen. The initiative aims to overhaul how MakerDAO works at its core.

The proposal included breaking up the DAO’s current structure into smaller entities called SubDAOs, which are self-governing and self-sustaining entities with their own tokens within the MakerDAO ecosystem.

The plan also aims to increase platform revenue by investing a portion of Maker’s more than $7 billion reserves in real-world assets (RWA) and money market funds, and further decentralize support for the DAI stablecoin to make it more resistant to censorship and sanctions.

The movement is also restructuring the DAO’s governance by establishing new groups such as Constitutional Voter Committees (CVCs), Constitutional Delegates (CDs) and Constitutional Conservers (CCs).

The plan faced some pushback from Maker investor a16z in October. PaperImperium, a MakerDAO delegate, called out Maker to prevent delegates discussing Maker publicly under the new rules.

“While there are many imperfections in the Endgame reforms and the constitutional processes, we are better able to unite around the clean slate these reforms provide and work to make the new Maker as dynamic and successful as possible,” wrote delegate platform Frontier Research on Maker’s governance forum.