Unchained - Rune Christensen of MakerDAO Part 2: How Dai Stayed at $1 While ETH Crashed From $1,400 to $85 - Ep.105
Episode Date: February 5, 2019Rune Christensen, CEO and cofounder of MakerDAO, explains how multicollateral Dai will work, what happens if one type of collateral fails, and what happens when someone's collateralized debt position ...with multicollateral Dai needs to be liquidated. He also discusses who gets to participate in the various levels of governance with the MKR token, who owns those tokens and what the purpose of the Maker Foundation is. We also cover whether the CFTC would consider collateralized debt positions to be derivatives and therefore under its purview, how Dai is being used and how much education is required for people to use the system. Thank you to our sponsors! CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unchained Microsoft: https://twitter.com/MSFTBlockchain Tokensoft: https://www.tokensoft.io Episode links: MakerDAO: https://makerdao.com/en/ Rune Christensen: https://twitter.com/RuneKek Previous Unchained episode on stablecoins with Rune and Philip Rosedale of High Fidelity: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-its-so-hard-to-keep-stablecoins-stable/ Unconfirmed episode with Rune on Andreessen Horowitz’s $15 million investment: https://unchainedpodcast.com/rune-christensen-of-makerdao-on-its-15-million-from-andreessen-horowitz-ep-039/ Part 1 of my interview with Rune: https://unchainedpodcast.com/rune-christensen-of-makerdao-part-1-how-to-keep-a-crypto-collateralized-stablecoin-afloat/ Digital Asset Research report on MakerDAO: https://www.digitalassetresearch.com/our-products/#in-depth-research CFTC smart contracts primer prohibiting derivatives contracts that are traded on exchanges that are supposed to be registered with the CFTC and are not. https://www.cftc.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/LabCFTC_PrimerSmartContracts112718.pdf Nice recap of how Dai has performed as ETH has dropped in price: https://medium.com/@mikeraymcdonald/single-collateral-dai-9-months-in-review-b9d9fbe45ab MKR Tools website: https://mkr.tools/tokens/dai Description of Maker Tools: https://medium.com/@mikeraymcdonald/announcing-the-new-mkr-tools-e32466f1c3db Maintaining its peg as ETH dropped: https://medium.com/makerdao/volatile-times-dai-as-a-safe-haven-2f017453e9f1 MakerDAO and Wyre partnership: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/makerdao-and-wyre-give-businesses-immediate-access-to-dai-stablecoin-in-over-thirty-countries-including-usa-300696400.html ETH in DeFi projects: https://mikemcdonald.github.io/eth-defi/ Placeholder VC blog post: https://www.placeholder.vc/blog/2019/1/23/maker-investment-thesis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. If you've been enjoying Unchanged, pop into iTunes to give us a top rating or review. That helps other listeners find the show. Within months, cryptocurrency anti-money laundering regulations go global. Are you ready? Avoid stiff penalties or blacklisting by deploying effective anti-money laundering tools for exchanges and crypto businesses. The
same tools used by regulators.
Cypher Trace is securing the crypto economy.
Considering using digital securities as a way to grow in 2019,
Tokensoft's trusted platform provides the security and compliance tools to leverage
blockchain technology and enter new markets with confidence.
Visit us at tokensoft.io or on Twitter at Tokensoft Inc.
Do you have an idea for a blockchain app but are worried about the time and cost it will
take to develop?
The folks at Azure have you covered.
The new Azure blockchain dev kit is a free download that gives you the tools needed to get your first app running in less than 30 minutes.
Learn more at AKA.m.m.S. slash unchained or by following them on Twitter at MSFT blockchain.
My guest today is Roon Christensen of MakerDAO, who is back for part two of our dive into MakerDow.
where we left off last week, and for listeners who did not listen to that episode, I highly recommend that you check that out.
Plus, also, Rune was on the podcast almost a year ago to discuss stable coins generally.
So if you don't understand stable coins, that gives a really good overview of all the different types of stable coins.
And now in this past episode, last week's episode, and this episode, we are diving deep into Maker Dow and how it works.
And where we left off last week was we had started to talk a little bit about multi-collateral die.
That episode kind of talked a lot about the single collateral die system.
So Rune, can you describe for me multi-collateral die?
And let's do the same as we did last week, where you describe the process by which somebody creates a multi-collateral die for themselves and then redeems it without their collateral falling below the 150% threshold.
Yes, absolutely.
So, well, so I mean, it's actually the same process, right?
It's just now you have a choice of using many different tokens.
So it would be, you know, it could be something like you take a tokenized stock, right?
So like Apple shares that have been turned into tokens that are available as you see 20 tokens on Ethereum in some sort of regulated environment, like some sort of regulated front end.
And you then just deposit them into the system, just like you do with Ethereum.
single collateral die. And then the system will have some specific risk parameters for that
particular type of collateral using that depends on how risky it is. So something like stocks
is going to have a sort of a medium level of risk parameters to it. So it's not going to be
considered as risky and as expensive, like as expensive to borrow with as something like
Ethereum or cryptocurrencies. But also it's not as as stable, considered as stable as something like
tokenized bonds or maybe other stable coins.
And yeah, so you put in your asset, you take out a loan, and you can then choose to wait
for as long as you want before you pay back that loan.
But of course, when you pay back the loan, you also have to pay what's in Maker called
the stability fee, which is basically the interest rate of the system, right?
The cost to borrow the die from the system over time.
And once you pay it back, the system automatically unlocks your collateral and allows you to retrieve your tokenized stock out again.
And the reason why this is interesting to do is because it allows you to keep your exposure to the tokenized stock.
But still unlock, like, you know, still access liquidity in it, right?
And actually spend, sort of spend the money that's in the stock without actually selling the stock.
So if the price of the stock goes up, you actually still get the benefit of that.
And then later you can choose to pay back your debt and then just get your full access and sort of like take it back into your own wallet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I find the system so interesting because it's basically a way to just give yourself a loan out of assets that you already have.
One thing that I want to ask though is so with multi-collateral die, let's say eventually there comes a point where maybe there's 20 different assets that are allowed as collateral for the maker Dow system.
So let's say that I own only two of those assets.
Can I create a die for myself with only two?
Or could I even, what if I only have one?
Could I make a single collateral die for myself at that point?
Or how much diversification will you require from people who are making multi-collateral
die for themselves?
Yeah.
So I mean, so let me be clear because, so it's like multi-collateral dye.
It doesn't mean that you have to use multiple collateral.
like as a user when you take a loan for the system.
So it really works exactly the same way.
It's just you have different choices in what kind of collateral you want to use.
So if you only have, let's say, a tokenized stock,
or you only have, let's say, auger rep tokens or Digix tokens or Bitcoins or whatever,
even if there's a thousand different collateral types,
you can still get direct access to the loan just like the way the system currently works.
And the reason is because the risk is pulled across all users?
Yeah, exactly.
And like I said, the only thing that's different is the actual risk parameters, right?
So if you use, let's say, Bitcoin as collateral, like if you use something like WBTC,
you know, like a tokenized Bitcoin and Ethereum, that's going to probably have, you know,
a higher stability fee and require a higher level of collateralization than if you use something like, you know,
a tokenized government bond or something, right?
Like some sort of asset that is very stable and very unlikely to crash.
Okay.
So basically you charge essentially the users for the risk that they're taking based on the
asset that they put up for collateral.
Yeah.
And this actually ties back into the dynamic we were talking about last time,
which is that when things go well, MKR holders get paid, right?
And MKR holders are, in addition to the die holders and like the addition to die in a system,
that's a stable point, right?
You have the MKR holders, which run the governance of the system and who actually decides, like, makes the decisions on something like how much is a stability fee for tokenized bonds and what is the liquidation ratio and so on.
And they try to set these parameters so they make as much money as possible, but also make the system very attractive for users, right?
And as long as everything goes well, they keep getting in, you know, they keep getting money from the system, right?
The stability fee goes to actually buy and burn the MCAR supply.
So the supply of MQA fault over time.
But, and this is how the risk is pooled, right?
If one of those particular, many, like if there's 20 different collateral types and one of them fails or something like that, right, then it doesn't matter which collateral type it is because the whole system is sort of tied together, right?
So as long as any collateral fails anywhere, the MKR token and sort of the whole governance community as a whole is always responsible for recapitalizing that through inflation of the MKR token.
So MKR is really what ties it all together, right?
Because it means that even though some dye is created out of tokenized stocks and some die is created out of Bitcoins, ultimately the thing that sort of fundamentally underwrites the stability and sort of,
guarantees liquidity and fungibility in the system is the fact that all the die is also protected
by MKR inflation, right? In case that the first line of defense, the collateral fails,
there is that second line of defense, which is the MKR inflation, that can then step in and make sure
that even if your die was created out of some terrible collateral that soon after failed,
that doesn't matter because that die still has the same protection as all other die from
the MKR function.
So you keep talking about the MKR holders.
Who gets to be an MKR holder?
So MKR is actually the first
ERISE20 token, as far as I'm aware.
And it's one of the only
EOSY20 tokens that wasn't distributed in ICO,
but rather was sold in this very
deliberate fashion to community members early on.
So MKR was kind of was distributed
by the foundation,
very slowly over time and in a very, you know, initially in this very kind of like, you know,
deliberately obscure manner where only those who really knew what they were doing and really
was seeking out a stablecoin project and then came upon maker and found out about it,
were able to, to buy into this asset.
And then over time it started.
How did you find those people and verify their identity and,
and give it to them if it wasn't through a traditional ICU?
I mean, it was actually just people coming into a chat room and basically buying MQR.
So it was, I mean, and initially it really was like just individuals in the community that
joined and started contributing and then actually were able to like get like able to buy MKR.
And at the very beginning, of course, at very low prices because we did.
didn't actually really, you know, in the early days when we started distributing the MKR token,
you know, we didn't really have much of a burn rate and everyone was kind of volunteers.
And in fact, actually, the initial MKR distribution was primarily as reward for those who were
volunteering, right? Because it was a very low value asset, but people sort of were willing to
put in the work because they could see the long-term potential. And then after a while, like
the people who had been rewarded with MKR and as well as the,
those had been doing those direct purchases from the foundation,
then started trading them on secondary markets,
such as actually OASIS Dex,
which is our own decentralized exchange that the foundation created.
And yeah,
then the next phase was that when we started selling institutions.
So that was kind of when the price of MCRs act,
like when,
yeah,
when the price of MCR actually started increasing
and sort of crypto started going mainstream,
we stopped doing any sort of sales to regular to individuals.
but rather started selling to institutions
who were then able to do these larger purchases
and sort of where everything was properly, you know,
compliant and done sort of in a proper professional fashion.
And people continue to be able to then buy...
And so, for instance, that would be like Andresen Horowitz,
who were some of the other big names?
Yeah, so, I mean, Andreessen Horowitz is probably the best example.
But actually, there is a, it's a very large amount of institutions
at this point as well.
There's also polychain.
that was very prominent.
They were actually the very first institution.
And what's kind of interesting is that they actually went and proposed,
like the deal they made was kind of like they negotiated with the entire community.
And they actually made like a public proposal to the community and had the community
ratify or kind of like agreed to that proposal kind of like as a part of the decentralized
governance process.
Yeah.
And it's kind of funny because isn't that on Reddit?
They were posted on Reddit.
Yeah.
we also had a forum and
yeah like there is we we had some
very like we had a lot of very radical
experiments in when it came to like
direct community participation and kind of like direct
democracy I guess you can say and like direct
control of the project but
in the end that was actually only possible
during the very early stage when the community was
basically tiny there came a point
where you know
the community started so like started really growing
and then it just became
like it was just no longer possible to have that kind of total democratization of everything
right and and the foundation started becoming more structured and and then it just kept doing the
same kind of deals as the very first one with polygene and when you say when you say that
it was because like once it got bigger you couldn't get enough votes like you know because
random people that weren't kind of paying attention everything were you know they had these
tokens, but they weren't participating in votes and stuff like that. Is that why?
Well, so actually our main approach to governance is actually, I mean, so we do use votes,
and I do talk about voting in terms of controlling maker, but when we think about governance
in terms of how we make, like how the community makes decisions at the social layer, you know,
as like as the group of people, basically. Rather than doing it based on voting, we do it based
on consensus decision making.
So it's not really about who approves.
It's about who opposes, you know,
and then something can be done if there's no one in opposition
or there's no like significant opposition.
And the problem is basically, like that works really well
when you are super aligned and have like a very defined objective,
which is why, you know, for instance, it works in science, right?
And you can, you're going to have scientific consensus on very complicated topics
because you ultimately have, you know, everyone follows the scientific method, right?
But you can't do, like, you can't, you know, like, get consensus at scale on some topics such as, like, how does a startup navigate its competition or something?
So, like, we actually thought it was going to be possible initially, but at some point we started realizing that because we were letting literally anyone come in and join the decision-making process and, in fact, sort of giving everyone a veto.
And amazingly, it worked for two years.
But eventually, it just became too big, right?
And it was clear that, like, we didn't actually have any instances as someone sort of trolling us and just like abusing the process.
But it became clear to everyone.
Like the entire community basically reached a consensus on the fact that it was time to sort of structure.
And in order to start focusing on actually delivering the project, the foundation had to become more structured and sort of more centralized, basically.
And based on a more traditional process of just having a core team that makes a decision, right?
And so now is that the foundation?
Yeah.
So that is a maker foundation.
And from there, we were then able to actually launch the actual, you know, maker platform and the Dye stablecoin system on the blockchain.
And then when that happened, that's when the real governance started, right?
Because that's when the voting actually became a thing on the blockchain.
And you could use the tokens to vote on.
and stuff like the risk parameters.
So essentially now the maker holders,
that's what their main function is,
but it's not to choose who else becomes
these kind of institutional votes.
Like the big maker holders,
that will still be decided by the foundation.
And then the general population of maker holders
are deciding which assets can be used as collateral
and kind of how much risk each asset presents.
Is that it?
Yeah. And it's really like, and what's important about how the risk assessment is done is, it's very important. It doesn't become a popularity contest, right? And it's very important. It doesn't become kind of like arbitrary rule by MKR holders or even MKR whales. Because in that case, you can very easily imagine that there would be a lot of bias introduced, right? And it would end up becoming kind of like a contest of like what other tokens do the MKR holders hold most of?
because then let's give that one some really good risk for remnants so we can pump our backs basically, right?
And that's obviously very bad possibility, right?
Yeah, I mean, and that's really the fundamental, like the fundamental issue we've grappled with when trying to design the governance process.
And what we came up with is, yeah, it's basically what I was talking about earlier, right?
It's consensus decision-making process.
And it's trying to emulate the scientific process, right?
So it's kind of like a two-layer process where the first layer is kind of like is this scientific debate basically,
a place where people who are actually subject matter experts openly debate based on, you know, on data and on models and on theory that all has been, you know, that all is kind of like known as like known by the community and especially known by the experts to be, you know,
the scientifically approved way you do risk management, right?
And here the key really is to look at existing traditional mechanisms, right?
So we're not really trying to reinvent the real, rather.
We're trying to build a system where we can apply all that existing knowledge to,
so we can apply it in a more efficient way.
But we don't claim to, you know, have reinvented math or something or reinvented, you know,
risk, various risk models that exist.
rather we want to actually apply those very rigorously and in a very transparent manner.
So we have these various risk experts who are basically a part of the community
and ultimately like the very best of them and the very most dedicated of them,
they actually end up getting chosen by MKR governance.
They get essentially elected into what we call risk teams and actually receive salary
directly from the maker system.
So they actually will receive a part of the stability fee.
income stream. And they will then sort of present the data and the models and preside over
this scientific debate that ultimately should result in scientific consensus on the things that
are clear enough that you can actually reach a consensus on them. And the job of the MCI holders
from a crypto-economic point of view is to then act as essentially kind of like a very slow
oracle on this process. And right now it's envisioned to be every quarter. So basically every
quarter, there will be sort of this, there'll be the end of a cycle of the, of the risk assessment
debate, basically. And the things that were able to, the things that the experts and the, and the,
risk community was able to reach scientific consensus on is then sort of proposed for M.Careholders
to vote into the, like, like, you know, to, to vote into the core of the system and actually
change the parameters in the system. And the M. Careholders then have to, you know, to vote to vote into the core of the system.
And the MKal holders then have to ensure that the process was actually followed, right?
And it's not some sort of, you know, some sort of attack or some sort of, like, there's some sort of bias in there or something.
And there's actually, like, there's like multiple things in play here because there's even the possibility that if, you know, the proposal is malicious.
But then a big MKR wheel still tries to push it through because he just has more votes than the others, despite this.
proposal being actually not the outcome of the of the scientific process.
Then there's, then other M.K.O.holders can actually trigger, you know, an emergency shutdown by
considering that a governance attack and then re-deploy the system without the malicious voter in
there. So there's really a lot of complexity to like, wow.
Like the MKO holders have this kind of like very mechanical, a kind of like very security-focused
role, I guess you can say.
That's very interesting. It's essentially like hard forking that whale out of the system.
Yeah, exactly.
Then this means, does this mean that for the various assets that are added that they will all have different minimum thresholds and points at which they'll be liquidated because of the risk profiles?
And then they all have different stability fees and et cetera. And also liquidation penalties.
Yeah, they should all, I mean, in theory, they will all be completely unique based entirely around like the exact data for that particular asset and the models that apply to it.
And then MQO holders, their job is to basically, like those of them that do have the ability to participate in the debate will of course participate in a scientific debate directly.
But those that don't then just have to sort of be observers that, you know, that this is indeed like this is indeed the result.
of a scientific debate, right?
And it's not some guy just trying to push something through
because he has a lot of MKR and he,
this is a favorite token or something, right?
That's really the role that like the average MCR holder plays.
So even if you have no idea about risk assessment,
there's still a, you know, there's still a role to play as an MKR holder
because you can still be sort of the, you know, the final line of security, right?
Like the final sanity check to ensure that the system isn't getting abused.
And what was the name of these MKR holders that have the special role?
What was their name again?
You're like, I mean, so there is, there is this type of, of actor in the ecosystem
called a risk team.
So these are actual risk professionals that are sort of form these teams and are then
elected by MKR holders to actually receive like salary, like receive a compensation out
of the system to then work full time on, on building the risk models and, and,
gathering the data and sort of presiding over the overall scientific debate.
Right. And you guys hired one recently, or not that recently, but I guess last year,
who worked in traditional finance in a role like this, correct?
Yeah. And actually, and you're probably referring to Stephen Becker, who was hired as our head
of risk. But today has actually, today is actually the president of the foundation.
And that's correct. So he is, so, so today he is the president.
he's very deeply involved in a lot of the operations of the foundation.
But he is also still running what we call the temporary foundation risk team.
So because today is still the very early days, you know, we are like we're making sure that the bare minimum is there,
which means the one risk team that actually have risk professionals that can, you know,
that can actually produce these model and actually produce something that is very sound.
and, you know, again, made based on these objective scientific idea, like models, right, from the traditional space for MQLOL.
Although I'm not sure exactly how well those work.
I guess we'll find out.
But one thing I wanted to ask was, so earlier we walked through what happens if someone creates multi-collateral die and then just redeems it without their collateral falling below.
the threshold. But let's walk through what happens if their collateral does fall below their
minimum threshold, then what happens? So what happens is this, like, you know, the price
oracles see that the price is now crashed by whatever some amount. Let's say 20%. So they send in
the price of this asset is now 20% lower. And that change in price then gets your, you know,
if that's enough to get your precision below, let's say, 150% if that's a cutoff point,
then the moment that the data is pushed into the system that changes the, you know,
that changes the calculation in the system to below 150%.
Then the keepers, you know, the external agents that sort of monitor the system and act
to exploit profit opportunities they see in the system, they will immediately trigger an auction,
so a liquidation auction.
And once and then they'll trigger it and they will place a, you know, they'll place a bid
for the collateral. And basically the auction just says, hey, I want to sell this collateral.
How much do you want to pay for it? And people can choose to bid zero if they want to.
But of course, that's not really a good strategy, right? It's better to try to bid something where you can get,
you get a cheap rate that's below the market rate, but still pretty close. So no one else
is going to be able to bid better than you. Right. But then, so what happens is I think they
try to recoup the amount in die that was in that.
CDP, but then once they do that, then they try to recoup as much of the value of the collateral
as possible for the owner, right?
Yeah, that's correct.
Like there's two different options.
Yeah.
Can you describe that part?
Yeah.
So, I mean, so this is actually really complicated, right?
But yeah, so the first and main goal of the system is to recapitalize the diet, right?
So ensure that there is enough collateral in the system to back the outstanding value of diet.
So first order of business is to basically say this CDP, like this loan is now no longer safe.
So the dye that has been backed by this loan needs to be removed from the supply.
So we need to contract the supply to be in line with the fact that the collateral base has now contracted.
So yeah, so first the first thing the system tries to do is basically saying, well, actually it just tries, like first it actually assumes it's not able to recoup all of the die from the market.
So first it just says, here's all the collateral.
how much die are you willing to pay for that?
And if someone then bids, like in this scenario, let's say that the debt is 100,
and the liquidation point is $150, or like 150%, sorry,
so there's $150 worth of collateral and there's $100 worth of debt, right?
The system will then take the $150 worth of collateral and be like,
how much, like, does someone want to buy this?
Basically, anyone can submit a bit.
And Akiba will then most likely submit, you know,
maybe someone's going to be cheeky first and be like,
I'll pay $5 for the $150 worth of collateral.
But because of the value of the collateral,
if it actually is $150 or maybe slightly lower than that
because it's the process of a crashing,
is the middle of a crash or something, right?
Then soon enough, someone will actually say,
I'm willing to pay, you know,
I'm willing, like, I mean, someone will say,
I'm willing to pay $100 for the $150 worth of collateral.
And once the system knows that,
so once someone is willing to pay $100,
then the system,
system has had its, you know, has achieved its primary objective, which is to ensure that it
can take in a hundred die to contract supply, right? So then the next step is to be like,
okay, so actually I can, I know I can sell this collateral for a hundred die. Then actually,
my goal is to just sell as little collateral as possible for a hundred die. So I can see if there's
something left or where I can give back to the owner. So the next, like so, so the next phase of
the auction, if it indeed gets this far, because it doesn't always get this far, because
sometimes the value of collateral has just crashed below 100 die already, you know, while the auction is in process.
But if that doesn't happen, then the next phase of the auction is the system then says,
how, like, you know, who's going to, like people basically who, you know, I need 100 die.
How much collateral do you want for me to give me 100 die?
So then people will, so then one guy would bid maybe, I'll give you 100 die if you gave me
$140 worth of collateral.
And then someone else would be like, well, you know, just give me $120 worth of collateral, right?
I'll give you $100. Die for that because it's still a great deal, right?
And eventually, like eventually this should equilibrate towards just the actual, you know, like the value of the debt, right?
So someone is going to basically, you know, bid 100, 100 die and want about $100 worth of collateral, like maybe $102 worth of collateral or something, right?
So there will actually be still a decent surplus, like $48 if the CDP holder is really lucky,
that then is left over in the system and is then given back to the CDP holder.
Okay.
So now I think we've walked through most of the nuts and bolts of MakerDAO.
We are going to discuss how all the different partnerships that MakerDAO has.
We're going to discuss regulatory issues.
But first, a quick word from our fabulous.
list sponsors. Getting your blockchain app off the whiteboard and into production can be a big undertaking.
From connecting user interfaces to integrating disparate systems and data, blockchain app development can be
time intensive and costly. Well, the folks at Azure have you covered. With a few simple clicks,
the Azure blockchain workbench can create a blockchain network for you, pre-integrated with the cloud
services needed to build your app. And with their new development kit, users can extend their app to
ingest messages from bots, edge devices, databases, and more. It's free to download and gives you
the tools you need to get your first app running in less than 30 minutes. To learn more about the
Devkit and how to get started, visit AKA.m.ms slash unchained or follow them on Twitter at
MSFT blockchain. Issuing a digital security on the blockchain can be a significant undertaking,
particularly to ensure compliance requirements are met. Tokensofts,
trusted platform provides security in a world of uncertainty by working with top legal and financial
experts so that your digital assets are secure. Tokensoft leads the market in providing technological
tools to support tax, banking, and securities regulations for issuers of digital assets. We are
honored to have supported leading companies in 2018. To learn more about issuing digital securities
successfully, visit tokensoft.io or follow them on Twitter at
Tokensoft, Inc.
Within months, cryptocurrency anti-money laundering regulations go global.
Are you ready?
Avoid stiff penalties or blacklisting by deploying effective anti-money laundering tools
for exchanges and crypto businesses, the same tools used by regulators.
CipherTrace is securing the crypto economy.
Face it, regulations can stall or kill a fast-moving crypto business.
New Financial Action Task Force and European Union cryptocurrency AML
laws are coming soon. You could be hit with stiff fines or blacklisted, no matter where your
servers are in the world. Prepare now. Deploy the same powerful cipher trace tools used by regulators.
Protect your assets, streamline your compliance programs, and keep your exchange or crypto business
out of the regulators' crosshairs. Learn how effective anti-money laundering tools help keep your
crypto business safe and trusted. Learn more at CipherTrays.
dot com slash unchained.
CipherTrace is securing the crypto economy.
Back to my conversation with Roon Christensen of MakerDAO.
When do you expect to launch multi-collateral dye and with which assets?
So we've basically, like you can say, learned the lesson that we're not, we don't make any
estimations on when it's actually going to be done because like we really, like at this stage,
right, we are so, like it's so close, right?
I mean, the code is already, we actually released the code almost half a year ago at this point.
And we've formally verified almost the entire code base.
And there's only these very small pieces left that needs to be engineered.
And most of it is just in testing at this point.
And of course, there's going to be a very rigorous testing process.
But ultimately, yeah, it's like it basically is really close.
And it is also really close to the point where we actually, you know, we can actually,
we don't have to make an estimate of when it's going to launch.
we can actually commit to a hard launch date.
Once we reach that point, then we'll announce it everywhere.
But until then, basically, all we can say is it's very close.
And also very soon they'll be, you know, we'll actually give the community some very deep insight into, you know, the whole, like sort of the project management of the launch cycle.
Right.
And like the, the milestones and basically, you know, the entire scope of what's, what's still left.
to do.
And have you decided on at least what your next asset is that you'll use as collateral?
Yeah.
So that's the other really interesting thing that's happening in parallel, right?
Is the preparation for actually launching with some new collateral types.
And so right now we still haven't, we haven't published anything, but basically the goal
is that we'll just launch with whatever it's available at launch, right?
the goal is that, so right now we're looking at basically most of the top, like the top
ERC20 tokens and also the top stable coins on like ERC 20 stable coins.
And at some point, the foundation risk team, and actually will be relatively soon, will then
come like release, like first release a set of models and then also kind of like propose some,
some potential data sources that these models can then be applied to in order to,
you know, in order to synthesize the risk parameters for these different collateral types
that we can available launch.
But in general, like our approach is that, you know, it's not really a question of what
is going to be collateral.
It's a question of what are the risk parameters going to be?
Because from a technical standpoint, the system can really support like anything as collateral.
Like sometimes if you have a weird token, it needs to be, like, there needs to be built what we call an adapter to make it, you know, actually fit into the system.
But unless a token is literally a scheme or just like a horrible, like a terrible project with no redeeming qualities, it's actually always going to be included as collateral eventually.
because it's only a question of technical bandwidth.
But from the risk assessment,
or like the governance point of view,
the risk process and the risk models
are always able to just take into account
whatever risk is inherent in that asset.
So it's actually possible to be very diverse,
rather than be very inclusive of all the different tokens
on Ethereum in a long run.
Okay, so this is something that I think I had a misconception about.
So you're going to, once you get the models, then it sounds like you're just going to allow people to use many, many different assets as collateral and you're not going to add them individually.
Because I thought, you know, you would sort of suss out the risk for like maybe five or ten at the most.
But it sounds like you're just going to allow people to use whatever for collateral at a certain point.
Yeah, well, I mean, so in practice, it is going to be the way you're talking.
So in practice, they do have to be added individually.
And there is like some level of, you know, like technical overhead to adding a new collateral
type, especially in the beginning as we're, you know, still kind of getting started and getting
the processes up and running.
So initially it will be, like it will be based on what are the most, like again, right,
what are the top ERC20 tokens on Ethereum and one of the top stable coins that we can sort
of, you know, we can get ready for launch.
But when you do launch, do you expect that you'll,
launch with like 10 assets that people could use? Or do you expect it'll only be like two or how many
at launch do you expect to have available? Yeah, I hope it's going to be closer to 10 than two and
maybe even more than that. I mean, that's definitely, that would definitely be ideal, I think,
and also very much possible. All right. All right. So it sounds like it's undecided.
So TBD, check back here. I'm sure I will have updates when that happens.
So something that's really, really, really interesting that I was totally fascinated by was,
so if we think of liquidations on these CDPs as similar to kind of like defaults on loans,
digital asset research had this pretty interesting report that showed that across a lot of months,
defaults were at about 1 to 2 percent, but then there were a few months when they reached as high as,
well, in one month, although the system.
was really small at this point. It was 28%. And the report actually only went up to September.
And I know that there were a large number of defaults in November and December. So, of course,
you know, making only comments about how the system is still small and it's still kind of early,
do you feel like you have any conclusions you can draw about how people behave when they have
this much responsibility over their own loan versus, you know, if they had taken the loan out in a more
traditional way? Yeah, I mean, I've been incredibly fascinated by being able to see how, like,
how people interacted with the system in this first year. And I mean, especially considering the
crazy circumstances of just like this persistent Ethereum crash, right, they just kept getting
worse and worse and worse. And I think the main, the main interesting takeaway that we've
observed is, yeah, it's just like this, how good people have been at adding more collateral to the
positions and in general how people seem to have preferred adding more collateral rather than
de-leveraging, which I actually think is a little bit counterintuitive, but it's, but I mean,
that's apparently just the preference, right, of users. And then, like, there have been those
situations where a lot of people have been liquidated at once. And typically, those have always
been times where there's been kind of like a sustained, you know, there's been a sustained crash.
It's kind of been crashing and crashing and crashing and crashing. And then,
at the end of like a long sustained period, then suddenly there's like a really steep crash.
That seems to like catch a lot of people off guard because I guess many people they expect
after there's been like a long period of crashing, then it'll turn around right.
And then if and then they're actually willing to go to a pretty risky point in their CDPs there
and then can be caught off guard if there then is suddenly a steep crash.
Yeah.
So let's talk a little bit more about what you mentioned about how and this is partially why
I was so impressed when I was researching this.
Dye has basically maintained its value at around $1.
During this time when the price of ether at its high was $1,400 and then also hit a low below 100,
or sorry, below 100.
So how did the system keep that peg?
Yeah, it's quite amazing.
And actually, the answer is pretty simple, is that the system ended up absorbing almost
2% of the entire Ethereum supply.
So basically, as the
price of Ethereum crashed,
more and more of the entire
Ethereum ecosystem
entered the system, basically, to
make sure that despite the
price of Ethereum crashing,
the supply of Dai actually kept growing
the whole time because there was just a
flood of Ethereum tokens entering the system.
So even though from the beginning,
the value of Ethereum had fallen
10 times or even more,
there were 100 times as much.
Ethereum in the system at that point. So even a 10x fallen price didn't matter because there's just so much Ethereum put into the system.
Let's switch to regulatory issues. I noticed that Coinbase has listed Dye and it's also listed MKR. But MKR is actually only listed in jurisdictions outside the U.S., which is I'm assuming for regulatory reasons. So how do the collateralized debt positions and Maker comply with CFTC regulation of derivatives and margin,
trading. Yeah. So I mean, so the question of regulation in crypto is actually, you know, it's a lot more
complex than you would think because the fact is that just isn't really legal clarity at all on
these things, right? In fact, even when, you know, the CFDC and the SEC, they go out and they make
statements, they are actually very careful to not really say something that's, you know, they don't
really try to, they don't really make very, like, precise statements. And this is typically also the case for
most other regulators around the world, except, like, there's a few notable exceptions, such as
Japan and Singapore that have actually been very, you know, been like, here are the guidelines.
This is exactly how it works.
You know, go ahead and innovate basically within this framework.
But in most countries, the approach at this stage is still kind of wait and see, because on one
hand, you know, they don't want to stifle innovation.
They don't want to be like, you can't do this.
And then suddenly a bunch of startups move to another country, right?
but on the other hand, they also still a little bit scared.
You know, they're still like, it's still a bit unknown.
They're not really sure what actually needs to be done.
So right now, I mean, something like CDPs just is, like, it is way to kind of like,
there are multiple issues that are kind of like much closer on the horizon that,
for the regulators to deal with globally.
But in general, I mean, we basically, we've done a lot of research, right?
and we retain basically all the top lawyers,
and both in the US, but also all across the world, right?
Because, of course, there's a ton of work that goes into
dealing with the legal and regulatory
and even political challenges of trying to build
a decentralized financial infrastructure.
And, I mean, so in general, it seems like
because you had, like, as long as you have something
that is fully decentralized,
that really, you know, that in a lot of jurisdictions, including the U.S., that seems to be one of the big sort of factors that decides whether a regulator feels like they're compelled to step in to protect people.
Because, you know, traditionally, like the spirit of the law and really what regulators is all about is kind of like, you know, protecting honest people and maybe slightly naive people from, you know, smart and dishonest people, right?
So like, you know, confident schemes or whatever, like scams or pump and dumps and that kind of stuff, right?
Where there's a guy who's saying, you know, buy this because I'm totally going to make you rich.
And then after you buy it, he's like, uh, not going to make you rich after all, right?
You can't do that because when you told them they should buy it and they were going to make you rich or whatever, right?
like, you know, that actually created, like, effectively a legal claim in a sense, right?
And that's kind of, so that's the basis of the whole thing about ICO as being securities, right?
That if you sell a token and you go out and say, buy this token, it's going to make you rich,
you actually suddenly fall under a, like a part of the law.
Right, but in this case where it's more about derivatives, that involves the CFTC, not the SEC.
Yeah, and then, like, then the question really is,
is like in a legal sense in the, you know, under the common law precedence of the US is,
like does a CDP fall into the bucket of being a derivative?
So the thing like the thing that's really critical to to think about in this context is like
it's very, it's very much about the transaction.
So it's not so like the concept of like a smart contract.
So like a piece of code on the blockchain that holds some money.
and hold some, you know, hold some assets and has like, some debt, that doesn't really, like,
that fundamentally doesn't really make sense in a, in a regulatory sense, because there's no such
thing in, like, the real world, right? Because the way derivatives work in the real world is,
it is, you know, it's kind of like you, it's a transaction where you basically, you know, you,
you sign a contract that says, like, I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to, or rather, like,
we're going to post some collateral.
at some point we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll sort of share it according to what we put in this contract
and then when you you know when you enter into that legal relationship that is when you again like
you get into that situation where are you know are you actually like you know you can't like
with derivatives for instance right you don't want to just have like random people do that kind
of stuff because you don't know what are they like what are the full implications of what
actually doing there, right? And again, it's just a smart contract just isn't the same thing,
right? I mean, there's no, you're not actually doing it in any sort of legal transaction.
You're not even dealing with a counterparty at all, right? You're actually like dealing with
yourself in a way, right? You're like sort of making a deal with your own assets. And ultimately,
it is just an ongoing, like I said, right, there's no clarity on this yet. And we're in touch
with like most of the regulators. And like, we, like, we,
what I think could happen, right, is that I think there are some places that are going to just say, for instance, as CDP is, I mean, it could be a CDP is a derivative. It could be CDP is a loan. It's a whatever. It could be all sorts of stuff, right? But the important thing is it still wouldn't, like, it wouldn't impact Maker itself. It would impact those that, you know, create, like those that actually enable those transactions, right? So it would be a question of what kind of front ends, you know, and what.
what does a front end into the system look like?
So it could, for instance, mean that some front ends would block.
Let's say if the US, for instance, decided it falls under some sort of regulation, right?
Then you would see kind of like you're seeing with a lot of decentralized exchanges,
the US would get blocked from interfaces, just give direct access to the, you know,
this is exposed directly to the underlying system.
And then you'd only have these more fully compliant interfaces that maybe
even had a license or something that would actually enable users to use the system.
And then at the same time, of course, you would have like proper sophisticated investors,
right, and institutions and so on be able to completely freely use the system, right?
Because this kind of regulation really only applies to, to like end consumers and their
access to financial services.
Yeah.
So I'm not, I think you're right that it's not entirely clear what the regulation is.
but I did see that the SEC has a document, and it appears to, I guess, be put out by some lab at the CFTC.
But it talks about, it says, you know, here are examples of prohibited activities.
And it says derivatives contracts, including those that are smart contracts deployed on a decentralized blockchain, must not be traded.
And there's like a list of them.
but the one bullet point that stuck out at me must not be traded or executed by individuals
or firms that are required to be registered with the CFTC but are not, meaning are not registered
and also do not have an exemption or exception from registration.
So yeah, it's not clear.
You're right that in a way they're using the system to take out a loan from themselves.
But presumably, you're right, these people would not be registered or would it be interpreted
as, you know, they are using the maker system to do it and the maker foundation or whatever
entity is not registered with the COTC.
It's not clear.
So I guess we will someday find out you probably before me.
So tell me how people have been using dye.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that's a really sort of broad, like it's very interesting because actually adoption
of diet so far is not really that great.
compared to if you look at something like UACC, which is a much newer stable coin,
but it actually already now has a much bigger supply.
And I think it's because what we're seeing, like the way that die really is positioned
is kind of as, you know, it's more like a platform.
It's more like a tool for others to build something on top of rather than being, you know,
like a product in of itself.
So like basically what we see is.
is very, like, there's really,
that has really been used in a lot of different ways,
but still at relatively small scale.
And at the same time,
there are a ton of different projects
that are building on top of it, right?
So there's a lot of different projects out there
that are right now in the process of building
some sort of system that uses dye
as this decentralized store value.
And I think if I should, like,
probably the best example to mention
of like a,
a very useful and very interesting use case is that there are a lot of startups around
the world that use the payroll to international employees, right? Because actually doing
payroll as a startup is very difficult, actually. And it's been done, like, it was done
a lot with Bitcoin in the past. And now it seems like a lot of the companies that have been
doing that, they've actually started to use die for it because just allows them to even avoid
the volatility of doing it, right, but still getting that incredible.
convenience of being able to just pay salary directly, regardless of where the person is.
And then in addition to that, there's also just a lot of trading on decentralized exchanges,
right?
In fact, I think pretty much all the volume on the decentralized exchanges on Ethereum is mostly
would die.
Oh, meaning that's used as the, for trading pairs.
Yeah.
So if people, for instance, want to trade, you know, they just want to speculate on the price
of Ethereum with the zero X protocol, you know, they'll like, you know, then they might go on
radar relay and trade die against ETH, right? So they'll go into Dye when they want to hedge their
exposure and then they'll take the die and they'll purchase ETH with it when they want to
speculate enterprise. And that actually generates a lot of, well, some demand for die, right?
Because there is a whole ecosystem or like a whole economy around trading ETH against, against
die across these various decentralized exchanges.
Yeah.
I was looking at the Maker Tools website, which is amazing for people who haven't seen that.
I'll link to it in the show notes.
But one thing that stick out at me is that dye has a pretty high velocity, which
I think indicates that it is being used as a medium of exchange.
Sometimes it's as high as three to six, which I tried to find this out for Bitcoin.
And I did find it a chart.
and it showed that at least especially more recently Bitcoin's velocity is in the one to two
range or even sometimes below one. So I think you're right that it is, I mean, like I said,
as a stable coin, it probably makes sense. So something else I want to ask about was, you know,
you kind of described how everyday people are using it. But I know that Meagerdow has also
entered into some business partnerships, such as with Wire, which is a blockchain,
money transfer company.
Can you describe some of those different business partnerships
and how Dye can be used by businesses?
Yeah, so I think one of the things that really sets
like the maker project apart from many other than the crypto spaces,
how we've managed to really like penetrate
both into the real world in some cases, right?
But then also just like create this momentum of many different
crypto projects that kind of get tied together by all adopting Dye
are adopting CDPs and integrated with Maker in some way.
And I mean, it's really a lot.
And I think, you know, we have partnerships with almost all kind of like the major decentralized crypto projects,
at least on Ethereum in particular.
But, yeah, so Wire is a really good example of something.
I think it's really, like it's a really, it really makes sense.
I mean, it's really useful both in the sense that it's very good for the maker.
system to get access to this kind of service because not only is wire and on ramp, right?
So not only is wire a point that's going to interface between money and the bank and sort of
the Fiat world and then the crypto world through Dye.
But also, Dye actually provides a lot of which utilities to wire because wire is also,
you know, wire also powers remittance services, right?
Like some money transfer.
And Dye is really used, like that's one of sort of the top use cases of Dye is to use it as
liquidity backbone for remittance.
So actually, wire is just one of many that are doing that, using Dye.
And again, like I was saying, like most of the partners and most of the projects
that are integrating Dye, they're still working on it.
Like a lot of it is still not live yet.
Another really cool example is our major partnership with Tradeshift.
So Trashift is one of the biggest supply chain platforms in the world.
they actually have more than a million companies on their platform
that use trade shift kind of as they're almost like Facebook for business or something.
So it's like a software, like it's an internet platform that the companies use to kind of like maintain all the relationships with each other.
And especially small businesses, it's really important for them to have access to this kind of system.
So they don't have to do so much paperwork.
But the other problem that small businesses have is that,
that if you're a small business and you sell some product to a big buyer that buys, let's say,
a million dollars of products from you, the way it works in the international trade is
they'll buy those goods from you and you'll send them to them.
But they're not going to pay you until like three months later or sometimes six months.
Or in some places like in Asia, it's even like they'll pay you whenever they want to, which is kind of crazy.
So that's really like, just like an example of how the global economy is very, like,
it's kind of like built to disadvantage to the little guy in many cases, right?
Like the, like, you'll see big companies kind of like squeezing out these kind of terms out
of small businesses because they just have no other choice.
They just have to do it.
And so when you're this kind of situation where you've sold your product,
but you're not going to get paid until several months later, what you can do is you can get
get what's called trade finance. So you can actually access financing that sort of gives you
a bridge loan basically. Like you can get some credit during this period where you still haven't
get paid, but you still want to do more business, right? You want to buy more material so you can
build more stuff and you can sell it to even more buyers. And so with TradeShift, what we're doing
is we're building, we're actually using blockchain technology to build a new kind of marketplace
for this kind of service where we'll actually be able to really put the small business at the center
and create something that is, you know, really, really has the efficiency and also like transparency
and just like the really like built with the right values to create something that just
improves, you know, the conditions for small businesses. And it's all based around the fact that
you can actually tokenize, you know, you can tokenize an invoice, right? You can take an indexer you can have
small business that is going to get paid, you know, a million dollars from its big buyer
three months from now, you can actually turn that sort of future million dollars into a token.
And then you can have people buy that token at a discount.
So the company gets paid up front, but it gets paid slightly less, but then the good news
is they get the money straight up, right?
And so what we're doing with TradeShift is we're implementing this kind of tokenized
system using Dai as a settlement currency.
So you can buy these tokenized invoices with die.
And then when they sort of mature and the big buyer pays out, you'll get paid out and die.
And that just makes it very convenient to access and also means that we can actually open up this market, like the market for trade finance to the entire financial world and the entire blockchain economy.
Yeah, there are whole companies now in the fintech space that do this.
it is a huge business, but you're right that it depends. Some of the companies do take kind of a big
cut, like they really are pretty aggressive with the discounts, but you're right that I think
this could potentially be even more liquid than it is now if it were in a blockchain-based
cryptocurrency. So we'll see what happens there, but it is already kind of a big business. And there's a lot of
fintech companies that are already working in that space. I also wanted you to walk through
examples, which you sort of mentioned briefly, that die is being used in the decentralized finance
system. And listeners will know at least some parts of that system, because I've interviewed
Dharma, D-Y-D-X, compound, zero X, like just a bunch of these decentralized finance protocols.
So what are some examples of how Dye is being used in that system?
Yeah, I mean, I think the ones you mentioned are probably some of the best examples of that.
I think compound is maybe the first one that blew up a bit.
So what compound does is actually kind of like a more generalized version,
or maybe also you could say a more simple version of the multiple analogized system actually,
where there just isn't like there isn't a native stable coin,
but rather there is kind of people who can deposit.
assets into the platform, I kind of like lend out those assets, and then others can come and
deposit other types of collateral to then borrow those assets. And they actually held a poll
where they asked, like, what stable coin should we add? And most people then voted to add dye.
So they added die as a stable coin on the platform. And it meant that you were now able to, if you
had, like if you either had bought die or even if you're using a CDP in single collateral die,
you were able to lend out that dye on the compound platform.
And people would then use assets like Auger Rep.
I think actually primarily it was the main asset that was used to then take out
like compound CDPs basically and borrow that dye that people are lending out.
And the interest rates, they were really high.
So at first it was really popular.
Like you could get something like 10% per year or something for depositing your dye into it.
So that saw a lot of activity.
and it's an interesting example of how, you know,
like how you have two projects, two platforms that actually synergize, right?
Because in a completely permissionless manner, right?
Because basically what that meant was that the multilateral functionality
was now built on top of maker already, right?
Because now you could actually go and you could put in rep and you could borrow dye,
just like you'll be able to do in multilateral die.
And yeah, and zero X is another great example, right?
And of course it's, well, I mean, obviously that's the first big example, right?
Because it's a pretty old project.
It's been alive for a long time.
And I actually not sure which zero Xero X relayer is the biggest nowadays.
But at least Radar relay is, I think, is one of the oldest.
And I think it's actually the only, I don't know what you call them,
but kind of like, it's the only kind of like pure Xero X relayer that like does the Xerox protocol kind of like,
the OGUA that it was meant to be done, where they directly expose the orders in the blockchain.
And since the beginning, they've primarily been about trading ether against die.
And I think it's really cool, right?
Because that's meant that people have actually been able to, like blockchain users have been able to go to this platform and speculate on the price of Ethereum, just like they would do on any centralized exchange, but just without.
having that centralized exposure, right? So you can do it without any risk of getting gouged.
Wow. Yeah. This whole thing is just so fascinating the more that I learned about the whole thing.
And you've been such a trooper for powering through this super long interview. But as
listeners can tell, there is just so much to unpack. But I do want to circle back to something
that was mentioned at the beginning of the first episode that we did on Maker Dow, which is you
talked before about how you felt like there was a cultural shift with MakerDAO
and something I had been thinking when I was learning about this whole system, you know,
about how people have to put up their own collateral.
The management of the smart contract is their own responsibility.
They have to manage this risk that their position could be liquidated, et cetera.
So I used to cover personal finance.
And I know that a lot of people don't even understand the basics of budgeting and saving,
let alone something maybe this complex.
Like I used to be one of those people.
There's no judgment there.
I for a long time really was terrible with my money.
So how much education do you feel like you've needed to give people for them to use Maker correctly?
And do you feel like that's some kind of barrier or hurdle to adoption?
I mean, that's an interesting like subject, right?
Because I think actually that, and this in fact sort of ties into.
the whole question about regulation as well, right?
I mean, the thing is in the end,
like, the view we've had
in Maker for a long time was actually that we didn't
really want to go out and get random
people in because you really
got to know what you're doing when you start playing
with something like a governance token like
MKR that can be inflated to infinity.
Or similarly, if you, you know, if you start
opening a CDP that can be liquidated
and give you a 13% penalty, right?
So we have, like, we do a lot of
education and it's, and it's basically
it's really focused on taking people that already are sort of pretty smart and have been able to learn a lot on their own.
And then really getting them into the core of the community and get them in and kind of try to get them prepared to actually participate in the governance and the risk management of the system.
But ultimately, you know, we haven't, you know, we're not really like our goal has not been to, to, you know, take this beta and then go out and kind of like push it out to the regular people or kind of like push it out to the,
mainstream. I mean, we build it really still as a technical demonstration of what we were able to do,
right? And for really, like I would say regular people currently, I think only really the die
functionality is what's available to them, right? I mean, because pretty much anyone would be able
to actually obtain dye in their wallet by, you know, by like, I mean, actually, it's not even
easy to actually not even that easy to buy diet currently, but well, okay, I guess you can buy it on Coinbase nowadays.
I mean, you could at least receive it in your wallet from your friend, right?
Like, anyone can do that.
And I think that's really good, right?
Because, I mean, that's kind of the thing that, I mean, if you don't know what you're doing
and you're going to play around the crypto, you should play around with a stable coin, right?
Don't play around with something crazy volatile.
I mean, so I actually think that's, that works pretty well, right?
That CDPs are quite difficult to use.
And then MKR is incredibly difficult to understand and difficult to even obtain.
and in the future, all of this stuff will be made, you know, will really be made very easily
available to everyone.
But it has to be done in a way that's safe, right?
And in many cases, that will be in collaboration with, you know, with regulators or institutions
and basically, like, you know, systems that exist to protect people who don't know everything
about finance or whatever from themselves.
right, from and, and, uh, and, and, uh, and or from like, crooked salesmen that pits them a little bit too much on, on the advantages of, and whatever, I don't know, convince some innocent guy to open a crazy CDP or something. Like, and I think also actually tying back to what really, what the regulators again really look for, right? Is and again, because there's this, like in this, especially in this current element of, of, of, there's still not being any clarity and still not really being any, uh, clear, clear guidelines, right?
you know, there is this concept in, in securities law that's called the manner of sale, right?
Like, so it's like, it's not just what your, your sell, like, it's not just what transaction happened,
but it's like what kind of of marketing and communication happened before, right?
And there's a very big difference between someone, you know, learning, just someone being able to understand finance and learning that they have access to, let's say, go and use CDPs, right?
and they can actually use that to take a very favorable loan for themselves.
And then versus someone going out and being like, you know,
creating some Google ads and being like,
hey, buy my coin or something, you know,
or like use my interface and gamble with some CDPs or something, right?
That's a huge difference between that.
And definitely like the one way is sort of aggressively going out
and getting people who maybe not know exactly what they're doing
to get into some complicated financial contract,
that's when, you know, like it's that kind of,
kind of like, you know, I would call like aggression, right, that I think is going to be what,
like where the question of the regulation would really apply, right?
Because it really becomes a, like, it becomes a question of, of protecting people who may
not be able to protect themselves.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I think that at least we've seen so far with the enforcement actions that if they detect
that there was some kind of exploitation, I guess, that was going to.
on in the way that the promoters were trying to get people into the system, then that definitely
plays a role, which is why we saw some of these enforcements against celebrities and stuff
like that. But we will, you know, as we've discussed on this episode, there's, there are a lot of
question marks that remain about regulation of this kind of thing. However, at least in the short
period, I think, I think this is an incredible, I see people always commenting on.
on Twitter and other places that I say interesting a lot, but I really do think that this is an
interesting project, and that's why I use the word interesting, because when I say that,
I actually mean that. But one other thing that I noticed is before we recorded,
placeholder VC noted that it took, that maker issued about 200 million in loans in the first
year, and that for perspective, they said that Lending Club took five years to originate $250
million dollars in loans, although they did concede that wasn't, it's not totally apples to apples.
So certainly there is a certain amount of traction that you're getting.
And yeah, I guess we'll see how it plays out.
Well, it's been so great having you on the show.
Thank you so much for enduring the crazy soundcheck from the first episode and also for
coming back on the show.
Where can people learn more about you and MakerDAO?
So the best place to start is on our website, MakerDile.com.
where you can find a lot of good resources.
You can find the white paper, the team page,
and just access to all the information about the whole system.
And then if you want to join the community and really be a part of the discussion,
the first place to go is to our subreddit,
which is on Reddit.com slash R slash MakerDAo.
Or you can even join our community chat room,
which is open for everyone to come and join on chat.makerdao.com.
or which you can just find on the website.
Thanks so much for coming on Unchained.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
I mean, anytime, you know,
maybe next time we have an update,
I'll come back and we can talk for like three hours more.
Yeah, and let's hope that this sound check goes more smoothly that time.
No, yeah, I'm getting like a professional setup
and I'm going to have it like on Monday or something
because I'm never going to, this is not something I ever want to go.
Like my freaking headset just stopped working.
What the hell? You know, that's ridiculous.
We paid our dues.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
To learn more about Rune and MakerDAO, check out the show notes inside your podcast player.
New episodes of Unchained come out every Tuesday.
If you have until ready, rate review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
If you liked this episode, share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
And if you're not yet subscribed to my other podcast, Unconfirmed, I highly recommend you check it out and subscribe now.
Also, be sure to go to Unchained Podcast.com.
and sign up for my weekly newsletter.
I'm Shane is produced by me, Laura Shin,
with help from Rayling Gallup Holly,
fractal recording,
Corinne Fife,
Jenny Josephson, and Daniel Nuss.
Thanks for listening.
