The Bull Case for MKR | Sam MacPherson, Niklas Kunkel & monetsupply.eth

MakerDAO is one of the most underappreciated DAOs in DeFi. At least, that's what David thinks. We're bringing on three DAO members to discuss the most bullish elements about MakerDAO. Hear how their recent deal with Tesla (yes, the real-world electric car manufacturer) happened, what it means for their future, how the $MKR tokenomics work, and so much more! ------ 📣 MAC NFT DROP https://bankless.cc/MAC ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALED ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🏦 ALTO IRA | TAX-FREE CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/AltoIRA 👻 AAVE V3 | LEND & BORROW CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/aave ⚡️ MAKER DAO | THE DAI STABLECOIN https://bankless.cc/MakerDAO 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 7:30 What is MakerDao 14:30 $MKR Price Action Curse? 19:10 Maker’s Meta Goals 21:36 Increasing the $DAI Supply 33:53 Increasing the $DAI Demand 45:23 The Future of Maker’s Collateral 51:45 Tesla Taps MakerDAO 1:01:34 Legal Structural Components 1:06:00 Bridging Real World Assets 1:12:05 L222 1:18:39 $MKR Tokenomics 1:31:11 Why Bullish MakerDAO ------ Resources: MakerDAO: https://twitter.com/MakerDAO Sam MacPherson: https://mobile.twitter.com/hexonaut Niklas Kunkel: https://twitter.com/nomos_paradox monetsupply.eth https://twitter.com/MonetSupply Maker Burner www.makerburn.com http://www.makerburn.com ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:21David Hoffman?

  Welcome, Bankless Nation, to this very special episode. Today, we are talking all about MakerDAO and the bull case behind MakerDAO. You guys all know MakerDAO. It's the organization. It's the DAO behind the DAI stablecoin, the first ever trustless stablecoin that crypto has ever seen. But I'll ask the listeners, do you really know MakerDAO? Have you really been paying attention to what's going on behind the scenes? Because in my mind, from my understanding, it's a DAO like none other. And MakerDAO has made fundamentally different choices. Less about different smart contract design choices, but more about how the DAO operates, how the DAO is organized, and what is going on behind the scenes. I've been a long supporter of MakerDAO.

• 1:06David Hoffman?

  Before I started writing about Ethereum, I started writing about MakerDAO first. So I've been very close with the team and organization behind MakerDAO. They have been an organization since 2016 and has blossomed and grown since then. It really started very emergently. People that were just interested in figuring out how to produce a decentralized stablecoin all came together. This was before DeFi was a thing. This was before the ICO boom. MKR, the MKR token, was minted and distributed to early stakeholders. And a treasury of MKR was maintained, kind of as you see in the current DAO landscape. But again, this was in 2015 and 2016. Then the maker organization realized that they really needed to have real-world footprint.

• 1:50David Hoffman?

  They needed a centralized foundation. And the MakerDAO turned into a foundation that operated as a typical company more normally would. And that foundation existed for years. And then that foundation was disbanded almost a year ago. And once again, the DAO, which started as a very emergent bottom-up organization, is now returned to A DAO structure, but it's not just a DAO structure. It's more a DAO of DAO structure. And Maker Governance really is just capital allocation decisions rather than, you know, voting on what the brand or icon should be, or you know, who should be able to tie their shoes with a snapshot vote. So entire companies work for the meta DAO, the bigger DAO, rather than just simply individuals in a Discord.

• 2:34David Hoffman?

  I think that there is a very strong bull case for Maker DAO, that the market does not appreciate, and the market has never really fairly appreciated Maker DAO, at least in my opinion. And so we have brought on three Maker DAO community members to give the bull case for Maker DAO and to illuminate what is going on behind the scenes with Maker DAO. Because in my mind, it is a fantastic story that's very rich and is extremely compelling and interesting. And so we are going to give out the bull case for Maker DAO here on this live stream. I got a few more things to say before we bring on the panelists, but before I do, we got to let you know that in honor of National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day on April 10th, MAC Cosmetics has created the first ever NFT collection

• 3:16David Hoffman?

  featuring the work of the iconic artist and activist Keith Haring. They are minting NFTs. This is the NFT project where 100% of the purchase price of primary sales of the Keith Haring NFT collection will be donated to the MAC Viva Glam Fund to support youth impacted by HIV and AIDS. There are three rarity levels in this NFT drop. 1,000 total red tokens available for $25 each. 250 blue tokens, NFTs, are available for 150 each, and 25 yellow tokens available for $8,000 each. Minting has not yet happened. That is coming up on April 10th, so mark your calendars. If you have never been a part of an NFT drop, this might be the first one for you because of how

• 4:01David Hoffman?

  everything is going for charity. It's like an NFT drop where you can feel good about everything that happens. There is a link in the show notes to sign up and learn more. And you can access all of that information there in the show notes. And so with one last comment before we get started. This is a future, this is a coming up and experimental show model out of Bankless. Future bullish blank shows are definitely going to be a thing. This is the bullish Maker show, which I think has a compelling story, but I'm sure there are many other communities, many other DAOs, many other projects that have the bull case for that project, for that token, that the rest of the market might not understand. So this is a new format that we're trying on Bankless.

• 4:42David Hoffman?

  If you think that the market is underappreciating a particular token, a particular DAO, a particular community, here's what you need to do. Assemble a team, write down some notes, hit Bankless up on Twitter saying you've got the bull case for your particular token ready to go and you've got the team assembled to get it done. This, I think, will be a very fun show moving forward to help spread the alpha about what is going on behind the scenes with your particular favorite DAO. And we are getting started here with one of my favorite DAOs, Maker DAO, of course. So we will be right back to get into the show and the bull case for Maker DAO teaser. They actually just announced a deal, they're financing a deal with Tesla. And this is something that the market just doesn't understand. It's a little ridiculous.

• 5:26David Hoffman?

  And so we're going to get into all the details about Maker DAO and the bull case for MKR right after we talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer two scaling solution that's going to completely change how we use DeFi and NFTs. Over 300 projects have already deployed to Arbitrum and the DeFi and NFT ecosystems are growing rapidly. Some of the coolest and newest NFT collections have chosen Arbitrum as their home, all the while DeFi protocols continue to see increased usage and liquidity. Using Arbitrum has never been easier, especially with the ability to deposit directly into Arbitrum through all the exchanges, including Binance, FTX, Quobi, and Crypto.com. Once inside, you'll notice Arbitrum increases Ethereum speed by orders of magnitude for a fraction of the cost of the average gas fee. If you're a developer who wants low gas fees and instant transactions for your users,

• 6:10David Hoffman?

  visit arbitrum.io/developer to start building your DApp on Arbitrum. If you're a Dgen, many of your favorite DApps on Ethereum are already on Arbitrum with many moving over every day. Go to bridge.arbitrum.io now to start bridging over your ETH and other tokens in order to experience DeFi NFTs in the way it was always meant to be. Fast, cheap, secure, and friction free.

• 6:32David Hoffman?

  The Layer 2 era is upon us. Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem is growing every day, and we need bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a Layer 2 life. ACROSS is the fastest, cheapest, and most secure cross-chain bridge. With ACROSS, you don't have to worry about the long wait times or high fees to get your assets to the chain of your choice. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. ACROSS bridges are powered by UMA's Optimistic Oracle to securely transfer tokens from Layer 2 back to Ethereum. A token proposal is being deliberated as we speak in the ACROSS forum, where community members will decide on the token distribution. You can have your part of ACROSS's story by joining the Discord and becoming a co-founder and helping to design the fair, fair launch of ACROSS. If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.to to bridge your assets

• 7:16David Hoffman?

  between Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Boba Networks.

• 7:21David Hoffman?

  MakerDAO is the OG DeFi protocol. The MakerDAO produces DAI, the industry's most battle-tested and resilient stablecoin. Using Maker, you don't need to sell your collateral if you need liquidity. Instead, you can spin up a Maker Vault and use your collateral to mint DAI directly. With Maker, the power to mint new money is in your hands. The Maker protocol is extremely hardened and operated by one of the most experienced DAOs in existence. They've been here since the beginning. They've seen it all, and so you can mint DAI with the assurance that your collateral is safe. Soon, Maker will be present on all chains and L2s, so minting DAI can take place on oasis.app, Xerion, Zapr, or any other DeFi protocol that you use. Follow Maker on Twitter, @makerDAO, and learn from the oldest and most resilient DAO in existence.

• 8:06David Hoffman?

  All right, Bankless Nation. Here is our bull case for MKR, a bull case for MakerDAO panel. On the top left, we've got Sam, who is all the three of these DAO members. We've got top left is Sam. Bottom left, we've got Manet Supply. You probably know him on Twitter. And then bottom right, we've got Nick Kunkel, who I've actually had the pleasure of spending COVID time with. Nick and I went skiing a lot during COVID, and that has been a fun time. And so, guys, are you guys ready to get into the bull case for MakerDAO?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:37David Hoffman?

  Yeah, all right, let's do this. I gave a little bit of an intro about the Maker Foundation, the origin originating story about Maker DAO, but I want you guys to pick up the thread and take it from here. And Sam, I want to start with you. Just like, let's zoom forward to the present. Like, what is Maker DAO? And what about Maker DAO is just so different than the typical DAO that people are familiar with? And also, just who is a part of Maker DAO? Like, who composes it? And how is how is the culture of Maker DAO just different from other organizations that we find in DeFi? Sam, I'll start with you.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. First, thanks for having us, David. And congrats on the bankless arena you got today. Very, very bullish news. So I would say, one of the big differences between Maker DAO and other DAOs is we don't have an associated legal entity. We used to back in the day, the Maker Foundation. People probably know that pretty well, but they are fully dissolved now. So like, yeah, we're fully a DAO, no legal entity. That's an interesting piece. Another thing is that we're completely sustainable. The protocol revenues more than pay for all the expenses of running the workforce and, you know, paying out various things on the protocol. So that's something

• 9:49Speaker 01

  that's really interesting and unique, I think. In terms of who's involved, there's a number of different groups in the DAO. We have what's called core units. This is like our main unit of like workforce. So me, I'm on the protocol engineering core unit. So we're responsible for maintaining and building the smart contracts for the core protocol as well as other things involved with that, you know, we have risk, we have monies on that. Nick's on the Oracles team. So this is sort of the fundamental unit we have. We also have what are called mandated actors. And so these are sort of elected people to sort of run the day to day operations of the protocol.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  This is sort of mixed in with core unit facilitators. Essentially, we have a once a week meeting that like we kind of go over like and synchronize and stuff like that. There's also delegates which do the voting, and there's maker holders, and just the wider community, you know, anybody can be involved.

• 10:50David Hoffman?

  Nick, what would you add on to that? How would you illustrate the differences between Maker DAO and how Maker DAO came to be and how people think about DAOs these days?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Um, well, okay, so, uh, right, I mean, we had, we had the the DAO, right? Um, and, uh, right, uh, right af- right before kind of the DAO blew up, right? You had a, every project was trying to be a DAO because we, we thought we had just discovered this, uh, new kind of social primitive, a way of like, you know, of like collectivism, right? And so you had Maker DAO and you had DigiX DAO and you had a couple, a couple of these other ones, right? And then the DAO got hacked. Um, and then DAO was kind of a dirty word for a long time, right? Uh, Maker, you, we considered dropping the word DAO from our name, you know, for like a long time.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  And, uh, now it's almost like enough time has elapsed that like DAOs are, um, like this idea that came back that people are like, no, wait, that was actually like, like a very useful, uh, concept. Um, I, what, what I think kind of makes Maker like unique and, and special really is, is not just the way that we, we structure ourselves as a DAO, but the way that, uh, we build is just very, uh, comes from a perspective that's very adversarial, right? Uh, we really think of like, um,

• 12:24Speaker 02

  truly every little thing that could go wrong and try to have as little kind of direct human control or, or authority as possible. Uh, you know, we as, you know, the developers, like, we don't have special knobs and switches of turning the, the system on or off or, or deactivating stuff or activating things, right? It's really completely controlled by Maker governance. It's completely controlled by the Maker token holders. And that type of full decentralization, I think, is, is quite rare. Um, in, in, in DeFi especially, right? Where, uh,

• 13:07Speaker 02

  I think many teams take the argument that, oh, well, we need to be a little bit centralized at the start, right, in order to innovate quickly, to scale quickly. But then later, they don't actually decentralize. And I think Maker is one of the few that really stuck to that promise and is following through on that.

• 13:26David Hoffman?

  Manet, I want to get your perspective in on this as well. What are really the properties or characteristics about Maker Dow that stand out as unique and special that only really Maker Dow exhibits?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say only Maker Dow exhibits this, but I feel like the Maker community is really mission focused. You know, part of that might be from the token, you know, sort of stagnating, I think, in a certain way. But it's, people don't get into Maker because they're, you know, just hyped about number go up. You know, we have a clear goal of making a really reliable financial system that people can trust and that people can actually be safe to put their money in. And, you know, it attracts just kind of like a special committed group of people.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  And I think, you know, other protocols really are striving for that, but maybe are still in the, like, hype phase.

• 14:27David Hoffman?

  That is something that I think stands out to me the most is the ability for Maker to retain the same talent that it had years ago. I find the same people, the same Maker Dow community members, every single Maker Dow event, year after year after year. And for some reason, something about the Maker organization just retains developer attention and talent attention inside of it. And so it's the same cohort, it's always the same builders. And that's really, really rare in DeFi when there's just so much churn all of the time. People that seem to work for Maker tend to commit really, really hard to Maker. Manet, you kind of alluded to this, and I want to ask this next, this next question is, I've always thought the story behind the fundamentals of Maker Dow and then the MKR price on the secondary market to tell two completely different stories.

• 15:12David Hoffman?

  Like, there is, I don't think there's any other Dow that has had so much thought and attention and like, attention to detail and conservative labor built into the protocol, yet none of these properties seem to be reflected in the MKR token. And so I want to get your guys' thoughts on like the historical price action of this thing as it relates to some of the fundamentals that have been built over the years. Like, Is there like a curse on the MKR token? I just want to ask that question. Does the MKR price kind of feel cursed to you? Sam, I'll start with you.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, I mean, I've, I kind of went through a phase, I guess, where I was like, you know, concerned about the Maker price and stuff like that. But at a certain point, you just kind of become numb to it. And all you can really do is just keep delivering on building fundamentals and stuff like that. And, you know, the price will catch up at some point.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  You know, like, the market can only remain irrational for so long, kind of thing. So that's kind of the way I look at it.

• 16:11David Hoffman?

  Nick, same question to you. Like, what's up with the MKR price? Maker Dow's been building so hard for so long. And just, do you, do you see like a discrepancy between the, what the story of the price is being, is telling versus what's actually happening with the fundamentals?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, but I, but I think it's quite obvious how we kind of ended up here. There was never a focus on trying to showcase MKR, trying to advertise MKR, to get MKR listed on exchanges, to build liquidity, to incentivize liquidity, right? It was never just a focus. The focus was always DAI. And the, I think the rationale was quite reasonable, right? Make DAI have utility, make DAI useful, scale DAI as much as you can. And if DAI is successful, by proxy, MKR becomes successful, right?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  All of the profits that are generated by the system, right, are diverted to MKR token holders. And so it's really one of those things that in the end, it'll work itself out.

• 17:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think that you make a really, really good point. Part of the legacy of the Maker Foundation, from what I've gathered from being an outside observer, is that the legal side of the Maker Foundation really hamstrung the marketability of the MKR token, right? Like, we can talk about DAI, we can talk about the contracts, getting a vault, all that stuff. But in an industry which clamors for attention, the, the legal side of, and the compliance side of the Foundation was like, you guys can't talk about MKR. Manet, would you agree that that was, that was kind of one of the influencing cultures of the Maker Dow as a result of the Foundation? Is that there was a removal of a culture of attention to put on the, on the MKR token?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that I imagine that a lot of that was like some legal influence, but I think it's also, you know, kind of goes back to just the discipline of the project, which, you know, if you just are disciplined and you keep doing the right things for long enough, like it does pay off. And I think there's, you know, lots of advanced new tokenomics that we've seen people deploy in the last couple of years. A lot of that is like kind of very flywheel based where you can accelerate your growth, but then, you know, on the reverse, it also, you know, kind of accelerates your decline. And I think Maker has just been very,

• 18:45Speaker 03

  sort of conservative about those sort of changes. Like, we don't want to like over-leverage ourselves and put die holders in a position where their their funds are at risk. So yeah, I think it's, it's like not surprising that you don't see the Maker token rallying as much in a bull market, but hopefully it won't be crashing in a bear market as much.

• 19:08David Hoffman?

  And I do remember the MKR token was one of the leading tokens in the 2018 to 2020 bear market. It was kind of where a lot of people put their attention, including, including myself. All right, guys. So there are so many subjects to get into. We're going to talk about the supply of die, where supply comes from, the demand for die, how demand, how demand is induced into die. We're going to talk about Maker's penetration into real world assets. We're also going to talk about Maker's L222 strategy and then also finish off with Maker tokenomics. Each one of these subjects has just some insane development and progress to talk, to talk about. So, but before we get into all of those things, I want to talk about just like the meta goals of the Maker

• 19:49David Hoffman?

  DAO protocol. What are the goals of Maker? What does the protocol want? Does the protocol want? Something just fell off of my desk, sorry. Does, what does the protocol want? Die number, die supply to go up, loan fees to go up? Like, what are the really bullish metrics for Maker DAO that you guys are trying to optimize for? And Munay, I'll throw it back to you on that one.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  I think total die supply and then also like usage and integrations across different platforms, you know, being able to use it in real commerce as well as just, you know, DeFi. And then I think kind of more directly to the bottom line, like what's our actual like amount of die that's being generated through through vaults rather than through stable coins? Because that's, that's where we're actually able to, to earn revenue. So yeah, I think those are probably the two biggest fundamental drivers.

• 20:47David Hoffman?

  Sam, Nick, anything to add on about the, the optimizing metrics for Maker Dow? Which metrics are the most important?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say like in the short term, what Manet said, we need to get sort of the interest bearing supply up to replace the stablecoin supply. I would say a medium term goal is to, at least for me, is to reactivate the die savings rate, start getting a die demand growing in a more organic way. And long term, yeah, it's sort of like several orders of magnitude scaling of the die supply such that we're in sort of the fiat currency scale as like a credibly neutral alternative.

• 21:30David Hoffman?

  Nick, anything to add?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  No, I think that it covers it pretty well.

• 21:36David Hoffman?

  All right. So let's start with the supply side of things. What is the actual strategy for increasing the die supply? Sam, you just talked about interest bearing collateral. So I think we can also talk about USDC and like the dominance inside of USDC inside of Maker Dow. Do you guys consider the dominance of USDC in Maker a problem? And if so, how, what's the plan to fix that? And overall, what is the overarching like strategy for increasing the total die supply on the secondary market? Sam, I'll start with you.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Okay, um, so I've put out along with some of my colleagues a recent strategy to address the problem of lack of sort of organic dye supply generation. I put this out as a tweet and a post called the aggressive growth strategy. So really this involves two parts. The first is we want to do a cap raise, sort of debt or equity offering or some mix between the two. The idea behind this is the surplus buffer, if you can see in the image. This is sort of our making sure we're solvent kind of a number. So currently it's at 65 million and this is just growth from revenues in the protocol.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  But we kind of want to move that up another 5X or so to like 250 million or even above. And what this gives us is the ability to basically take, basically move up the risk curve and you know, take defaults on individual loans without like breaking the protocol. And so as you can see here, we don't really do high risk loans all that much because we're kind of limited in how big they can go, but we increase the surplus buffer, we can increase the size of all these sort of more high risk loans, address a larger market and sort of grow the revenues in a, in a good way.

• 23:25David Hoffman?

  But you know, let's camp on the surplus buffer. Can you just, let's define that a little bit more. What is the surplus buffer in Maker? How does it grow? Where does it come from? And why is having a large one good?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Right, okay, so the surplus buffer is basically, well, okay, it's a buffer of direct, so let me start with I guess stability fees. So if you open up a vault on ETH or something like that and you take out a dye loan, you're paying interest on that. Now, so currently it's I think 2.25%. So where does that go? That goes into what's called the surplus buffer. So this is basically an excess of dye that the protocol controls and it can be used for a couple of things. So we use it to pay for things like core units and whatnot, but it's also there just in case we You take a loss on one of the loans, say one of the loans defaults and we have bad debt.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  This will eat into the surplus buffer. But it will, as long as the surplus buffer is larger than this bad debt, the protocol is still solvent. We're all good. We can continue operation. So by growing the surplus buffer to a larger number, we can sort of increase our tolerance for individual defaults. The idea is that we spread this risk across many, many different protocols and sort of lenders and stuff like that, such that we have sort of independent risk on every single one of them. Such that we can tolerate losses and sort of plan for them. This is more how traditional lenders work. They don't usually plan on no losses. They account for them.

• 25:00David Hoffman?

  Okay, so the, the growth of the surplus buffer comes from the revenue on the interest rates on the collateral inside the vaults. And you say that we want to like 5X the supply of the surplus buffer to give Maker a larger buffer so that it can start to lean into more risky loans than it, what it currently has. Because if it can service more risky loans, it can also service higher interest rates on those loans. And so the idea is that a larger surplus buffer allows the protocol to get higher yield on a larger array of loans without having to really increase the risk because of the supply of the, the increased supply of the surplus buffer. Is all that correct?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. So by doing a cap raise, we can basically say, hey, we've got, you know, 10 billion in DAI demand. People love DAI. We've got a very good value prop. It's, it's probably going to be very likely to be able to raise capital in anticipation of the future. So, you know, how we do that is some sort of combination of debt and equity offering. So yeah, basically what this gives us is the ability to experiment more, integrate with more protocols, under collateralized lending, reputation-based lending, loans to TradeFi where we don't necessarily have all the legal recourse in place yet. These are the types of things we can do with a larger surplus buffer.

• 26:24David Hoffman?

  And so we have low-risk loans up top, and those are really big bars. And I think that just indicates the total supply of collateral inside the MakerDAO system. But those low-risk loans have low interest fees. And then below that, we have the high-risk loans, which doesn't have a lot of collateral because of how they're high-risk. But there's a lot of interest rate, there's a lot of money to be made on those high-risk loans. And so in theory, if the surplus buffer increased like 5X, viewers who are watching YouTube would, you know, you could imagine that dash line moving very, very far to the right, allowing for more collateral to exist in the high-risk loans, which would just yield a lot more DAI on a yearly, yearly base. Is that all right?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:05David Hoffman?

  Manet, Nick, anything you want to add or any additional element to discuss here?

• 27:11Speaker 02

  No, but I did want to circle back. Because part of your original question was trying to address USDC. And, you know, what were we going to do about this problem? And I, and I just want to push back on that a little bit.

• 27:25David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Because I don't necessarily see the Maker Protocol having a lot of USDC as a problem. I think of it as a capital battery. So when we say like, right, anyone can mint DAI one-to-one against USDC, right? What we're essentially saying is that if DAI is trading above a dollar, right? Meaning that there is a bunch of demand for DAI relative to the supply, right? There's more demand.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Then anyone can go and give USDC to the Maker Protocol, get DAI, and sell the DAI in the open market, and essentially arbitrage that, that peg in balance and bring it back down exactly towards a dollar. So I think that's very useful property because, one, even though DAI has a kind of market-based kind of algorithmic peg, because it's not hard redeemable for dollars, we essentially get an artificial hard peg to the dollar. And that's incredibly useful when you're dealing with kind of more traditional kind of TradeFi counterparties.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  So, okay, so we've accumulated a bunch of USDC.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  People kind of refer to this blacklist like risk and I don't really see the difference between having like 200 million of USDC versus having 5 billion of USDC. The blacklist risk, right, doesn't really change, right? It stays the same. But what you're getting out of this is, one, you're getting extremely deep, deep liquidity for DAI against dollars. And so what this really is, is a capital battery to supercharge real world asset lending. So I know probably later you want to get into this a little more, right?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  What are we doing with real world assets? But essentially, it's Maker lending, you know, against assets that exist in the real world instead of off-chain. And essentially, what they want to do is these lenders, they don't necessarily want DAI, right? They can't do anything with DAI. What they want is they want dollars for their business to go execute on some opportunity, right? And so having the ability to go to a TradeFi lender and be like, we have 5 billion dollars of dollar liquidity, allows us to do much, much larger deals than if those TradeFi partners

• 30:18Speaker 02

  had to try to find like OTC liquidity, right, for 200 mil or 300 mil.

• 30:24David Hoffman?

  Sam, I see you nodding your head. Can you elaborate and just add to that if you have anything to say?

• 30:31Speaker 02

  No, I think Nick covered it pretty well.

• 30:33David Hoffman?

  Okay, so yeah, this USDC supply in Maker, I'm seeing, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm seeing 227 million USD, DAI generated from USDC, a comparable amount of USDC locked in Maker DAO. And then the stability fee on that, on that 227 million is about 1%. So Maker is charging 1% on that 227 million dollars, which, you know, that's a decent amount of revenue. But is that, is USD, revenue from USDC collateral inside of Maker just like less revenue than your typical collateral because of how just like low risk it is? And is the idea that you still want to displace the USDC collateral with other collaterals that you can charge higher revenue for?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  So David, I think you're misunderstanding something. So from USDC, right? We're not making any money, right?

• 31:30David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  It is, it's just a swap facility, right? You can go and you swap, you give us a USDC, we give you a DAI.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  If you want to say, okay, well, okay, there's five billion USDC. We're not really making any money from those.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  I would say that that's a completely different problem, right? Okay, that's just saying, how do you monetize your balance sheet, right? And Monet can probably explain this a little better than I can. So I'm going to butcher it first and he'll probably correct me and come up with a much more eloquent explanation. But the way that I would describe it is Maker Dow is sitting on $5 billion and can decide on how they, we want to allocate those $5 billion into some productive asset that produces yield, right? And so probably we want to look at something very low risk, something like AAA rated, so something like US Treasuries, right? Where the yield will be very, very low,

• 32:34Speaker 02

  but it's an extremely, extremely safe yield and it's also extremely liquid. So being able to go from Treasuries to Dollars, right? You're not going to really have any slippage, no matter what scale you're trading at, right? Even if you want to do like half a billion dollars of Treasuries. So it's more of an opportunity of how do you want to allocate? Rather than, oh, this sucks, we don't make any money off USDC.

• 33:00David Hoffman?

  Monet, you want to add anything to that?

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think like all else equal, USDC is, I think it's a lot less risky than many people assume. But there is still, you know, some small amount of risk holding it. So yeah, I think it's a positive if we can allocate that intelligently to.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Real world assets, maybe stuff like treasuries or other, you know, kind of safe, reliable investments. And then maybe also some little bit higher risk investments. Once we get enough surplus to really support that.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  So yeah, I'd agree that it's it's an opportunity. You know, it's just, we're methodical. So we're not just going to yeet, you know, a billion dollars of USDC anywhere. We want to make sure that it's it's truly like a safer, better bet.

• 33:53David Hoffman?

  Okay, guys, I think that covers everything on the supply side. And like the very basics are you put collateral inside of MakerDAO, you charge a fee on it, number goes up. We also have this USDC is what Nick is calling like a battery. Unless there's anything else to cover on the supply side, I want to turn into the demand side. The other side of things like demand for DAI. And so like putting on our like 101, explain it like I'm five hats. How does DAI demand? How is that good for the protocol? How is that good for MakerDAO? And then where does DAI demand come from? And how does the DAO plan on increasing DAI demand?

• 34:29David Hoffman?

  Anyone want to raise their hand and take this one? Yeah, Manet, go for it.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the way that I look at it is it's it's kind of similar to banking. But when people are willing to hold DAI, they're basically lending MakerDAO money that we're then able to lend out to the the other people who are, you know, using our vaults to borrow money. So that's that's kind of a key part of our system is when we have a lot of excess DAI demand. We can always be sure that there's, you know, we have the capital to lend out to people borrowing. Kind of like banks, you know, they they use the money from people who are depositing with them to make the loans that they're that they're then are in interest on.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  So yeah, it's a really key part of of MakerDAO. It's probably our biggest asset is that we have so many deep integrations with people like Curve and Compound and Ave.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  That a lot of people are are really interested and willing to hold DAI, even though we're not actually currently really paying them anything to hold it through something like the the DAI savings rate.

• 35:40David Hoffman?

  You mentioned integrations with other DeFi protocols, and I think that actually opens up a subject that I think a lot of people kind of forget about. There's something different about borrowing USDC or borrowing DAI from something like AVE or Compound than there is borrowing DAI directly from MakerDAO. MakerDAO can mint DAI, whereas Compound and AVE cannot. And this is a huge advantage, which is the optionality to be able to mint DAI, to control the supply of DAI. And you alluded to some integrations with AVE, and I want to turn this to Sam next. Sam, can you kind of just illustrate how those integrations with other DeFi protocols work?

• 36:21David Hoffman?

  And how the ability for Maker to actually mint DAI is a useful thing for other DeFi protocols?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for AVE in particular, if you remember last year around April, May, their interest rates on all their stablecoins were like skyrocketing. They went up to like even as high as 20%. And if you're taking leverage on AVE and you just get hit with that intermittently, it's brutal. So one of the mechanisms to alleviate this for DAI was that we recognized AVE was a very reputable, rock-solid protocol. So we basically just extend them minting rights such that they can sort of squash these excessive times of borrowing. So we built and introduced what's called the DAI Direct Deposit Module,

• 37:12Speaker 01

  or we shortened it to D3M in conjunction with AVE. And basically, this module enforces a max variable borrow. And it does this by basically, like as soon as if somebody borrows a bunch on AVE and the interest rate spikes, it will just shove DAI into that pool, put the interest rate back down, so nobody gets screwed over by this.

• 37:36David Hoffman?

  And how does Maker pocket money in that scenario? How is that generate revenue for MakerDAO?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  So it's essentially just as if Maker is any other lender. So we collect interest rate on the lending.

• 37:50David Hoffman?

  And like, so if AVA interest rates like jumps up to 20% and then they tap into Maker's credit facility, how much interest rate would Maker make in that scenario?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  So we would enforce a max rate. So we would basically, I think, what is it now? It's probably like 2.5% or something. We're enforcing around there.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  So that would be the max borrow we would enforce. And then we would, there would be some spread and then we would earn some portion of that interest, you know, 1.5%. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's, yeah, it's about that.

• 38:26David Hoffman?

  There's an old model that, old as in we haven't talked about it a lot on Bankless, but we talked about, we talked about the Protocol Sync thesis, where like deep incredibly neutral protocols are, find themselves at the bottom of the DeFi stack and other applications are built on top of it. And so I want to get into the other integrations as well, but using that as a frame of mind for the listeners. Like AVA in this particular arena is built on top of Maker DAO, because Maker DAO can supply AVA with the credits and with that it needs in times of like a supply squeeze. And ultimately that value flows back to Maker DAO because of Maker DAO's ability to mint DAI.

• 39:07David Hoffman?

  It's the extreme privilege. Maker DAO has its own money printer, the own ability to print money. And other protocols need to access that ability in times of supply squeezes. Sam or Manet or whoever wants to take this one next, can we just talk about all the other DeFi applications that are also integrated into Maker DAO that are leveraging this property of Maker?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is sort of the general version is exactly what you said. So the recognition that Maker is not going to be the best at everything. There's other protocols that specialize and are very, very good at what they do. So instead of Maker trying to do this all ourselves, let's use DeFi Legos. Let's connect all these various protocols and extend them credit lines, such that we can kind of exponentially grow together. So what we're focused on right now, so we have the AVE one up and it's been a great success so far. We are now integrating with Compound to give them something similar, as well as sort of newer protocols. Maple Finance, who does reputation-based loans. There's TrueFi, does similar things.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so these are all sort of protocols we're looking at. Rari Fuse Pool, that's sort of a new thing, that's pretty interesting that we're looking at. So we're wanting to go wide with this and sort of just, you know, switch from, you know,

• 40:28Speaker 01

  lending out against like individual collateral assets and instead just sort of empowering others to get DAI everywhere, basically.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I really want to hammer that point home. It's really Maker can provide DAI liquidity as a service, right? And so what really this does is it just, you know, this goes with the kind of protocols, like sync thesis that you were talking about, David, is it really puts Maker on a base layer below any of the other secondary lenders, right? For a primary lender, only we can generate DAI like on-demand. Secondary lenders need to source liquidity, right, from somewhere, from users or from Maker. And so it's really quite synergistic, right, for Maker to be able to have these distribution channels for DAI, right?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  It's a specialization of saying, what is Maker good at? Well, Maker is good at having this really stable decentralized stablecoin called DAI. And we're really good at providing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of concentrated liquidity wherever it's needed. And it's acknowledging that there is secondary lenders who are better at us in other things, right? And they specialize, for example, in distribution, right? If you look at something like AVE, right, you know, how many chains has AVE already deployed on, right? It's practically everywhere, right? And so you can have this really synergistic relationship, right?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Where AVE can go and, you know, deploy on all these chains and we can provide targeted DAI liquidity there. And we basically get a free distribution mechanism for DAI.

• 42:15David Hoffman?

  I think a great model for understanding this, it feels like a central bank with commercial banks, where like Compound and Ave are the commercial banks that tap into the central bank's liquidity. And the cool thing about Maker, and again, the cool ability that being able to mint the money, being able to mint DAI, it allows for Maker to really be like a bulk order credit facility. Like, I think it's actually kind of skeuomorphic, maybe not skeuomorphic, but just like, you know, it's just a sign that it's early that individuals are going straight to Maker DAO to open up vaults, when really it's far more appropriate for things like Ave or Compound or just like other larger organizations to come to Maker to open up vaults and then give those, like you said, Nick, distribution.

• 42:59David Hoffman?

  Maker can use all these other applications as distribution to the individual. How do we like that frame of reference? Is calling like Maker DAO a central bank of DeFi like appropriate? Or how would you guys change or amend that?

• 43:12Speaker 02

  I would call it a de-central bank.

• 43:14David Hoffman?

  The de-central bank. Yeah, Manet, tap us in here.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  I would add that I think maybe our vision is bigger than just the central bank of DeFi. Like, we already have some of like the sort of titans of C-Fi, like Nexo and Celsius already do, you know, a lot of business with us among, you know, other DeFi protocols as well. But, you know, that's already kind of like an interesting like CD5 scaling solution that they're running where they're lending money to their customers on their own closed platform, but then they're sourcing all of the liquidity, not all of it, but some of it from Maker.

• 43:53David Hoffman?

  And this illustration of Maker as the de-central bank of the crypto universe gets even more exciting in my mind when we get to the topic of real world assets, which I think we definitely will. We'll get there here in a second. Guys, is there anything else that we should talk about when it comes to DAI demand, where DAI demand comes from, and like the long-term roadmap for inducing DAI into the world?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, one thing I'll add is the DAI savings rate, you know, it's kind of gone away for a bit, but I think this is a very, very critical tool that when we reactivate it, the value prop for DAI is going to be huge compared to holding like a US dollar derivatives of other kinds.

• 44:34David Hoffman?

  Why will it be so huge?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  It's a risk-free interest rate, right? It's just gonna like, why would I hold, say, USDC when I could be just earning a risk-free rate on DAI, right?

• 44:46David Hoffman?

  And this again kind of goes and lends itself to like, what is a new treasury? This is the new like native dollar-denominated interest rate where I've always thought that there's going to be two major interest rates in the world of cryptoeconomics. There's going to be the ETH staking yield rate, which is going to be the risk-free rate of a non-store value asset, non-sovereign store value asset. But then there's also the DAI savings rate, which is the yield that you can get on dollars in DeFi.

• 45:14David Hoffman?

  Anyone want to riff on that for a second?

• 45:19David Hoffman?

  Cool. Okay. One, okay, yeah, one last question I have for you guys is like, let's zoom forward and like kind of, and this will tee us up for some real-world asset conversations and layer two conversations. But like, let's zoom forward like 10, 15, 20 years. What do you think is like, in a world where Maker is maximally successful and has achieved all of its gold, what do you think the collateral inside of Maker DAO looks like? Like, what would the Maker overall portfolio look like in an ideal world where every, everything about Maker DAO was achieved? Is that something that is known or is that something that we kind of just need to iterate on? Nick, I'll start with you.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  It's staked ETH, Bitcoin and real-world assets.

• 46:04David Hoffman?

  Just those, just those three things?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Just everything else will look infinitesimally small relatively, in my opinion.

• 46:13David Hoffman?

  Well, you want to, can you elaborate on that? Why, why will those three things be the dominant things?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Um, well, ETH is the, uh, ETH is kind of like to, to me, just the, the, the future-proof kind of network of networks, right? It's, uh, the internet was, is a great network, but it has some shortcomings, right? Uh, it doesn't really have integrated identity and it doesn't really have integrated payments. Um, if ETH literally just becomes a network that has integrated identity and payments, right? It's already, um, it's, it's already like such an order of magnitude improvement, right? And then you start adding in, okay, well, ETH is this global network that, right? Anyone can, uh, can, can connect to, right?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Uh, you have, for the first time, this concept of like a globalized liquidity pool, rather than like this fragmented kind of regional, nationalized kind of liquidity. Um, and to me, it's just, it's, it's just clear. It's, it's obvious. There's, there's no other alternative. Um, for, for the real world asset side, it's really just acknowledging that maker, right, has this superpower of, right, and our superpower is that we can just mint DAI, right, and that there is incredible amount, like deep, deep liquidity of DAI to dollars. And as long as we have that superpower, right, we have, we have no cost of capital, right?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  So unlike, um, a traditional lender, right, which would need to somehow kind of source capital, right, to, to give out loans or to, uh, to finance something, right? Maker doesn't have that, um, right? We don't have that overhead. And so we're going to be able to undercharge on, on these rates. Um, and that, you know, on, on the macro scale is just going to allow us to be incredibly, incredibly successful, uh, when it comes to financing, uh, real world assets.

• 48:16David Hoffman?

  I really like that line, you're going to be able to undercut the rates because you can mint dye, you can always outcompete other lenders because getting, receiving capital for Maker comes for free. It's just like one single transaction that mints a bunch of dye and Maker doesn't actually owe anything to anyone because it has the power to mint dye. So like the Jeff Bezos, yeah Jeff Bezos' line, "Your margin is my opportunity," definitely comes to mind where if some commercial bank offers 4%, well Maker can always offer 3%. Minay, Sam, any of the last comments before we go into the second half of the show?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm good.

• 48:53David Hoffman?

  Cool. Alright guys, okay, so there's some really hot topics coming up next. Wormholing between all the layer twos and the other layer ones is definitely something that we're going to talk about. And we've definitely touched on real world assets, but we're gonna dive headfirst into the topic of real world assets because I think that is something that no other credit facility, no other DeFi app is really tapping into in the same way that Maker is. And it's really the untapped field of opportunity that really only Maker seems to be capturing. And then of course, we're going to get into the MKR token, the current tokenomics for MKR, and perhaps how that might stay the same or might migrate into something else moving forward. So those are the three big subjects where all the alpha is. We're gonna get into those subjects right after we talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

• 49:38David Hoffman?

  If you're trying to grow and preserve your crypto wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem. Also, IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax-advantaged ways to help you preserve your hard-earned money. Also, Crypto IRA lets you invest in more than 150 coins and tokens with all the same tax advantages of an IRA. They make it easy to fund your alternative IRA or crypto IRA via your 401k or by contributing directly from your bank account. There is no setup or account fees, and it's all you need to do to invest in crypto tax-free. Let me repeat that again. You can invest in crypto tax-free. Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto Crypto IRA to invest in crypto tax-free. Just go to altoira.com/bankless. That's A-L-T-O-I-R-A dot

• 50:26David Hoffman?

  com slash bankless and start investing in crypto today. The Brave browser is the user-first browser for the Web3 internet with over 50 million monthly active users. Control your digital footprint with built-in privacy and ad blocking. Inside the Brave browser, you'll find the Brave Wallet, the first secure crypto wallet built natively inside of a Web3 crypto browser. Web3 is freedom from big tech and Wall Street. More control and better privacy. But there's a weak point in Web3: your crypto wallet. The Brave Wallet is different. Brave Wallet is built natively inside the Brave browser, no extension required, which gives the Brave Wallet an extra level of security versus other wallets. With the Brave Wallet, you can buy, store, send, and swap your crypto assets, and you can even manage your NFTs and connect to other wallets and DeFi apps,

• 51:10David Hoffman?

  all from the security of the best privacy browser on the market. Whether you're new to crypto or a seasoned pro, it's time to switch to the Brave Wallet. Download Brave at brave.com slash bankless and click the wallet icon to get started. Aave is the leading decentralized liquidity protocol, and now Aave V3 is here. Aave V3 has powerful new features to enable you to get the most out of DeFi, including isolation mode, which allows for many more markets to be launched with more exotic collateral types, and also efficiency mode, which allows for higher loan-to-value ratios, and of course, portals, allowing users to port their Aave position across all of the networks that Aave operates on, like Polygon, Phantom, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Harmony. The beautiful thing about Aave is that it's completely open source, decentralized,

• 51:53David Hoffman?

  and governed by its community, enabling a truly bankless future for us all. To get your first crypto collateralized loan, get started at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com. And also check out the Aave Protocol Governance forums to see what more than 100,000 DAO members are all robbing about at governance.aave.com.

• 52:13David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, we are back on our MakerDAO Bowl panel. Again, three DAO community members all talking about their perspectives of MakerDAO and really why the fundamentals are so bullish. And there's a really bullish announcement that happened not too long ago. I think it came out yesterday, and Nick, I want you to take the lead on this one. MakerDAO is giving a line of credit to Tesla facilities? Nick, can you kind of unpack what's going on here and what are the details of this?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like you said, we just announced this this deal yesterday. Really huge news. And it's basically facilitated by one of our real world asset partners, Six S Capital, led by a guy called Matthew Robinowitz. And he's been a Maker community member for a long time. And so this is like one of those like really cool kind of success stories where he saw the the vision of Maker and DeFi so early. And then one day kind of a light bulb went off for him was like, wait, like, I can actually use this.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  And so what what Six S Capital is is kind of doing here is they're kind of acting as this go between liaison so Maker can effectively interface. The Maker Protocol can interface with, you know, borrowers like like Tesla. So in particular, what's happening here is that Tesla wants to build a network of collision repair centers. I believe right now in the US, but I think eventually it's supposed to be a global thing.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  But they don't have the capital, right, to to to build all of these things themselves. And if you think about like them doing a capital raise, right, them trying to take out debt, well, debt on your balance sheet isn't isn't the best thing, right, from when when when you start like analyzing the health of the company, right, and it would really slow down their ability to to execute on this, right, it's a it it shows up as a capital expenditure. So what they're doing is they're using credit tenant leases in order to raise the cash to to build these. So what a credit tenant lease is, it's essentially saying that.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  If someone were to finance the construction of this, then Tesla will promise to pay a certain amount of rent, right, every year for X number of years, and maybe the amount increases by Y percent every year, right? It's a, it's kind of, each one's a little bit unique in that respect. And, and now, right, this isn't debt on Tesla's balance sheet, right? It's not a capital expenditure, and now it's an operational expenditure, right? And so OpEx and CapEx are treated very, very differently. So that's why a credit tenant lease is like a very attractive option for Tesla to scale

• 55:26Speaker 02

  and build out this network of collision repair centers like extremely quickly.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  And so essentially, right, what we can do is we say, okay, well, we know that Tesla is going to be right, paying a certain amount, right? And that's generating yield. So essentially, you can kind of almost like treat this as a, as a bond, right? There's, it's a fixed income type of product, right? And that has a speculative value to investors. And so Maker is willing to, right, supply the, a dial loan, right? Against that kind of fixed income stream. And so we're, we're starting, I, I think, right? We just announced the first deal, and I think the amount is like 7.8 million dollars.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  But this is just the first one. We have more deals, or well, Success Capital has more deals in the pipeline with Tesla that they plan to close in the next quarter, in the next two quarters by the end of the year. So really, this is an opportunity that we, once it gets going, it's a flywheel, and we're just gonna snowball this up, right? And, you know, the amount that Maker can lend, right? We, we said it's, it's near limitless, right? We can just mint as much dye as we want. And so really, it just comes down to the Perspective of how much risk exposure does Maker want to have right to these Tesla collision repair facilities?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And that's, that's a really good problem to have, right? Where you're saying, uh, right? Oh, there's too much growth. And we, from a risk point of view, we have to throttle the growth, uh, but the opportunity here is, is absolutely huge. And we're, uh, super stoked that, uh, that this, uh, finally went live.

• 57:20David Hoffman?

  Rene, I want to get your perspectives in on this. What, how does this, how should we be thinking about this in, in the frame of DeFi? I, I think a lot of like, um, you know, cypherpunks would have, be puzzled about this. It's like, wait a second. How are we getting real world assets into the world of DeFi? How does it even work? Can you just like, give us your thoughts on this? Like, how, how, how does this, uh, illustrate the story of Maker Dow? And what it's optimizing for? And just like, how bullish is this?

• 57:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, um, I think Maker Dow, you know, by and large, is taking the approach of like engagement. And hopefully we can influence the entire economy that we're, you know, that we're living in, in a real world, um, to operate better. Rather than trying to like strictly bifurcate ourselves or like separate ourselves from real world assets or other stable coins or anything that, you know, the government might be able to touch through a couple of layers of, of interference. So, um, yeah, I think we're, we're taking the path of engagement.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  I think Maker does have like a really unique opportunity though, compared to, um, if you look at like a lender, like Compound or Ave, they always need to maintain, you know, enough liquidity so that people can withdraw their money if they want to. When Maker is, you know, much less, much less constrained about that. So, um, you know, some of these, these, you know, real world asset deals, like lending to finance, building something. They're going to need that money for a year or more. Um, and, and we have like a really unique opportunity that we're able to fund stuff for a longer commitment. And, um, other, other protocols, you know, they, they kind of have to adjust how they work to really do that effectively.

• 59:10David Hoffman?

  I think a lot of people are probably wondering how legally or technically this actually happens. How does Tesla pay money to make her DAO? There are legal structures in place, I'm pretty sure as well. And just overall, how do real world assets become collateral inside of a DeFi app? How technically does this even work? I'm not sure who's most equipped to answer that, so I'll let you guys kind of figure that out.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  So David, it is enormously complicated. And we could probably spend a whole hour talking about, well, this thing talks to that thing, is subservient to this, and there's an outside auditor here. Suffice to say that this is a structure that was purpose-built around real-world assets. And it was purpose-built for the DAO to effectively have as much control over where the money goes, where the money can't go, and how it can be handled.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  This didn't just pop up out of thin air. This is the culmination of over a year's worth of blood, sweat, and tears, and an enormous investment of resources, of capital, to create this structure. And I would say it's probably the most advanced real-world structure, asset structure out there today. And of course, it's going to be iterated on. We're going to want to diversify to different jurisdictions as well. You don't want to just have concentrated risk just in a single jurisdiction. But this is a huge first step.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Because it shows that DeFi is not just a tool for speculators and traders or whatever to get margin and to get leverage. It's really a tool that can be used in the real world to fund real tangible things. And so even though the amounts are so small, the symbolism of what it means and of what DeFi can grow into, become, I think, is extremely significant.

• 1:01:33David Hoffman?

  Nick, you said it was extremely complicated. I just want to reiterate that it's complicated on the meat space side. This isn't like a technical smart contract complication. This is a network of legal structures that you've alluded to are complicated. But if I could just press you on this, what are just really the main components that really make this thing work? Like, what are the key unlocks that allow for real world assets to come into a smart contract in DeFi? Like, where are the, where do the actual assurances lie? That these real world companies are actually going to pay a DeFi protocol? Are there any just like key components of these legal structures that stand out that we could talk about?

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Um, so I would say of note is that there is a fiduciary, right? Who is not, who is, you know, kind of like, think of them as like an independent kind of party. And they are, you know, legally required, right? To kind of do what is in the interest, right? Of their, of how you've structured this agreement, right? And so it doesn't matter what some meat space partner wants, right? It is, the fiduciary has to execute like the,

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  the kind of legal will of like this constitutional document. And so every step of this has basically been designed to protect maker, right? And so how the money can move and how money can be replaced, right? There, there is literally a mechanism for the DAO, right? To do a governance vote, to send a message to someone who then, and that message is required, right? To execute on an action, right? They're legally not allowed to do anything without, you know, this, this signal by governance. So it's literally been designed end to end just to have makers' interests basically aligned at every step and protected.

• 1:03:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so there's smart contract innovation in DeFi, but this really seems like legal, I mean, legal contract innovation in the real world. And when we get into the subject of bridging real world assets into DeFi, we must ultimately talk about normal paper, pen and paper contracts, not just smart contracts. Manet, I saw you raised your hand. Do you want to add anything on to how this kind of legal structure works?

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  No, but I was, well, I guess just a short thing is that I think it, you know, maybe for DeFi native people, it helps to like, think of this kind of like a bridge where like, you need some sort of, like, almost like an oracle to kind of take the messages from, from the blockchain, like how Maker Dow is voting, and then execute that in another domain in the real world. But there are, there are companies that, you know, in a more like tradFi context, have been doing this for years, like trust companies, basically, they're just supposed to like, take info from one contract or like another domain and then execute it. So I think

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  that we're just figuring out how to like, use all of these pre-existing mechanisms to, to our best effect.

• 1:05:01David Hoffman?

  Nick, you said that this is a really complicated, how easy is this to scale out? Like, if it's complicated, is it easily reproducible? You talked about like, you know, perhaps we can iterate on this model and make it more efficient. How is this going to go? I think you said something like $7 million deal with the first Tesla facility, but then that can roll from there. Is this model that this legal structure that's been created, can this just kind of be like replicated over and over and over again for many, many different types of real world assets? How easy is it to reproduce this in order to scale the size of real world assets inside of Maker Dow?

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  It's totally replicatable, right? The difficult part is constructing it, right? And is ensuring, right, that it works, right, that all the parties, right, are doing their, their roles and are comfortable with, with the actions that they're supposed to take, right? But once you have this up and running, right, you can definitely just clone this to, to different parties.

• 1:06:00David Hoffman?

  And so I wanted to go back and take a frame of reference as like the decentralized bank of the internet, but now put this into a context of there are bridges, as Manet said, there's bridges between real world assets and like this decentralized credit facility that's based on the internet. And if you've talked about like one of the long-term goals of collateral inside of Maker is Bitcoin, Ether, and real world assets. Like is the position for MakerDAO to be to kind of like rug pull the actual central bank and allow people to, rather than having to go to their commercial banks, or even the commercial banks having to go to the central bank, is like MakerDAO positioning itself to be the new credit facility of the digital age?

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  I wouldn't describe it as rug pull, right? It's just, it's just more competition and consumers will win, right? Because ultimately it'll lead to lower rates for everyone, right? So that's how, that's how capitalism works, right? And, you know, lower rates, right? We can, we can fund more things, we can do more good in the world, right? And the world can, can advance and innovate quicker.

• 1:07:10David Hoffman?

  Okay, you said innovate and compete with the central bank of the United States of America. And like the thing about the central bank is that it has a complete monopoly because it is the only bank in America, in the West, that can print money, except for MakerDAO. MakerDAO, the only other like institution that I can think of that can print new money is MakerDAO. I mean, there's other decentralized stablecoins like UST, and we can talk about that. But like this is the new level of competition that the central bank of the United States has never, ever had before because no one else has the legal right to print money. But now in the world of DeFi, we have this ability to do that. And so this is kind of one of, one of the bull cases for MakerDAO is they are

• 1:07:55David Hoffman?

  the first credit facility to offer competition to a whole entire central bank that controls the world reserve currency. Any, any comments or thoughts on that?

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  I think it's, I think it's very collaborative too, as well as competitive though.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  I look at Maker sort of like a little bit like commercial banking where we can we can mint as much die as we like, but we do actually need somebody who is willing to own that die to kind of balance the the supply that we're making versus, you know, the demand that there exists in the market. So we're we're operating a lot like a commercial bank. You know, we we create money, but it's all still kind of underlay by the actual, you know, US dollar that that's getting made by the Fed. I think the the collaborative part is that we're totally expanding the the breadth of people that actually have the ability to own US dollars. So people in,

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  you know, Venezuela or other Latin American countries, or just any anywhere around the world where dollars and reliable, you know, financial services are not available. Now they can they can own die, they can use die, and you know, that ultimately does kind of anchor back to the the US dollar system, at least while we're we're pegged to the dollar. So I think it's, you know, I think it's kind of giving competition to like commercial and central banks, but also kind of a tailwind for for the US economy, I would say.

• 1:09:36David Hoffman?

  So I think one last angle on this real world asset conversation before we get into layered 222 stuff. I think some people would say like, oh, like if you're going to integrate real world assets, you're just going to become regulated, right? Your the real world and sanctiations means that the regulators are just gonna it's gonna be super easy for the regulators to come knocking. And so, you know, the bear case is that well, Maker Dow will just become, you know, a regulated DeFi entity. And that's not really crypto. That's not really, you know, DeFi. That's not really crypto. The other, the bull case, the bull argument, I think, is that, well, if you integrate so much of real world assets into Maker Dow, you kind of become too big to eliminate from a regulatory standpoint, and you actually are playing very, very nicely with the real world, abiding by like real world legal structures

• 1:10:19David Hoffman?

  and playing inside the real world game. So I'm wondering your guys' thoughts. On this like this bear versus bull debate about what it means to actually integrate the real world into the maker system. Is it, does it provide like a regulatory shield? Or is it regulatory weakness as in like it's actually a risk for Maker Dow from the regulatory standpoint? Who wants to take this one?

• 1:10:44David Hoffman?

  Sam?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in terms of regulation, I would say sort of in what jurisdiction? That's it. That's important. So like, if we were just in one jurisdiction, I mean, this could be a problem. But like, I'm a big fan of we need to play nice with regulators. But if we go wide in terms of like geographic, political diversity, they'll be incentivized to play ball with us, right? And we're like, I'm not a big fan of sort of like, you know, crypto anarchy and stuff like that and fighting against regulation. I think we should embrace it and we should work with regulators to make sure the whole world can benefit from DeFi and not just keep it as sort of a niche product.

• 1:11:25David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So do you think some like the products that Maker Dow is building with for real world assets will make people like Elizabeth Warren warmer to DeFi? Is that perhaps an angle we can take?

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  I don't know about Warren, but I think I think it can win hearts and minds generally. Maybe for people who have like less personal stake in in sort of combating crypto. But yeah, I think it's, you know, when we can show, hey, like, we financed X many hundred jobs in your district for like all the different people who are working in government, it's got to have an impact.

• 1:12:06David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, I think it's time to get into the layer two, two, two side of things. And Sam, I'm going to throw this one to you. Generally speaking, what is Maker's layer two strategy? And is this time to talk about wormholing?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So I'll pull up a diagram here. So yeah, Maker is incredibly focused right now on sort of the multi-chain future. We see it as all but inevitable at this point. So like initially, we are, we've deployed canonical DAI bridges on Optimism, Arbitrum, and Starknet. But the plan is to basically go to wherever the users are. And this includes sidechains. If people want to use it, you know, Maker should be available there. It's up to the users. So like, this, this kind of plays in with this, if you see in the diagram, sort of like this D3M module type strategy,

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  where we can basically just have the core of MCD extend a credit out to these, what we call domains, but you can think of them as chains, to Arbitrum, Optimism, Starknet, Polygon, Avalanche, whatever it happens to be, and then empower these other protocols that people are using and they love to basically mint DAI. Of course, we have to take risk into account, so we extend only certain levels of credit. Now, with Wormhole, this is the other new product we've been working on for the past year, which we're actually just rolling out the first phase of this just in the coming weeks. So once Wormhole is fully deployed across all these chains, what it allows for is essentially a superhighway of liquidity

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  between all these chains. Because, again, it goes back to our superpower, we have the right to mint. We can, we have zero cost of capital, so that if somebody wants to jump from Arbitrum to Optimism, all they have to do is signal to us the intent, and then our Oracle network will basically say, sign messages saying, "This is okay," and we can mint the DAI immediately on the other chain. We do not require liquidity providers. And so we think this is our big advantage. Essentially, other than some sort of technical details, we can offer this for free. People can go from chain to chain with, and is, once the security models are solidified for these L2s in particular,

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  the debt ceilings can be raised to pretty much infinity as these chains basically inherit Ethereum's security at that point.

• 1:14:38David Hoffman?

  So let me make sure I get this right. For every single EVM-compatible chain or anything that can hook into Ethereum, there is the ability for MakerDAO to replicate its credit facility on every single chain. So DAI minting can happen natively on every single chain, and it's the same DAI across the chain. And so you don't actually do... How do the actual canonical bridges of Layer 2s, like between Ethereum Layer 1 and Optimism or Ethereum Layer 1 and Arbitrum, are these relevant? Or are we just skipping right over the bridges?

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is an important point. So in order to make DAI fungible and give minting rights on it on these other chains, we need to deploy what's called canonical DAI. This is slightly different than your sort of out-of-the-box, what we call wrapped tokens, which are basically just generic ERC20 bridge where people can deposit, lock their funds in the L1 and then mint new tokens that look and feel like the original one. We do a similar thing, but we also get this... We also can pre-mint some extra DAI on the L1 escrow and then give minting rights to multi-collateral DAI which is deployed on the L2. So it's a little bit different in that regard.

• 1:15:55David Hoffman?

  Okay, okay. And so what would happen if the canonical bridges broke, for example? Is that a risk for... You know, that's a risk for most people because that's how they get to and from the Layer 1 to Layer 2. Does that change the risk parameters for MakerDAO?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Yes, so people just bridge normally. It's permissionless, it's up to them. If the chain they're going to is compromised, user funds will be lost, and we have no control over that, nobody does. It's like just a permissionless nature of the ecosystem. Now, for DAI that we pre-mint into the bridge, that could potentially be stolen, and that would be in the sort of worst-case scenario where the chain is compromised. Now, how we limit that is we use debt ceilings on all of these. As chains sort of solidify their security, we can continually raise these, but if we're...

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Concerned about these types of hacks, we can limit our exposure via debt ceilings. And on the wormhole in particular, we can say, you know, from this chain, let's say, I don't know, I've got some side chain that's, you know, not very well known and I'm wanting to go to Arbitrum, we would set the Arbitrum die that we're minting from that source chain that we're not too sure about to some low number. So people can do it, but if it's compromised, we'll shield ourselves in that way. And the bottom line is that maker holders are responsible for this loss. We make sure we do not put this loss on the die holders. So maker holders are making a decision on which, but that debt ceilings are, they should be responsible for the loss if they make a mistake.

• 1:17:31David Hoffman?

  Can I put like Ether into the Ethereum L1 maker instance and then mint die on like any of the other maker replicas? Like if I have a thousand dollars of Ether collateral in the main Maker DAO, can I mint 500 die on like Arbitrum?

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, this cross sort of lending thing, I've been hearing more about that. We have no plans at this moment, but it's something we're sort of initially investigating. It could very well be in the near future.

• 1:17:59David Hoffman?

  Neat, neat. Manet or Nick, anything you guys want to add to this layer two conversation?

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  No, Sam is the Sam is the layer two man. He's a, he's our god.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  I think maybe only one thing I'd add is just, it's like exciting to think that we can kind of balance liquidity needs and rates across all of these different domains. Not only with wormhole, but we can use stuff like the D3Ms to target specific interest rates on different platforms. So yeah, I think, you know, we're just going to bring a ton of utility to all of these L2s.

• 1:18:38David Hoffman?

  Amazing. All right, guys, this is a, I want to bring us, unless there's anything else to talk about in the layer two section, I think what we want to get into the final topic, just the MKR token and MKR tokenomics. First question I want to ask is, how much revenue is Maker DAO as a, as a platform making right now? And then how does that relate to the value of the MKR token in its current form? Manet, can I throw this one to you?

• 1:19:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think we're earning currently around like $60 million in profit. And then we

• 1:19:14David Hoffman?

  On a yearly basis?

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  On a yearly basis. And, you know, we have overheads, we have, you know, numerous core unit teams that we're, we're paying for.

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  So the actual amount of stability fees that we're earning is, is significantly above that. I want to say it's over 100 million, or I'm not actually certain right now, but it's, it's a pretty significant amount.

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  So yeah, we're, we're very strong from like a revenue and earnings standpoint.

• 1:19:44David Hoffman?

  And then how does all of this revenue translate into the value of the MKR token on the secondary markets?

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  So in theory, if we have met our goal for how much we want to have saved in that surplus buffer, anything above that, where we use to buy back MKR tokens and, and burn it. And, you know, as a regular MKR holder, what that means is that your percent ownership of the protocol goes up a little bit whenever Maker is burning tokens. So it's almost like you're passively being, you know, distributed that income.

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  I think at the moment, we're actually not burning because we want to build up those reserves even more so that we can, you know, take on more risks and then hopefully over time, just kind of accelerate our earnings potential even more.

• 1:20:35David Hoffman?

  Is this going to be the tokenomics model for Maker going forward? I've heard some clamoring, some, there's been debate about the, how the, the burn, the buyback and burn model maybe doesn't actually capture value all that well. I'm wondering if you guys have any thoughts on, on the, the future of the MKR tokenomics model?

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  So there's been several new tokenomics kind of proposals. Actually, there was, there was one, I think, even just like a couple of weeks ago from, from Andreessen Horowitz, from, from A16Z. Where, where they came up with a model. And I believe even Runa, right, Runa is the, the co-founder of Maker. Even leaked kind of some, some of his own ideas, I think, yesterday or two days ago in, in the Discord around some, some potential tokenomics changes. So I, I would very much say there, there's a lot of different ideas on implementations.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  But I, I wouldn't say there's a solid consensus yet on, on which direction that, that the community wants to go yet.

• 1:21:43David Hoffman?

  Is there consensus that change is wanted, even though we don't know what the change should be? Is there consensus that we should move into something else?

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  I, I, I think so. I, I think the burn mechanism was, was, was good for when it was created. Because it showed a clear transfer of value, right, from the protocol back to the token holders. Remember that, you know, in 2015, 2016, you know, this was when you had utility tokens, right? You know, you, people were trying to make their tokens as useless as possible, right? You know, to make sure, ensure that, you know, this could never be misconstrued as a security. Right? So the, the burn mechanism at the time was already fairly, I think, revolutionary in that respect.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  But I think it's, it's shown to be rather dated, right? And because it incentivizes the wrong things, right? When, when you're burning MKR, right, you're really, what, what really happens, right? Is there's an auction that gets triggered, right? There's a certain amount of dye that's up for auction. And people bid with their MKR, right? And whoever wins the auction, right, they get the dye and the auction that, that the, the MKR that the auction returned from the bidder, right, that gets burned. The, the problem here is that this is kind of incentivizes, right? The people who are selling their MKR, and this is almost like the, the wrong incentive that you want to create, right? You don't really want to.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  You don't really want to incentivize people to sell, right? If anything, you want to incentivize the holders, right? And so I think there's a lot more interesting crypto economic kind of innovations that we've had like in recent years, right? That we can that we can implement. Primary one being right, you want to incentivize the holders, right? So you want to incentivize, you know, locking up and serving as some kind of sponge or sink, right? For the tokens on the sell side.

• 1:23:57David Hoffman?

  One of my favorite things about the Maker Dow protocols, there's just so many data and so much data and numbers to be able to consume. One of my favorite websites is makerburn.com, which I'm going to ask for Sam to pull up here in a second. There's just so much, so much numbers to be able to look at. And this definitely kept me entertained during the bear market of 2018 to 2020. I just want to kind of zoom out and get like a gist for the fundamentals, right? The current state of the fundamentals of the MKR token. Sam, can you kind of just walk us through what we're seeing on the screen here? And allow people, help viewers interpret what it means to what the fundamentals of the MKR token are?

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so as you can see, some of the stuff we previously talked about, as you can see in the top, you know, there's a countdown to 10 billion die. There's the surplus buffer, which we talked about previously. We can see the total die supply, which we're just shy of 10 billion. I think we actually crossed it not too long ago, but we've slightly retraced. As well, you can see the system surplus, which is actually kind of synonymous with the surplus buffer. This is the amount of sort of extra die we have to take on losses and protect the system. We also have annual profit estimate here. This is, you know, Maker Burn, the guy who He's like compiled everything, right?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Like it's sort of a, you can see it here actually takes into account stability fees, liquidations, even sort of stuff that's kind of a little bit off-chain, sort of how much the core units cost, as well as like maker vesting and the DSR. So this is actually a profit estimate, it's not revenues. So that's pretty interesting. You could see like PE numbers and stuff here. It's pretty low. Then you see the maker price down here. Yep, let's go back. And maker tokens burned so far on the bottom right here. So we've burned 2.24% of the supply. There's some amount sitting in the treasury as well.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, 83,000, these were sort of like famously given from the foundation to the DAO back in, I think that was August of last year, as the Maker Foundation dissolved. So yeah, this site's really great for a breakdown of like what's going on in detail. The guy who runs this, he's doing an awesome job.

• 1:26:25David Hoffman?

  And so I think this gets me into my very last set of questions. The costs of the protocol. There are Maker DAO core groups, is what I think you guys call them. And it's one of the very unique things about the DAO, the Maker DAO, in the sense that it's not, you know, a Discord with 10, you know, 50 people all doing work. It's actually different organizations that are all focused on their one particular set of goals, and then they lobby the central org, the central DAO, for capital, right? Saying, hey, this is the work that we're doing, please give us capital. Can you guys just talk about that model and how it's unique? And also, can we illustrate some like, these are the costs of the protocol, right? We gotta fund the salaries, gotta pay the bills.

• 1:27:08David Hoffman?

  So how much do all of these core groups cost the protocol? And maybe you guys can just talk about why this model of a DAO structure is advantageous at large. Who wants to take this one?

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  Uh, I think I can do it, right? Uh, so, so David, right? What is the? What do, what are DAOs optimized for, right? How are DAOs different from companies, right? Uh, companies optimize for efficiency and DAOs optimize for resiliency. Right? So if you're going to do a DAO and then still just be some kind of company in, on the legal end, uh, it, it, it doesn't really make any sense, right? You're kind of just doing DAO like decentralization theater, right?

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  If you wanna be a real DAO, if you want true decentralization, you cannot have a top-down hierarchy. You cannot have, right, uh, everyone in, in this same legal entity. Like to get that resiliency, you really have to have this type of hub and spoke model where it's really just these different autonomous groups, right?

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  You know, i- i- it's almost like, right, uh, if, if something happened to me, right? It, it wouldn't be a problem, right? Because, uh, someone else can just come in and be like, well, you know, we're, uh, I'm, I'm leading the Oracle core unit now, or, um, if I go, you know, rogue or I'm deciding, you know, I, I hate this shit or whatever, right? Anyone else can go and just like, say like, you know what? Hey, DAO. I'm gonna do Oracles for you from now on, right? And this is the amount of budget I'm gonna need in order to pull it off, right? Do you approve? Right? And what, what you eventually wanna build this into is you don't even want just like, you know, one

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  like smart contracts team, one Oracles team, one risk team, one real world asset team. You really want just like redundant and redundant layers of different teams, right, in different geographical areas, locations, right?

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  All kind of, uh, you know, just adding layers and layers and layers of extra resiliency. Um, and, and that's really where this, this core unit model comes from. Um, it's just these, these isolated operating units. And while I would say- That you know, it's it's not all flowers and rainbows, right? You know, there there are disadvantages to working in this kind of like distributed fashion. I would say coordination right becomes uh is something that centralized corporations do a lot better than kind of like distributed decentralized DAOs, right? Uh, that's that that's just the trade off you make for resiliency.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  Uh, and so I would argue that anyone who's doing a DAO that's not doing it this way, right, is is really not being true to, you know, and taking advantage to the innate benefits of being a DAO.

• 1:30:06David Hoffman?

  Sam or Renee, guys want to add any perspectives as to the structure of Maker DAO?

• 1:30:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think um in my view, Maker has like a really good balance of trying to not be too um like centralized and too hierarchical like a company, but then also um not trying to be too flat of an org like some DAOs, I think. You know, it ends up just kind of everything is like bike shedding. And I think we have a good balance of, you know, we have clear accountability that runs up to the the token holders and the delegates. Um, teams have their own kind of accountability that they are able to like figure out themselves, um, because they're kind of self sovereign.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  And yeah, I think it's it's like a really good mixture of like really distributed, but also not not falling into like the flat org. Like Curse or Psyop or whatever you want to call it.

• 1:31:08David Hoffman?

  Sam, I want to let you take this home for us. Let's zoom all the way back out and just view this whole entire episode, this whole podcast and from a bird's eye view and especially Maker DAO from from, you know, a bird's eye view. Why bullish Maker DAO?

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  I mean, so many things. From like, I guess, our strategy to branching out into the real world. Sort of, there's just so much opportunity out there. Like, we are just scratching the surface. And, you know, Maker, as usual, is kind of taking the lead. We expect others to come along with us. But yeah, it's sort of getting into this much bigger market, like sort of spearheading that. And sort of providing, I would say, the backbone infrastructure for modern day DeFi, which I view as sort of incredibly diverse set of chains and sort of connecting them all together, provide, like, is basically being the liquidity powerhouse of multi-chain DeFi.

• 1:32:08David Hoffman?

  Guys, this has been a fantastic panel. Thank you for coming on and helping me illustrate the bull case for MakerDAO. Bankless listeners, you know what to do. Like and subscribe. That's how we get the views. And if you guys, like I said in the beginning in the intro, if you think that there's a DAO or organization or token that has really bullish fundamentals, yet the market isn't appreciating it, assemble a team, put some notes together, hit us up on Twitter, and we'll make a show about this. Sam, Minay, and Nick, thank you for coming on and kicking off this new series that we're doing out of Bankless and really helping us illustrate the bull case for MakerDAO.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, David.

• 1:32:47David Hoffman?

  All right. Cheers, guys. Bankless listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to the show. As always, this is not financial advice. Crypto is risky. Bitcoin is risky. Ether is risky. DeFi is risky. MakerDAO is risky. You can lose what you put in, but we are headed west. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access

• 1:33:31David Hoffman?

  To our market analysis, our alpha leaks and exclusive content, and even the bankless token for airdrops, raffles and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey.