Early polling indicates MKR holders want to keep the SKY brand, though participation in the poll is still low.
While Americans head to the polls today to pick a new president, MakerDAO token holders have their say on the protocol’s brand.
Voting is open for MKR token holders to gauge their opinion on whether MakerDAO should “re-center” the Maker brand and drop the new “Sky” moniker, which it adopted in August.
The poll – which is not binding – currently shows that token holders support keeping the Sky brand, although participation is so far quite limited.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Rune Christensen, MakerDAO’s founder, remained neutral on the branding question but instead asked the community to resolve the branding debate and refocus on growth.
“The most important thing is just to make a decision, and focus on what matters, which is the product,” he said.
Christensen emphasized that changing the name to Sky was not merely cosmetic “and a lot more than a rebrand,” saying it was part of Maker’s ‘Endgame’ strategy that introduced new products, like the USDS stablecoin.
One way to track the success of this stablecoin, Christensen said, is through the portion of USDS held idle without earning rewards. Of the over $1 billion in circulation, a small but notable amount are not earning rewards – which shows that it’s being held by real humans and not bots as this idle behavior signals organic use, as real users treat USDS like cash, holding it temporarily without maximizing returns.
“Bots are never going to leave money on the table,” he said.
However, while the move was still considered to be successful, and the launch of the USDS stablecoin has exceeded expectations, Christensen also acknowledged that the re-branding of Sky was met with challenges that impacted community perception and market confidence.
He noted that the (MKR) token’s value dropped significantly after the launch of Sky – CoinDesk Indices data shows it’s down nearly 40% in the last three months while the CD20 index is up 14% – overshadowing the positive aspects of the rebrand.
“The price action ended up totally dominating people’s impression of the launch,” he said, pointing fingers at the dual-token structure, which led to confusion.
“It was a half migration. It wasn’t a full rebrand of the token to Sky, so most people still hold MKR,” he said. “There are two tokens, and what does that mean? It gets very confusing very fast. The classic case of uncertainty, which is the worst thing you can have in an economy or financial system.”
The poll continues until November 7. The next step will be a binding governance vote.