On August 27, 2024, Makerdao formally transferred to Sky, a new identity that was intended to indicate a new era of modular governance, ecosystem scaling and Real-World integrations.
A year later the core pillars of that transformation are present, but the adoption story remains mixed.
The renewed protocol now supervises more than $ 7.8 billion in Stabilecoin obligations in DAI and its successor USDS. But despite heavy investments in marketing stimuli and spider -offs of ecosystem, Sky’s Headline Stablecoin -Statistics Flatlined, or in some cases, are vice versa. In the meantime, capital restructuring efforts and radical token migration have completely started fully reforming protocol management.
The financial data of the organizations are also a bit of a puzzle, said Sky co-founder Rune Christensen during a community call on Wednesday.
“We have three different ways to measure this stuff, and none of the three tend to agree,” said Christensen. He described the gap between PNL estimates on-chain, such as the Steakhouse report ($ 8 million Q2 profit) and dashboard prognoses ($ 300 million run-rate), as a function of the “capital transaction” accounting.
“By not counting capital transactions, we actually lower the profit,” Christensen explained.
Critics such as paper empire have questioned the effectiveness of management. “The cumulative costs for designing, planning and launching USDS are quite high,” he wrote on X. “About $ 44 million has taken effect in recent years … Costs currently run around $ 100 million/year annually.”
He noted that, despite these stimuli, DAI or other Stablecoin competitors in the market share did not make sense, even in a favorable environment.
Blockworks contacted the Sky team with questions, but was referred to the Community Call.
Rajiv, a leading contribution to the analysis efforts of Sky, offered some nuance in the community call: “It just feels like the Sweet Spot for Suss is really this large, more institutional holders who really appreciate immediate liquidity.” Crypto funds such as Galaxy Digital were cited as recent strikers, even when smaller long-tailed users withdrew from Sky Token Reward Participation.
Etherscan shows Suss, who receives the Sky Savings percentage (currently 4.75%), is in possession of 4,656 portfolios. That is the exclusion of some suss that have been promised as collateral in certain Defi -slimming contracts, but the figure must be reasonably representative of the number of individuals or entities that use the protocol.
Source: Dune / Viridian Advisors
Nevertheless, the combined USDS and Dai -Voeding Q2 2025 essentially ended flat, with a surprising turn: DAI itself is growing again. “In recent weeks there has been a very interesting trend of an increase in Dai’s question,” Rajiv noted.
This observation underlines a wider shift: although Sky no longer gambles on transactional stablecoin PMF, it leans heavily in the idea of capital formation by tailor -made ecosystem units such as Spark and Grove. These “stars” are expected to enclose USDS as a super-senior capital layer while the risk capital of onboarding in strategies with a higher return was noted, Christiansen noted.
“Sky evolves from offering only a stablecoin to offering the more general value of supporting capital formation,” said Christiansen.
He called Spark as an example: “Sky posted $ 25 million and received $ 390 million.”
From brand to token
Another core mile post: the transition from MKR to Sky, now almost completed.
From May 2025, Sky has an exclusive administrative authority, with MKR holders who can convert 1: 24,000. The pace of the conversion was sharp in Q2, as according to research data from Blockworks, after the announcement of a “delayed upgrade fine” – the planned 1% decline in the conversion rate every three months from September 18.
Source: Blockworks Research
“It is an important step in the direction of eliminating fixed costs and guaranteeing income flows to heaven holders,” Christiansen said about the transition at the time. Sky strike is also a bright spot, which makes rewards in USDS possible, or are put together again in heaven through an annual liquid safe.
