What Is Maker Coin
Maker Coin (MKR) is a utility token launched in 2017 to support a smart contract lending platform called MakerDAO, launched in 2015 as an open-source, decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to offer economic freedom and opportunities to everyone via decentralized lending.
The first function Maker Coin serves is as a recapitalization resource to peg MakerDAO's DAI tokens to the US dollar, making them a stablecoin for ease of use in decentralized lending. This is done through a process mediated by market-making protocols (hence the DAO and it's native token's name) to adjust the relative supply of each cryptographically secured token against each other so that the DAI remains pegged to the US dollar.
The second function of MKR token is to serve as a governance token for the platform's stakeholders. Holders of Maker Coin can vote on proposals to upgrade the Maker platform. Users can also delegate the vote share of each MKR token to others to vote. Voting is accomplished in phases through the execution of smart contracts.
Along with the successful launch of the Maker token in 2017 came the first version of an algorithmically mediated stablecoin for lending in the Maker ecosystem– the Single Collateral Dai (SAI), which used Ether (ETH) for collateral to take out loans.
Following that achievement, developers launched the Multi-Collateral Dai (DAI) two years later in 2019, and began phasing out SAI. Maker price on liquid market exchanges has risen dramatically since its inception, driving its market capitalization to an all-time high of nearly $6 billion by the top of the crypto bull market in May 2021. Since then, its market cap remained above $2 billion for most of the summer of 2021, dipping below essential support briefly the last week in June 2021.
Maker Founders
MakerDAO was first launched in 2015 by Rune Christensen, a tech startup entrepreneur residing in Sealand, Denmark. Christensen studied biochemistry in college, with interest in engineer complex biochemical machines, and graduated with his degree from Copenhagen University. He also studied international business at the Copenhagen Business School.
Before founding MakerDAO and the Maker Foundation in 2015, Christensen was a co-founder and manager of an international recruiting company called Try China. The first fully implemented and deployed element of the broader MKR ecosystem is MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization that is specialized to act as a smart contract platform.
The Maker protocol is the system of rules and software architecture implemented to operate as a lender without the need for trusted, third-party, central intermediaries like banks and sovereign governments.
The goal of its founder, developers, and backers is to revolutionize lending with a working decentralized finance (DeFI) solution, making lending open, permissionless, borderless, anonymous, and uncensorable. Hundreds of millions of the world's people rung in the new year in 2021 unbanked that is, without access to financial loans from banks or even basic banking services like checking and savings accounts.
The world's most unbanked countries are Morocco, Vietnam, Egypt, Philippines, and Mexico. In the Middle East and Africa, some 50% of the people are unbanked. In South and Central America, some 38% of the population is financially excluded. Christensen and the Maker community envision a world in which all the world's people have access to banking.
How Does MKR Work
The Maker infrastructure is the biggest player online in the DeFi space. The decentralized lending platform is the world's most popular by far after enjoying widespread adoption.
By the end of Dec 2020, it was objectively the biggest DeFi lending platform in the world with some USD $2.58 billion in total value locked (TVL). Total value locked is a measure of the amount of digital assets staked in a decentralized platform dealing with digital assets.
Maker price fluctuates in part as the DAO adjusts to keep its DAI lending tokens stable. Holders of MKR can utilize it as a governance token to vote on suggested proposals to upgrade the platform. Examples of proposed or proposed and implemented changes to governance include achieving consensus on a set of oracles to support the DAO with real-time information, smart contracts collateral functionality, and making adjustments to the Dai Savings Rate (DSR).
Many investors buy and hold MKR as a long-term investment in the enterprise. Others buy and sell it to trade against the Maker price for profits by taking advantage of short-term inefficiencies during volatile markets. MKR price is subject to supply/demand economics, the overall health and business of the ecosystem, the general momentum of the cryptocurrency market's prices, and strategic global macro factors.
Maker Network Security
Maker Coin is an ERC-20 token, so it is secured by the Ethereum blockchain. The world's most popular blockchain platform for developing decentralized applications, Ethereum offers world-class security for its decentralized databases using a propriety proof of work (PoW) consensus protocol.
The consensus mechanism mediated by this propriety tech (called Ethash) maintains network security by ensuring only qualified nodes participate in updating and securing the Ethereum blockchain. It does so by requiring participating nodes to venture the cost of electricity and computer runtime to solve cryptographic hash problems and rewards them for following the network's protocols but penalizes them for breaking the rules to double-spend tokens or otherwise corrupt the blockchain.
Ethereum is currently in the process of transition to a combination of proof of work and proof of stake (PoS) as the chain's consensus mechanism for security.
