The governance token of MakerDAO, MKR, has seen a surge in price following the introduction of a token buyback program. The token briefly reached a one-year high of $1,200 before settling at around $1,144. The buyback program, called the Smart Burn Engine, removes MKR supply from the market by allocating excess DAI stablecoins to purchase MKR from a UniSwap pool. MakerDAO is one of the largest and oldest DeFi lending protocols and is currently undergoing a major overhaul, including upgrading its tokens and breaking up its structure into smaller autonomous organizations.

According to makerburn data, MakerDAO's intelligent burn engine has been activated, with a current treasury surplus of $63.6 million, of which over $50 million ($13.6 million) will be used to repurchase MKR and add it to Uniswap V2 as LP along with DAI. According to on-chain information, repurchases are currently being executed approximately every 27 minutes, with an average repurchase amount of around $5,000.

Aave has overtaken MakerDAO as the second-largest DeFi protocol in terms of total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama data. This is due to a 15% drop in Maker's TVL since March 10, caused by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the depeg of USDC and its DAI stablecoin, and a fall in DAI supply rates.

Peer-to-peer lending has become a popular alternative to traditional banking, allowing borrowers and investors to connect directly without intermediaries. This article highlights five decentralized P2P lending services, including Aave, which offers flash loans, and Compound, which uses an algorithm to modify interest rates based on asset availability and demand. MakerDAO is known for its stablecoin, DAI, and its decentralized governance architecture, while dYdX provides borrowing and lending features for derivatives trading. Fulcrum, powered by bZx, offers seamless integration of lending and margin trading services and uses decentralized governance through its native token.

Whales have been buying DAI in an attempt to accumulate more BTC, leading to a spike in revenue for MakerDAO. Despite the growing interest in BTC from institutional players like BlackRock, DAI may emerge as a beneficiary. Traders have been closely monitoring the price range of $30k to $31k for Bitcoin and accumulating stablecoins such as DAI. MakerDAO's revenue has grown by 41.5% over the last month, with Real-World Assets (RWA) being a major contributor.

Non-profit organization Bluechip has launched a rating platform to provide transparent and unbiased evaluations of stablecoins in the crypto market. The platform currently rates 15 stablecoins and gold-pegged tokens based on Bluechip's SMIDGE rating framework, which evaluates stability, management, implementation, decentralization, governance, and externals. The launch is supported by MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen, Reserve’s co-founder Nevin Freeman, and StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson, among others. The platform aims to provide a simple tool and clear grading system to help users make informed decisions when choosing stablecoins.

MakerDAO's wstETH has seen a surge of interest in its vaults, with the WSTETH-B vault holding an impressive 309 million DAI and the WSTETH-A vault accumulating 221 million DAI. The RETH-A vault also recorded a substantial amount, with 21 million DAI.

Gnosis treasury manager Karpatkey initiated a community proposal in MakerDAO, proposing to launch MakerDAO’s lending agreement Spark Protocol on Gnosis Chain. Gnosis Pay will launch this month, allowing the issuance of credit cards.

MakerDAO has deployed the MKR buy contract on the chain. Previously, MakerDAO’s new proposal proposed to set the treasury cap at 50 million DAI, buy MKR for the excess, and set up LPs on Uniswap to increase liquidity.

July 5 (Cointime) - MakerDAO is promoting the development of the Spark protocol to multi-chain, and is ready for deployment in different fields. Users can submit information on the Maker Forum about deploying the Spark protocol in a specific field, including background, technology, and collateral. Evaluation results will be provided to MKR holders for decision making.

July 3 (Cointime) - The MakerDAO risk core unit team recently released the proposal "Introduction to Smart Burn Engine and Initial Parameters" in the community. Allocate excess Dai in the reserved Surplus Buffer (surplus buffer). The difference between the smart burn engine and the previous burn design is that MKR tokens will be accumulated in the form of Uniswap V2 LP tokens instead of being acquired and burned. Additionally, Surplus Auctions (Flaps) will be replaced by Dss Flappers contracts.

June 28 (Cointime) - SBI VC Trade, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based financial holding company SBI, has announced the listing of three crypto assets, including Shiba Inu (SHIB), on its cryptocurrency exchange platform.

June 21 (Cointime) - MakerDAO, the organization behind the DAI stablecoin, has purchased over $700 million in U.S. Treasury bonds, bringing their total bond holdings to $1.2 billion.

June 16 (Cointime) -MakerDAO officially announced that the Dai Savings Rate (DSR) will be raised from 1% to 3.49% at 22:00 on June 19th Beijing time.

June 16 (Cointime) - After a $95 million burn, BUSD stablecoin's market capitalization has fallen below that of DAI. Despite maintaining its third most dominant position for over three months, the decline of BUSD was inevitable after Paxos stopped issuing it in February.

June 16 (Cointime) - MakerDAO, a decentralized finance platform and stablecoin issuer, has approved a proposal to increase the DAI Savings Rate (DSR) to 3.49% from 1%, providing additional incentive for investors to hold and lend DAI instead of rival stablecoins.

Maker's MKR token saw a 2.8% surge in the last 24 hours, while its TVL fell by 15.8% over the last month. MakerDAO achieved a significant milestone as its annualized fee revenue hit $94.87 million, the highest since mid-February 2022. The surge in revenue was attributed to interest income earned from U.S. Treasury bonds purchased using the protocol's Peg Stability Module (PSM) USDC. Despite the positive news, concerns remain as Maker's TVL experienced the highest monthly drop among the top 10 DeFi platforms, according to DeFiLlama. MKR tokenholders use the fee revenue to fund the protocol's operational costs and buy and burn MKR tokens to dilute the supply.

June 15 (Cointime) - MakerDAO, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform and stablecoin issuer, is considering reducing its holding of Gemini's GUSD stablecoin from $500 million to $110 million in its DAI stablecoin reserve.

June 14 (Cointime) - an arbitrage bot utilized MakerDAO's 'DssFlash' contract to borrow $200 million worth of DAI stablecoin without incurring fees. The bot then used the DAI to borrow $2,300 worth of wrapped ether (WETH) and purchased Threshold Network (T) on Curve before selling it on Balancer. Although the bot made a profit of $33, it incurred almost $30 in transaction and protocol fees, leaving a net profit of $3.24. Flash loans have been used for nefarious purposes in the past, resulting in significant losses on DeFi platforms.

Following the SEC's lawsuits, there has been a resurgence of interest in stablecoins. This is evidenced by the increase in unique active addresses and weekly senders in stablecoin transactions. Investors are seeking stability and risk mitigation by shifting their investments from altcoins to stablecoins.