Can Maker’s Rune Christensen Fix the Sad State of DAO Governance? - Ep. 534

The height of the last bull run was when MakerDAO cofounder Rune Christensen felt most disillusioned by DeFi and DAOs. “I didn’t even see how Maker was going to survive,” Christensen tells Laura Shin in the latest episode of Unchained. Now Christensen is leading an effort to help DAOs escape their trough of disillusionment. He says the ambitious “Endgame Plan” for MakerDAO seeks to overcome “the central issue of voter apathy.” Will it work or are DAOs doomed to fail?

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights:

• the disillusionment that comes with the growth of DAOs and the need for a new approach
• Rune’s insights into the challenges that most DAOs face
• how Maker plans to implement alignment engineering through tools, gamification, and incentives
• what each phase of Maker’s “Endgame Plan” seeks to accomplish
• the strategy behind Maker’s rebranding, including the launch of new tokens while maintaining MKR and DAI
• the importance of governance boundaries in ensuring that participants follow the rules and contribute constructively
• the goal to reach a state of ossification and certainty, similar to Bitcoin
• the challenges of renaming tokens and the decision to keep the original brands
• why Rune believes that Phase 2 of the Endgame Plan will change the industry
• how SubDAOs will work to align incentives, improve the organization, and avoid ponzi schemes
• what Maker’s “Atlas” is and how it intends to set boundaries
• how Maker plans to use artificial intelligence 
• the role of delegates in the DAO and how users choose them
• the difference between “dovish” and “hawkish” governance
• what the motivation was for launching the Spark lending protocol
• why the DAI Savings Rate (DSR) is not offered to American investors and Rune’s take on DeFi regulation
• why South Korea and Japan are the best crypto environments in the world, according to Rune
• whether Maker should be doing more to mitigate the influence of “whales,” given that Rune owns about 10% of the MKR supply

Thank you to our sponsors!

• Crypto.com
• Arbitrum Foundation
• TOKEN2049

Guest:

• Rune Christensen, Cofounder of MakerDAO
• Previous appearances on Unchained:
• Rune Christensen of MakerDAO Part 1: How to Keep a Crypto-Collateralized Stablecoin Afloat
• Rune Christensen of MakerDAO Part 2: How Dai Stayed at $1 While ETH Crashed From $1,400 to $85 
• The Chopping Block: How to Manage MakerDAO, With Hasu and Rune
• Rune Christensen of MakerDao on Its $15 Million From Andreessen Horowitz
• Why It's so Hard to Keep Stablecoins Stable

Links

• Unchained: 
• MakerDAO: The DeFi Protocol That Lets You Be Your Own Banker
• MakerDAO’s Spark Protocol Blocks VPN Users
• MakerDAO to Raise DAI Yield Amid Lower Demand for Stablecoin
• Maker Founder Proposes Changing DAI Savings Rate to 5% 
• The Defiant: Christensen Drops Radical Plan to Remake MakerDAO and Address 'Fundamental Problems',
• Christensen’s Twitter thread explaining Endgame

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