Ethereum Istanbul may not pose problems for Maker smart contracts

Bitcoin and crypto-research firm Messari recently interviewed the COO of the Maker Foundation, Steven Becker, to discuss DSR, governance, and the upcoming Ethereum Istanbul hard fork.

When asked if all existing Sai will be rolled into Dai, Becker responded that the protocol is decentralized, leaving the decision up to MKR holders, or who Becker calls “Governance.”

“The plan for Governance is to shut down Sai when they have deemed a sufficient critical mass of Sai has been migrated to Dai. So no set date, it is up to them.”

Becker was also asked about how Dai would be impacted if one of the collateral types came to face regulatory issues such as being deemed a security. In response, the Maker Foundation COO stated that Governance has already been discussing tokenized real-world assets and security tokens.

“By definition they will be securities that can be used to generate Dai. Therefore there is no impact on Dai itself, as Dai depends on the core value of the collateral type for its stability and will still be decentralized.”

In explaining the incentive for MKR holders to increase the Dai Savings Rate, Becker stated that the SF would help with the generation of Dai — the supply, while DSR provided the demand aspect, creating a balance. Given a supply-driven scenario, Becker also said that DSR would help find the clearing point and provide necessary robustness to the protocol.

“How Governance manages the spread between SF and DSR will promote the necessary momentum for growth in a considered fashion.”

Becker also spoke about how the upcoming Ethereum Istanbul hard fork poses no problems for Maker’s contracts, which do not have hard-coded gas requirements. Despite Maker being blockchain-agnostic, Becker explained how it is more important to look at blockchains with the greatest available value, which right now is Ethereum.

He also seemed unconcerned about potential competition down the line, affirming that more competition would be better for the DeFi landscape and “showcase the value of DeFi to the traditional world.”

“Generating value from assets is only restricted by the value of the assets available. Consequently if real world assets were tokenized, the access to value would be potentially huge.”