Maker’s MKR Token Surges 30% and Stablecoin DAI Leapfrogs UST

Maker’s governance token MKR spiked more than 30% overnight, and its stablecoin DAI also benefited from the continued meltdown of Terra’s UST stablecoin, which slipped as low as $0.30 in the early hours of Wednesday morning. 

MKR currently trades for $1,664 dollars a token, a price increase of a little over 35% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Maker’s token is used to govern MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, and Maker Protocol, a software platform; both allow for the creation and management of Maker’s algorithmically dollar-pegged DAI stablecoin, which has now leapfrogged UST as the fourth-largest stablecoin by market cap.

Maker rises as Terra falls

Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) is in the throes of a dramatic price crash. On Monday, the price fell from its dollar peg and continued its precipitous collapse on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), a non-profit supporting all things Terra (LUNA), voted to lend $1.5 billion in crypto to protect its native UST’s peg. The effort failed to stem the tide, with UST crashing even harder overnight; at 8:45 AM UTC today it bottomed out at $0.2998.

The price of LUNA, the currency which Terra burns a dollar’s worth for every new UST minted, is also crashing hard. At its current price of $2.20, LUNA has lost over 90% of its value overnight. 

It currently remains uncertain what measures will be taken to re-peg UST, but Terra CEO Do Kwon addressed a nine-tweet thread for concerned Terra supporters. He wrote: “the only path forward will be to absorb the stablecoin supply that wants to exit before $UST can start to repeg. There is no way around it.”