Vitalik Buterin Sells MKR Tokens as MakerDAO Co-Founder Pushes for Solana-based ‘NewChain’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sold around $580,000 worth of MakerDAO’s MKR tokens, after the project’s co-founder Rune Christensen advocated launching the project’s new chain on a Solana-based platform.

In the Discord channel of rival stablecoin issuance platform Reflexer Finance, Buterin offered some suggestions on how to compete with and complement the leading platform in stablecoin issuance, “if MakerDAO is torpedoing itself in weird directions.”

MakerDAO, the issuer of the stablecoin DAI, is currently pursuing an overhaul of its protocol dubbed “Endgame.” In recent days, Christensen has pushed for the launch of a native blockchain for Maker codenamed NewChain, based on Solana’s codebase.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko clarified that the proposed new Maker chain has “nothing to do with Solana’s mainnet” or the ongoing Ethereum versus Solana debate.

However, Buterin appears dissatisfied with the Maker co-founder’s decision, selling his MKR holdings from 2020 a day after Christensen sent his tweet.

Buterin sold 500 MKR for 353.4 ETH, equivalent to approximately $579,000, through CoW Protocol, according to Etherscan data.

Buterin’s advice to Reflexer

The Ethereum co-founder also paid a visit to the Discord channel of rival stablecoin platform Reflexer Finance, where he encouraged the community to expand their collateral options to liquidity staking derivatives on Ethereum.

Reflexer enables the minting of the RAI stablecoin using only Ethereum as collateral.

RAI does not target any specific peg like the dollar pegged-DAI. Instead, its price is determined by the price of ETH and demand for RAI.

Liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) are tokens that represent the amount of staked ETH in Ethereum’s proof-of-stake validating contract.

Buterin emphasized the importance of active community governance in adding support for “staked ETH.”

He added that the community must “ideally intentionally” begin with “only non-dominant forms of staked ETH (so, not Lido).”

Lido has raised some concerns due to its rising dominance, representing one-third of total staked ETH.

The Ethereum co-founder went on to recommend to the Reflexer community that “if MakerDAO is torpedoing itself in weird directions”, then Reflexer can improve by providing more collateral options like MakerDAO. Nevertheless, Buterin added that there’s value in maintaining some kind of norm where "ETH is the collateral.”

The price of Reflexer Finance’s governance token Reflexer Ungovernance (FLX) surged almost 75% overnight after Vitalik’s endorsement to the community, per CoinGecko data.

Following an overnight dip, MakerDAO’s MKR token is now trading flat on the day, at around $1,130.