Uranium-Backed Stablecoin? Maker Proposal Goes Nuclear

By Liam J. Kelly

The so-called Endgame Plan is evolving quickly–and weirdly–over at Maker.

Now, after adding vanilla t-bills and accounts payable to the blockchain, a new proposal is looking to add tokenized uranium.

“Our goal is to democratize ownership of uranium by providing stability value, and easier access to exposure to a commodity that is growing in importance,” reads the proposal penned by Uranium3o8.

The element is growing in popularity of late as various nations either restart their nuclear ambitions in the name of energy or lay out fresh plans to reboot their power grids.

The details are scant, but one would suspect that these tokenized fuel rods would be onboarded to the Maker protocol.

Once added, all that DAI floating around the ether could get a nuclear-backed boost from the tokenized uranium.

When reached for comment on how serious this proposal was, a spokesperson for Uranium3o8 told Decrypt that it is indeed legitimately interested in becoming a DAI backer.

"If they also have interest in this, I am sure we can find a way to make it happen. A lot of work needs to be done for us to get to that point - but we’re in it to win it," they said.

As for the Maker team, well, anything's possible for a DAO right?

MakerGrowth told Decrypt "this proposal is a contribution from an individual within the MakerDAO community and is currently being assessed by members of the DAO. The Maker forum is open to contributions from anyone in the MakerDAO community."

The above-mentioned Endgame Plan was whipped up by Maker’s founder Rune Christensen to generate as much revenue for the protocol via yield from real-world assets.

This revenue would then, at least per the plans laid out, be converted to Ethereum.

With a massive, censorship-resistant treasury, the thinking goes that Maker’s decentralized stablecoin would be immune from government capture. (Remember, the plan was put in place shortly after the Tornado Cash sanctions.)

Both ideas–tokenizing a volatile element and then using it to back crypto dollars–are kinda nuts.

The first is nuts because, based on the proposal and the project’s marketing materials, it describes real, nuclear-grade uranium.

The project also briefly touches on a redemption mechanism to recoup one pound of Uranium backing each token.

When asked on Twitter about the redemption process, the project said that folks who are licensed and “meet the minimum threshold” can have that uranium shipped to their house.

That minimum threshold, by the way, means holding a minimum of 20,000 uranium-backed tokens–which, per Uranium3o8, also represents 20,000 pounds, or 10 tons, of actual uranium.

The Uranium3o8 spokesperson further added that it's not responsible for the shipping of the live uranium. Instead, they've tapped a Canadian mining firm called Madison Metals.

"Anything to do with touching, transporting, or approving delivery of the underlying uranium is executed by them according to industry standard compliance and regulation," they said.

Some are still unconvinced, though, with another account writing simply: “feds.”

And the only comment responding to this rather mad proposal is a picture of an FBI agent working at a laptop with his glock placed just next to his work-from-home station.

For a stablecoin, adding Uranium as collateral seems… well, volatile.

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