Sky’s attempt to reclaim its original brand name, Maker, has been declined based on governance voting that has been tilted by four large investors with significant voting influence on the community. On November 8th, Sky reiterated that the rebranding effort was futile, and the project will remain under the Sky brand as “the primary backend protocol of the ecosystem.”
Based on the voting results provided in the Sky governance forum, only 18.5% of the vote count favored refreshing the Maker brand, while a single whale cast 14,800 MKR. At the same time, only 2.2% of users chose the option that implies the maximum return to the original form of the brand Maker.
On the other hand, four other whales contributed 62,452 MKR tokens, representing over 98% of the vote for retaining the Sky brand. The results raised questions among community members; one recall was the overrepresentation of a few wallets that owned significant tokens in the proposal’s voting result.
Sky Rebrand Aligns with Long-Term Strategy and Vision
Sky’s official press release confirmed this, stating that the rejection aligned with their initial strategy to move from using MKR as the primary token for the ecosystem to using SKY instead. This proposal was executed a month after the Sky rebranding in August, when Maker’s governance token, MKR, was substituted with SKY, and its stablecoin DAI was replaced with Sky Dollar (USDS).
Bruh… pic.twitter.com/0BWJ4c7Hxt
— pDAI Xs to $1.00 (@pDAI_to_Dollar) November 7, 2024
The move with the Oct. 4 proposal followed much anxiety and uncertainty among the public on rebranding. Many users were uncertain about the use case of the newly added Sky token. According to Maker co-founder Rune Christensen, some even had qualms about the decentralization of USDS because of the freeze, as mentioned earlier.
However, those supporting the Sky brand assert that the change is in line with the direction of the protocol in the long run, especially after the Endgame roadmap Christensen introduced in late 2022. In a recent post on Nov 4th, Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework Ventures, pointed out it would help grow through new decentralized and regulating compliant stablecoins launches, expanding on the Aave integration, and bringing new features to Solana and Ethereum Layer 2.
Usually, Spencer noted that the project lacks the exchange support, and the timing of the project’s start meant it couldn’t go fully scaled. Ultimately, it should become precious to follow the Endgame roadmap.
Contrary to the result, which shows that the rebranding proposal was rejected, there is still enthusiasm within the Sky ecosystem, evidenced by increased vote results of more than 3% for both MKR and SKY tokens.
