MakerDAO Boosts U.S. Treasury Holdings by $700M to Back DAI Stablecoin With Real-World Assets

Stablecoin issuer and decentralized finance protocol MakerDAO bought another $700 million U.S. Treasurys, taking the total in its DAI stablecoin reserve to $1.2 billion, the platform said in a press release.

The purchase was the latest step in Maker’s strategy, encapsulated by founder Rune Christensen’s “Endgame Plan,” to diversify the assets backing the $4.5 billion dollar-pegged stablecoin by increasing the role of traditional financial assets such as government bonds in the reserve.

The acquisition was part of a proposal approved in March to increase the upper limit of a real-world asset (RWA) vault that invests in short-term government bonds to $1.25 billion. The vault, one of the facilities that ensures DAI keeps its $1 price peg, is managed by asset manager Monetalis.

The platform is undergoing a restructuring that includes breaking up its structure into smaller, autonomous units called SubDAOs and investing in yield-generating, real-world assets to boost protocol revenue at a time when demand for crypto lending is modest.

“Through the diversification of its collateral pool with this U.S. Treasury ladder strategy, Maker is taking advantage of the current yield environment and putting its assets to work,” Monetalis CEO Allan Pedersen said in a statement.

The community recently approved the onboarding of a new RWA vault managed by crypto asset manager BlockTower, marking the first step towards an additional UST purchase of up to $1.28 billion in the future. Voting members also favored ditching $500 million of Paxos Dollar (USDP) and $390 million of Gemini Dollar (GUSD) from the reserve to pursue better yielding investments.