MakerDAO community votes against CoinShares’ $500M investment proposal

Decentralized lending protocol MakerDAO has voted against crypto investment firm CoinShares’ proposal to invest between $100 million and $500 million worth of the community’s funds into a portfolio of corporate debt securities and government-backed bonds for yield as an investment strategy. 

Ultimately, 72.43% of the votes went against the proposal. Had the community voted in favor, CoinShares would have provided “a variable APY above the SOFR interest rate (3.01% as of October 26, 2022) in the community’s preferred currency (DAI, USDC, USD…) to MakerDAO, which would have been withdrawable on-chain. 

On MakerDAO’s page for the vot, a few members explained why they voted against the proposal. Feedblack Loops LLC shared:

“Since governance has voted on excess USDC then available, going to just say no to proposals of this type moving forward until the house gets in order. Coinshares had many incongruencies up front but did a decent job of articulating confusing portions of their proposal. Optimistic for a revision / different approach.”

Another user, Llama — who also voted against the proposal — said: “We believe this proposal to be extremely beyond protocol risk tolerance.”

Related: MakerDAO co-founder Nikolai Mushegian dies at 29 in Puerto Rico

In October, the MakerDAO community approved the custodianship of $1.6 billion worth of the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) with Coinbase Prime, an institutional prime brokerage platform for crypto assets. The custodianship was expected to allow the MakerDAO community to earn a 1.5% reward on th USDC. 

On Oct. 14, Cointelegraph reported that MakerDAO’s revenue plummeted in the third quarter of 2022, caused by a fall in loan demand and few liquidations, while expenses remained high.