MakerDAO's Sky Rebrand: MKR to SKY Migration, USDS, and Endgame Explained

MakerDAO is no longer MakerDAO. On August 27, 2024, one of the oldest and most important protocols in DeFi retired its name and rolled out Sky, a completely new brand with new tokens and a restructured governance model. You can still check the legacy MKR price on LBank and the SKY price separately because both tokens trade live while the migration is ongoing.

The DAI stablecoin now has a sibling called USDS. The MKR governance token is being migrated to a new token called SKY at a 1:24,000 ratio. The protocol has begun splitting itself into a network of specialized "Stars," starting with Spark and Keel.

For an asset that has been a DeFi pillar since 2017, this is the biggest identity shift in its history. The fact that it has been controversial, underperformed expectations, and may even be partially reversed only makes the story more worth tracking.

What follows is everything that has happened since the Endgame rollout: the plan itself, the migration mechanics, the new stablecoin architecture, and the open questions that remain for holders.

Why MakerDAO Rebranded to Sky: The Endgame Backstory

The Sky rebrand did not come out of nowhere. In May 2022, co-founder Rune Christensen published the Endgame plan, a multi-year roadmap designed to restructure MakerDAO into a modular network of self-governing units rather than a single monolithic protocol. The core problem the plan tried to solve was scale. MakerDAO by 2022 was already managing billions in collateral, backing DAI across dozens of integrations, and starting to move into real-world assets. Running all of that through a single governance process had become slow and politically difficult.

Endgame proposed five phases. Phase 1 was the public rebrand. Phases 2 through 4 progressively spin off specialized sub-organizations. Phase 5 introduces a new dedicated blockchain called NewChain to house backend SubDAO logic and governance security. Christensen publicly suggested that NewChain could be built by forking Solana's source code, with Cosmos as a backup option.

The rebrand itself went live on August 27, 2024. The community vote that formally approved it happened in November 2024, after Phase 1 was already underway. USDS and SKY launched alongside a new interface at sky.money, a dedicated Sky Savings Rate yield product, and an accelerated plan to migrate the entire MKR supply to SKY by September 2025.

Image by upgrademrktosky

How the MKR to SKY Migration Works and the Deadline That Matters

For MKR holders, this is the mechanic that matters most. Every 1 MKR upgrades to 24,000 SKY. The ratio is flat across all holders and does not change based on when you upgrade. 

The target deadline is September 18, 2025, one year after the launch. After that window the migration does not stop, but a penalty schedule is meant to kick in:

• A 1% penalty on the SKY received per MKR upgraded, starting September 22, 2025, subject to governance approval
• An additional 1% reduction every three months thereafter
• The penalty compounds up to 100% across roughly 25 years if the schedule runs unchanged
• Governance can amend or remove the penalty at any point through a Sky Ecosystem vote

The penalty has a specific purpose. As of late 2024, only about 10.7% of MKR had migrated despite the 1:24,000 ratio being value-neutral. Running two governance tokens on the same protocol creates confusion, splits liquidity, and complicates listings on venues that track both. The penalty is designed to push stragglers to move without being so aggressive that it looks like coercion. Several major venues have already announced hard delisting windows for MKR around the September 2025 deadline, which adds pressure beyond the penalty itself.

One technical note for holders who interact with the protocol contracts directly: the Sky documentation includes an OLD_MKR contract reference. Holders using older MKR balances may need to migrate through an intermediate step before reaching SKY. Anyone planning to self-manage the upgrade should read the Sky docs carefully rather than assuming the path is a single swap.

USDS Is Not Just DAI with a New Name

The stablecoin side of the rebrand is where the strategic shift is clearest. DAI is not being deprecated. Holders can keep it, and it remains fully immutable. But USDS is positioned as the default new path, and the two coins behave differently in ways that matter.

Key differences between USDS and DAI:

1. Upgrade path. DAI upgrades to USDS optionally at a 1:1 ratio through the Sky interface.
2. Yield. USDS plugs into the Sky Savings Rate, with a wrapped variant called sUSDS that accrues yield directly on chain. sUSDS currently offers roughly 3.75% APY. A higher-risk variant called stUSDS sits around 5.86%.
3. Multi-chain footprint. USDS deployed to Solana in November 2024 via Wormhole's NTT framework. DAI remains primarily Ethereum-centric.
4. Freeze function. USDS includes a freeze capability at the contract level. DAI does not. Christensen has framed this as necessary for Sky to participate in regulated financial pathways, while critics see it as a concession on the "decentralized stablecoin" narrative that the protocol built its reputation on.

Adoption has been fast. USDS supply scaled from roughly 100 million to over 2.3 billion between the September 2024 launch and early 2025. By January 2025, USDS ranked among the top three stablecoins by market cap, which puts it in the same conversation as the largest centralized issuers. That growth curve is a large part of why the protocol continues to push migration even while the MKR-to-SKY side has been slower than planned.

The Star SubDAO Model: Spark, Keel, and Specialized Governance

The SubDAO concept is the structural heart of Endgame. Sky calls them "Stars" in its public branding. Each Star is a semi-autonomous unit with its own governance token, its own product focus, and its own treasury, but it remains tied to the core Sky Protocol through shared reserves, USDS integration, and ecosystem rewards.

Two Stars are currently live:

• Spark. MakerDAO's first SubDAO, launched in May 2024. Spark runs a lending protocol with SparkLend and a savings product. Its native token is SPK, with a maximum supply of 10 billion. Allocation breaks down to 65% for user farming rewards distributed over ten years, 23% for ecosystem growth and airdrops, and 12% for the team with multi-year vesting.
• Keel. The Solana-focused Star, which publicly launched on September 29, 2025. Keel is structured to deploy up to $2.5 billion from Sky's USDS reserves into Solana DeFi, targeting protocols like Kamino, Jupiter, and Raydium. Keel effectively operationalizes the multi-chain thesis that started with the USDS deployment to Solana.

The Star model answers a real design problem. MakerDAO governance had become too slow for experimentation and too political for niche strategies. By spinning out specialized units with their own tokens and governance, Sky can move faster on specific initiatives without bottlenecking the main protocol. The trade-off is that users now need to understand multiple tokens such as SKY, SPK, and future Star tokens if they want full exposure to the ecosystem.

Sky Goes Multi-Chain: USDS on Solana and the NewChain Question

Multi-chain was the first major strategic break from MakerDAO's Ethereum-only identity. USDS went live on Solana in November 2024 using Wormhole's Native Token Transfers framework. That brought native USDS liquidity to Solana-based DeFi and served as the foundation Keel was built on.

The more ambitious component is NewChain, the Phase 5 proposal. NewChain would be a dedicated blockchain built specifically to house SubDAO tokenomics logic and governance security, separating high-value governance from the consumer-facing layer. Christensen's 2023 forum post suggested forking Solana as the technical base. Nothing has shipped yet on NewChain specifically, and its timeline remains tied to the later phases of Endgame rather than the immediate 2025 roadmap.

For traders watching market structure, the short-term impact of the multi-chain push is mostly on USDS distribution and on where yield opportunities appear. Sky's reserves are now being deployed across ecosystems in a way that MakerDAO never did.

Community Pushback and the Unrebrand Debate

The Sky rebrand has not gone smoothly, and Christensen has been unusually candid about that. He has publicly described the rebrand as costing around $5 million and called it a "typical DeFi mistake." After the launch, MKR dropped roughly 50% from its pre-rebrand levels, and SKY debuted at under $60 million in market cap, which was viewed internally as a weak opening for what was supposed to be a mass-market token.

Several specific tensions have surfaced:

• The USDS freeze function triggered a wave of community concern about whether Sky was drifting away from decentralization principles.
• In February 2025, an attempted governance attack led Christensen to push through emergency proposals to tighten voting security and prevent what he described as "an irreversible catastrophe." The episode highlighted how concentrated governance power still is.
• The dual-token period left casual holders unsure whether to hold MKR, migrate to SKY, or wait. Listings platforms reported ongoing confusion.
• Christensen himself floated the possibility of reversing parts of the rebrand and returning to the Maker name, citing community feedback. Whether that happens formally remains an open question at the time of writing.

For advanced readers, the takeaway is that Sky is a protocol in active transition rather than a finished product. The brand, the governance model, and even the decision tree for holders may still move.

What the Sky Transition Means for MKR Holders Today

Migrating or holding is ultimately a governance and optionality question rather than a price question, because the 1:24,000 ratio keeps the economic exposure value-neutral. The decision comes down to three practical factors:

• Governance participation. SKY is the token that votes on Sky Ecosystem proposals, including the penalty schedule, Star allocations, and any future brand decisions. Voting power migrates with the token.
• Deadline risk. Missing the September 2025 migration means accepting the penalty schedule if governance approves it. Even if the penalty is later relaxed, the operational path for legacy MKR is narrowing as venues delist the old token.
• Ecosystem access. Staking SKY currently offers yields above 10% APY on the Sky interface, along with exposure to SPK and future Star token rewards. Holding legacy MKR blocks access to those programs.

If you want a refresher on the pre-Endgame foundation, our earlier MakerDAO and DAI deep dive covers DAI's peg mechanics, MKR governance, and the RWA expansion in detail. For anyone still sitting on MKR in 2026, the rational default is to migrate unless there is a specific reason to wait. Pair that with the broader thesis question: Sky is betting that a more modular, multi-chain, yield-aware stablecoin ecosystem will outcompete the simpler MakerDAO setup.

If that bet works, SKY and USDS become more central to DeFi than MakerDAO ever was. If community sentiment forces a partial rebrand reversal, the pieces that matter in practice (the Stars, USDS, and SKY governance) are likely to remain even if the name on the door changes again.