MakerDAO Paves Way for Additional $1.28B U.S. Treasury Purchase

The community governing MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind stablecoin DAI, has paved the way to purchase up to an additional $1.28 billion in U.S. government bonds via crypto asset manager BlockTower Capital.

Voters unanimously favored opening a new real-world asset (RWA) vault named BlockTower Andromeda, according to a vote concluded on Thursday. The vault is dedicated to investing a maximum of $1.28 billion in short-dated U.S. Treasury bonds funded by Maker’s overcollateralized DAI stablecoin, according to the proposal.

Maker will pay a 0.15% arranger fee to BlockTower. Celadon Financial Group will act as a broker and Wedbush Securities will custody assets.

Maker has already purchased $1.1 billion of government and corporate bonds via a vault helmed by asset manager Monetalis Clysdale. It also made loans to banks such as Huntingdon Valley Bank and Societe Generale-Forge, the French banking giant’s crypto-focused subsidiary.

The latest decision fits into Maker’s ambitions to diversify reserve assets backing its $5 billion stablecoin DAI and boost protocol revenues by investing in yield-generating strategies. Maker earns a yield on storing $500 million USDC at Coinbase Prime, while Gemini pays rewards to Maker for holding Gemini Dollar (GUSD) among the reserve assets.

The platform’s investment plan also underscores the growing demand for traditional financial instruments among crypto native entities such as DAOs as a means to earn a stable yield on their treasury.

BlockTower already manages multiple Maker vaults, which currently invest some $90 million in structured credit products on blockchain-based credit protocol Centrifuge.