Bankless: Why did Maker and Aave get into conflict over Athena?

Author: Jack Inabinet, Bankless; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

More than $500 million in ENA has just been distributed to qualified investors through Athena’s first round of airdrops, but there are concerns about the agreement The debate reached a fever pitch on Crypto Twitter. Why are two blue chip DeFi protocols now in conflict over Athena?

Yesterday afternoon, a governance proposal was posted on the Maker forum requiring Delegates are considering increasing the capacity of the recently established USDe and sUSDe lending facilities on Morpho from 100 million DAI to 600 million DAI, with the ability to expand that limit to up to 1 billion DAI, with the majority of funds to be exchanged at a relative ratio of 86% or higher. Lending with higher loan-to-value (LTV) ratios.

Maker’s move to increase the use of Athena’s synthetic USD stablecoin as collateral is to increase DAI adoption The move comes as the market dominance of its stablecoin has declined significantly, with the stablecoin having plunged 20% since the beginning of the year.

In response to Maker's governance proposal, Aave contributors launched their own proposal seeking to ensure that all Aave deployments Set DAI's LTV to 0%, thereby eliminating the ability for users to borrow and lend using DAI as a collateral asset.

To the confusion of many, Aave showed willingness to incorporate Athena’s sUSDe into its V3 Ethereum deployment, March The temperature check on the 19th passed with near-unanimous support, in contrast to the protocol’s knee-jerk reaction to Maker’s recent efforts to increase lending activity against the token.

While it is possible that DAI loans through Aave will be conducted in a risk-isolated manner (similar to how the sUSDe market may operate in the future), thereby eliminating the possibility of contagion, Aave was no longer willing to take increasing risks. Maker has stated that it is committed to increasing DAI supply and fiscal revenue.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov reiterated this view, proposing that DAI be completely removed from all markets and Said he believes "with the new risk direction MakerDAO is taking, Aave DAO has little value."

Source: Aave Governance

In view of the extremely high yield rate of Athena stablecoin, High, sUSDe generates best-in-class returns for stablecoins through funding/staking payments, and USDe offers huge airdrop rewards, leverage demand for these assets is high, and holders are willing to pay to obtain it.

Although Maker’s current Athena lending operation only has 2% of the circulating DAI supply collateralized, these loans have an annualized return of 36% and contribute 10% to Maker’s expected revenue.

While Maker’s increasing adoption of Athena assets as collateral has undoubtedly increased DAI’s risk profile to a certain extent, Aave’s retaliatory response feels harsh and could be seen as aimed at Further supporting GHO - the protocol's own stablecoin and a direct competitor to DAI - the governance proposal considers the potential benefits that Athena's integration with Aave could bring to GHO to support the sUSDe market...

Source: Aave Governance