Announcing DAI Integration
Integrating Dai & a conversation with MakerDAO founder, Rune Christensen
Ethfinex is excited to announce support for Dai, a decentralised stablecoin designed by the MakerDAO team. Dai pairs will go live on Ethfinex tomorrow, April 7th, against USD, ETH and BTC.
The Role of DAI
A significant amount of research and thought goes into every decision to add a new token to Ethfinex. Dai, however, represents a particularly good match with our long-term vision. Listing Dai, and offering DAI/USDT markets, reflects Ethfinex’s vision of building a hybrid decentralised exchange which connects centralised and decentralised liquidity.
The requirements for a stablecoin, allowing for low-risk arbitrage between different cryptocurrency exchanges and price hedging by traders, is today mainly being met by USD Tether — a centrally issued alternative collateralised by USD held in a bank account. DAI instead removes this centralised risk point, and is slowly becoming popular in the Ethereum community with decentralised exchanges as a primary trading pair.
Ethfinex will act as a spoke connecting together the centralised and decentralised ecosystems of exchanges through our integration of the 0x protocol and other decentralised exchange protocols for non-custodial trading. DAI/USDT pairs are a first step towards connecting these currently disparate markets. Through doing so we aim to facilitate new arbitrage trading opportunities, subsequently allowing customers to make markets across a more diverse range of tokens and exchanges.
We are very pleased to introduce Dai pairs to the Ethfinex community. The addition of Dai further cements Ethfinex as the home of Ethereum trading.
A Conversation With Dai
Maker’s Dai is a decentralised stablecoin soft-pegged to 1 USD using a system of collateral and price feeds. Dai is a blockchain-based stablecoin, rather than a dollar-backed stablecoin. This is an important distinction. Dai’s price stability functions independently of any real world counterparty risk. In the design of Dai’s stablecoin, MKR token holders serve the function of buyers of last resort in order to guarantee price a stability.
Ahead of the listing, we spoke with Rune Christensen, founder of MakerDAO, about Ethereum and the role of Dai in the development of the decentralised platform.
Q: What potential impact do you see DAI having on the cryptocurrency space?
“A decentralised stablecoin is the key to unlocking the unique benefits of a complete financial ecosystem on the blockchain. In fact, addressing price stability will be necessary for many functions and businesses to develop on blockchain.”
“We’re proud to share that Dai has been stable since its launch 4 months ago. We see that market-based dApps will be able to directly benefit from the launch of Dai, enabling the ecosystem to approach a new stage of usability.”
Q: The ethos of decentralisation is important to many projects in the community. How does being a decentralised organisation inform your mission and what are some of the challenges?
“Being a decentralised organisation is an important aspect of MakerDAO, so much so that we put that in our name. It’s one of the most fundamental aspects to how we run. MKR is a governance token used by MKR holders to vote for the risk management and business logic of the Maker system. This kind of risk management is crucial for the system’s success and survival, and is done in practice by voting on specific risk parameters. Every MKR holder can vote for any number of proposals with the MKR he or she holds, and can submit a new proposal, or cast/withdraw votes at any point in time.
Of course one of the challenges is taking into consideration education for voters and how governance will mature.
“The initial governance framework for Dai risk management happens on weekly meetings to spread awareness around new proposals, and coordinate votes. Based on the experience learned in governing Dai, we are working together in the community to establish a holistic framework for future governance of the scale that the system will need in the long run.”
Q: What drew the organisation to the Ethereum blockchain and what challenges do you see with it moving forward?
“We chose the Ethereum blockchain because it was the only one available when MakerDAO started, but also because we saw its potential as the main hub of smart contracts and Dapps, creating synergy that benefits Maker. The biggest challenge for Ethereum is enabling scalability solutions and cross-chain systems that allows Dapps built on Ethereum to seamlessly operate and compete on other blockchains and ecosystems as well.”
