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MakerDAO emerged as a clear market leader in part for its rock-bottom interest rates of 0.5 percent, which are a technological necessity for keeping its DAI stablecoin worth $1. With interest rates rising to 19.5 percent, some early borrowers are angry.

The Tron Foundation has launched its own MakerDAO-like stablecoin system called "Djed." The USDJ stablecoin will be generated through decentralized smart contracts on the TRON network. Anyone can pledge TRX as collateral to generate USDJ, which is pegged to the US dollar through Collateralized Debt Positions using autonomous feedback mechanisms.

"It's a shots-fired moment for decentralized finance, or DeFi. MakerDAO, a decentralized bank and one of the cornerstones of DeFi, made its first "real world" loan last month. It is lending to Americans who want to fix and flip residential real estate."

The MakerDAO project launches its upgraded multi-collateral Dai stablecoin today. To the relief of many, it will not include traditional assets as accepted forms of collateral just yet. Cryptocurrency Exchange, Coinbase, has already announced support for the upgraded token from 2nd December.

After nearly two weeks of continuous voting, MakerDAO token holders have officially activated a decrease to DAI stablecoin fees. DAI is an ethereum-based token which presently maintains a soft peg to the U.S. dollar.

The Maker Foundation has handed governance over the smart contract that underpins the MakerDAO (MKR) protocol to MKR token holders.

MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen unveiled proposals that will effectively cause what he believes has become a "completely pointless" Maker Foundation to dissolve over the next few years.

Dai is minted by users taking on collateralized debt positions, where collateral is deposited in an Ethereum smart-contract, with a percentage of the asset's value being paid out in Dai. The collateral then gets released once the tokens are repaid, and the Dai are destroyed. Loans that can't be supported by their collateral are placed into liquidation proceedings, in which the collateral is auctioned for Dai to repay the debt. But the price drop allowed bidders to win liquidation auctions for 0 DAI - further worsening Maker's crisis.

A new class-action lawsuit against DeFi giant the Maker Foundation alleges that the company misrepresented the risks investors in the ecosystem faced, leading to catastrophic losses of collateral on MakerDAO on March 12. The complaint, which was filed in the Northern District Court of California on April 14, accuses three entities affiliated with Maker of negligence and intentional misrepresentation before investors, or "collateralized debt position holders."

MakerDAO's emergency shutdown option - which was weighed by community members following the appearance of a $4 million debt bubble on the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform - will not pass at this time. If a shutdown was triggered by the Maker team, all dai stablecoins in circulation would convert to the underlying asset, ether (ETH).

MakerDAO is currently conducting an auction of MKR tokens in exchange for DAI to cover roughly $4.5 million undercollateralized debt. The Maker Foundation, the non-profit that supports the lending protocol, appears to have won 33 out of 33 auctions thus far. The Foundation said it has been providing some bidders with "technical assistance" to help facilitate their participation in the auctions, stressing that it is not "purchasing MKR in the auctions""

Since COVID-19 smashed into markets on March 12 the price of Dai skyrocketed as high as $1.50. It has since retreated to a range of $1.01 - $1.03, but it has now spent a full month above its $1 peg - and shows no signs of returning. A negative stability fee would encourage more people to become indebted to the Dai system. This would increase the supply of Dai, and in doing so reduce upwards pressure on the peg.

"MakerDAO and DeFi more generally are helping to provide an answer to the question that hangs over crypto. After the bubble, then crash, of 2017 and 2018, it's natural to ask, 'What do we use this stuff for?' DeFi is the first legitimate answer to the question. DeFi is starting to have its moment because it's the next chapter for crypto."

"The release of Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) is only 10 days away and will mark a huge milestone reached for the MakerDAO project. MCD will introduce exciting new features to the Maker Protocol, including the much-anticipated Dai Savings Rate (DSR) and, of course, additional collateral asset types. "

MakerDAO (MKR) set interest rates on most assets, with the notable exclusion of Ether (ETH), back above 0%. Lowering interest rates is generally seen as a way of stimulating DAI creation, which is supposed to lower its price to its intended $1 peg, but DAI is trading at $1.03, significantly above its intended price. Maker has yet to find a satisfactory mechanism to entice arbitrageurs to bring the price down to $1. Several proposals based on strong-handed market interventions are being discussed, while external observers often bring up the idea of setting negative interest rates. The Maker community appears to be unwilling to cross that line for now, however.

Since Black Thursday, ETH is still performing well and organic demand for leverage has only increased. However, DAI selling from leverage seekers could not offset the yield farming craze and on average DAI has traded at around $1.02. Potentially, market making activities also decreased due to lucrative opportunities from yield farming. Importantly, this all happened despite heavily increased debt ceilings, the onboarding of new collateral assets and 0% rates across the board. The issue is that all the conventional monetary tools at hand simply cannot compete with massive DAI demand from yield farmers and new price mechanics introduced by several AMMs like Curve.

Maker (MKR) holders have voted to prioritize adding Gemini USD, Binance USD, and several other tokens as collateral assets to the Maker DAO protocol so those tokens can be used to generate DAI stablecoins. As a result, Maker "Domain Teams"-elected community members-will analyze these tokens and determine whether or not the protocol can handle them before the community takes a final vote to accept or reject them as collateral assets.

Decentralized financial contracts platform UMA has partnered with MakerDAO to release a token tied to the US stock market.

"In an effort to restrict supply and raise the value of DAI, MKR token holders have steadily been increasing what is known as the Stability Fee in larger and larger increments. However, this week, MKR token holders have signaled their support for a smaller, more measured increase to the Stability Fee of 3 percent."

The recent Ether (ETH) price drop showed the reliability and weaknesses of the decentralized stablecoin built by MakerDAO, Dai (DAI), and the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem built on top of it.