In an essay published in the journal Nature, MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen outlines steps that could be taken to transform the protocol into a vehicle for combating climate change.
CreatorDAO should seek to ensure that all of its collateral consists of “sustainable and climate-aligned assets that take into account the long-term implications of financial activities on the environment,” according to a lengthy post made on the MakerDAO governance forum on October 5.
Specifically, according to Christensen, collateral from the protocol should be invested in sustainable real-world assets (RWAs) through senior credit positions in projects that “build solar farms, wind turbines, batteries, recharging stations, and other cost-efficient renewable energy solutions, as well as their supply chains, sustainable resource extraction, and recycling,” as well as their supply chains. He went on to say the following:
“Today we already have everything we need to begin scaling our RWA exposure to hundreds of billions of USD and beyond, securely and in full compliance with financial regulation, by using the trustee-based model of real-world assets that the community developed over many years.”
The necessity for MakerDAO to restore its commitment to decentralized collateral is also expressed by Christensen, who advocates that the protocol return to its previous reliance on the Ethereum network and its Ether coin.
MakerDAO participants deposit crypto assets into the system in order to collateralize the minting of the Dai (DAI) stablecoin, which is now in circulation.
While the protocol initially supported only Ether, it has subsequently grown to include support for a variety of additional assets, including USD Coin, Wrapped Bitcoin, and Basic Attention Token.
According to Maker’s founder, the greater environmental efficiency projected to be gained by Ethereum’s shift to Proof-of-Stake consensus with Eth2 is underlined in the following way:
“Once the upgrade from proof of work to proof of stake is completed, Ethereum will become a highly energy-efficient blockchain. ETH will become a sustainable contender to Bitcoin’s current role as the primary cryptocurrency.”
