Sky (formerly Maker/MakerDAO; SKY is the successor governance token to MKR) (SKY) is the governance token of the Sky Protocol, a decentralized finance protocol on Ethereum (ERC-20).
The protocol issues the USDS stablecoin against crypto and real-world-asset collateral. Sky is the September 2024 rebrand of MakerDAO. Borrowers pay a stability fee on loans issued against collateral, and savers can earn a Sky Savings Rate by holding sUSDS.
Sky's differentiation is scale as an established decentralized stablecoin issuer. The Sky Protocol carried roughly $13.3 billion in total value locked and generated about $30.15 million in fees and revenue over the 30 days ending 2026-08-30.
SKY holders directly govern the parameters driving this activity, such as stability fees and the Sky Savings Rate, and can stake SKY in the Staking Engine (Lockstake) to earn rewards and borrow USDS against their stake, tying token utility to protocol cash flow rather than speculation alone.
SKY is both a governance and utility token, used to vote on Sky Protocol parameters and to interact directly with its lending system.
SKY has no fixed maximum supply. Circulating supply is approximately 23.42 billion SKY, close to a total supply of about 23.46 billion SKY (roughly 99.8% circulating), as of 2026-08-31.
Supply follows Maker/Sky's mint-on-demand governance-token model, with no hard cap. Daily supply growth is tracked as modestly inflationary, reflecting ongoing SKY issuance tied to protocol operations rather than a fixed emission schedule.
SKY launched on September 18, 2024, as a 1:24,000 redenomination of the pre-existing MKR governance token, with the Sky brand unveiled August 27, 2024. The current SKY ERC-20 contract was deployed September 2, 2024, distinct from MakerDAO's 2015 founding.
SKY itself was not separately fundraised. As MakerDAO, the underlying project raised about $12 million in December 2017 (Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, and others), $15 million in September 2018 (a16z, ~6% of MKR supply), and $27.5 million in 2019 (Paradigm, Dragonfly Capital) via private token sales, with no public ICO.
SKY is deployed as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum mainnet.
Sky does not operate its own blockchain or validator set; its protocol logic, including the governance "Chief" smart contract and the Staking Engine (Lockstake module), runs entirely as smart contracts on Ethereum mainnet.
Rune Christensen founded the project, first proposing it in a March 2015 post and later leading Maker/Sky through its 2024-2025 "Endgame" restructuring.
Sky has no traditional single CEO or investor-backed executive team. Named current contributors include David García Ríos (legal structure lead), Deniz Yilmaz (technology and product lead), and John Conneely, appointed Global Head of Business Development in August 2025.
Sky Protocol is not a conventional company but an open, DAO-maintained system with no single corporate entity owning it.
The Sky Frontier Foundation, an independent foundation founded in August 2025, serves as the ecosystem's innovation and acceleration arm, supporting research, education, and ecosystem development. By its own statements, the Foundation does not control the Sky Protocol or its governance.
Sky is governed on-chain by SKY token holders through a continuous-approval-voting "Chief" smart contract that migrated from an MKR-based version to a SKY-based version during the Endgame transition.
Governance processes are codified in a rulebook called "Atlas." The ecosystem also includes "Sky Stars" (formerly subDAOs), affiliate DAOs handling specific functions, and a Staking Engine (Lockstake) through which SKY holders help secure the system while earning rewards.
Recent Sky development has focused on stablecoin interoperability and yield products. Uniswap integrated Sky's LitePeg, enabling 1:1 swaps among DAI, USDS, and USDC, while Sky's sUSDS yield product attracted $44 million in deposits in its first month.
Ongoing priorities include continued ChainSecurity audits of protocol components (Diamond PAU, July 6, 2026; PAU Administered Agent, June 8, 2026; PAU Assemblers, June 12, 2026) and the Sky Frontier Foundation's target of $21 billion in USDS supply supporting a projected $611 million in 2026 Sky Ecosystem gross revenue.
Sky/Maker has an extensive audit history spanning multiple security firms since 2019. Trail of Bits (August 2019) and PeckShield (October 2019) audited Multi-Collateral Dai; ChainSecurity has audited components including Chief, Chief Migration, Sky Protego, and Lockstake (September 26, 2025); and Cantina audited Maker SP-BEAM (March 2025).
The SKY contract carries a token security score of 77/100 and is a verified, non-spam contract. Holder concentration is high: the top 10 wallets hold 91% of supply, much of it in protocol-controlled staking and legacy conversion contracts rather than a single team.