Sky rebrand to Maker rejected as whale votes dominate

Sky’s move to revert to its previous brand name Maker was rejected in a governance vote dominated by four whales.

In a Nov. 8 announcement, Sky said its governance proposal to rebrand back to Maker was rejected it will continue using the Sky brand as “the primary backend protocol of the ecosystem.”

According to data from the Sky governance forum, only 18.5% of votes, backed by a single whale pledging 14,800 MKR tokens, supported the change to recenter the Maker brand with a limited refresh, while a little over 2.2% of users voted in favor of fully restoring the “Maker” brand to its original form.

Notably, just four other whales controlled the majority of the voting power, contributing a combined 62,452 MKR tokens — or 98% of the total votes — in favor of retaining the Sky brand.

Sky governance voting weight | Source: Sky governance

One community member poked fun at the vote results, suggesting that influence within the “community” is concentrated among a few.

According to Sky, the result aligns with the original plan to transition from MKR to SKY as the core brand of the ecosystem. 

The push to rebrand back to Maker came just a month after the Sky rebranding in August which replaced Maker’s governance token MKR with SKY, while the protocol’s stablecoin DAI was renamed to Sky Dollar with the USDS ticker.

The Nov. 4 proposal responded to community concerns and confusion stemming from the rebranding, as Maker co-founder Rune Christensen noted that many users were unclear about the utility of the Sky token.

Previously, some community members had also raised concerns about USDS’s decentralization due to a potential freeze function that would allow its issuer to freeze the token.

On the other hand, those supporting the Sky branding have urged the community to focus on the protocol’s Endgame roadmap proposed by Christensen in 2022 and the broader vision behind the rebrand.

In a Nov. 4 post, Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer said that Sky’s rebrand will support the protocol’s growth with new offerings that include plans to launch decentralized and regulatory-compliant stablecoins, integrate with platforms like Aave, and roll out new features on Solana and Ethereum Layer 2.

Spencer added that the project’s timing and limited exchange support have hindered a full-scale launch but expressed confidence in its long-term vision as he believes “there is a ton of value to be unearthed by following the Endgame roadmap.”

Nevertheless, the community seems to have responded positively to the news as both MKR and SKY were up over 3% when writing.