MakerDAO Unveils Scaling and Multi-Chain Strategy Roadmap

The largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, MakerDAO, has revealed its scaling strategies for moving forwards in a multi-chain environment.

In a lengthy post on the MakerDAO governance forum on May 27, a protocol core engineer detailed the current state of the Layer 2 and multi-chain ecosystem. At the end of it, the DeFi lending platform highlighted its potential plans for going forward in this rapidly evolving landscape.

The purpose of the post was to engage with the broader community on the specific topic, gather feedback regarding the various opportunities, and:

“Align technical and development resources to agree on a strategy for how MakerDAO should embrace this new and complex landscape.”

Scaling is essential

There was a lot of in-depth information on current scaling and crypto-bridge solutions, but it highlighted the need to expand from Ethereum which is the current standard:

“Ethereum is likely to become a global settlement layer (think of it as the Manhattan of crypto), in this context it is unreasonable to assume that everybody will fit into a single ”city“ where property prices skyrocket.”

It added that instead, people with growing DeFi needs will establish new, thriving communities by creating their own “islands.”

It claims that MakerDAO is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the growing ecosystem because it can provide cheap access to DAI on rollups and side-chains for users currently priced out of Ethereum due to high gas prices.

In March, the protocol announced an Optimism-Dai bridge allows fast withdrawals by locking up Layer 1 Dai to mint Layer 2 Dai, as well as allowing the stablecoin to be burned in exchange for near-instant access to L1 Dai.

MakerDAO Roadmap

The proposed roadmap for community discussion includes the design of a blueprint for minting DAI on L2 while still tracking all minted DAI in the L1 base contract.

The Optimism launch roadmap isn‘t expected to enable fast L2 transactions until Q3 or Q4, but it’s in development at the moment. Maker is also considering Arbitrum, which plans to launch its Layer 2 Optimism mainnet on May 28.

Yesterday, BeInCrypto reported that Uniswap was preparing to deploy on Arbitrum for Layer 2 scaling.

Maker added that it would continue working with L2 solutions provider Starkware and zkSync to “create specific roadmaps aimed at making DAI available on these chains in a manner that will allow direct minting of DAI there in the future.”

It‘s also exploring other salability solutions such as Polygon, Klaytn, Avalanche, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) but cautioned that “given their much weaker security,” they do not inherit Ethereum’s base layer security like L2 rollups.

At the time of press, MKR was trading at $3,590, up 32% since its weekly open.