PANews reported on May 14 that according to CoinDesk, a report released by Steakhouse Financial's Sky contributor showed that the DeFi protocol Sky (formerly MakerDAO) suffered a net loss of $5 million in the first quarter, a sharp reversal from the $31 million profit in the fourth quarter of last year. The main reason for the loss was a 102% year-on-year surge in interest paid to stablecoin holders, which is directly related to its strategy of promoting the new stablecoin USDS to replace DAI. Sky co-founder Rune Christensen confirmed that in order to attract capital inflows, the USDS savings rate was as high as 12.5% (dropped to 4.5% in February), resulting in a surge in interest expenses. Currently, the USDS interest rate is still higher than DAI, but Paper Imperium, the governance contact of blockchain research company GFX Labs, pointed out: "USDS has failed to create new demand, but has only caused DAI holders who originally accepted zero interest to turn to high-interest products."
The launch of USDS is a core initiative of Sky's "final plan" to create a more compliant institutional-grade stablecoin. Although the total supply of USDS and DAI increased by 57% this quarter, it mainly came from the $450 million pledged funds of the synthetic dollar protocol Ethena. It is worth noting that Ethena has recently transferred part of its reserves from USDS to USDtb supported by BlackRock, which may reduce Sky's interest burden.
